There is only one writer in the Bible who tells us of the Body of Christ. The Old Testament writers saw nothing of it. It was a mystery hidden from them. The mystery of Christ, which is His Body, has been made manifest only in the New Testament age. Yet only Paul refers to it. Peter does not. Nor does John, even though his mending ministry was to bring the saints back to Paul’s completing ministry. Even in Paul’s writings, only four of his fourteen Epistles speak of the Body of Christ; the other ten do not mention it. Romans, 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, and Colossians are the only books that refer to the Body of Christ. I tried to see if there is a hint anywhere as to where Paul might have picked up the thought of the Body of Christ. I could not find a hint. Paul received a unique vision that the church is the Body of Christ.
This revelation has been lost, overlooked, or neglected by Christians. Consider all the practices that came in after the reformation. There were the practices of the Puritans, of the Mennonites, of the Amish, and of the various kinds of Brethren. In Germany there were different kinds of Orders with their particular rules. Then there were the Presbyterians with their practice and the Baptists with theirs. I must tell you that no matter what practices you follow or what kind of Brethren or Order you belong to, these groups are not the Body. All these practices are off.
When I was in Ohio, I visited an Amish community. I saw nothing of Christ. I saw old wagons. I saw drab clothing; they could wear only black, white, gray, and dark blue. Such practices are other than Christ.
Nowadays the term communal life has been popularized. Even to have a communal life based on Acts 2:44-45 is not the Body. When Paul got saved, the communal life was over. Even by Acts 6 the communal life was almost over because of the murmurings. Then Paul came on the scene. He told the Corinthians to bring their offerings to the church meetings on the Lord’s Day to take care of others (1 Cor. 16:1-2). Here is a strong indication that communal living was at an end. There may be a communal life without the Body of Christ. A communal life can be set up, but not so with the Body of Christ. The Body requires the resurrection, ascension, and headship of Christ.
In 1933 some young men from the British Navy who were with the Brethren in England heard of our meeting in Shanghai and came to visit us. They were well trained. They knew how to baptize, who could baptize, whom to baptize, and how to accept a believer at the Lord’s table. I was young then, only about twenty-eight. I admired them and thought we should learn of them; they were so clear about how things ought to be.
Now I think differently. That kind of knowledge is helpful only to a robot. A mechanical man is programmed to know just what to do. A living person, in contrast, is not quite sure. He does not know what is best for his situation. He does not know what to do, but he is living! Suppose you are asked how we baptize people and whom we accept at the Lord’s table. If you have a ready answer to every question, you are acting like a robot. If you simply reply, “We have no way. We just walk according to spirit,” they will press you further. “Do you mean the Holy Spirit?” When you explain that you are referring to the mingled spirit, they will ask, “What? Mingled spirit? What is that? We want to know how you have the Lord’s table. Do you use leavened or unleavened bread? Do you have wine or grape juice?” If you say, “I have nothing to tell you. We simply seek to walk according to spirit,” you can be sure they will be through with you.
Is not today’s Christianity made up of robots? Look at the pitiful robots belonging to the Catholic Church, the small robots following the big ones. There are cardinal robots and archbishop robots. Is the Lord’s recovery like this? I am concerned about this question. We must not make the saints robots.
The Body is an organism. We are organic members of this organism, not robots. Read again the description in Ephesians 4:12-16. The Body is built up directly by every member. Verse 16 says, “Out from Whom all the Body, fitted and knit together through every joint of the supply, according to the operation in measure of each one part, causes the growth of the Body unto the building up of itself in love.”
You may have an evangelical work but with no intention to build up the Body. You may have a communal life, but that may not be the Body. For the Body to be built up, you must first have a clear vision of the Body. Then as you live in the Body, you will grow. That growth of yours spontaneously builds the Body. Verse 16 says that all the members grow to build up the Body (cf. also Col. 2:19).
When will the Lord gain what He is after? There is a groaning in me about this. Not only is there a lacking of the Body life; even the meaning of the words is misunderstood. Nonetheless, the Lord has His way. The way is organic. It is by life, and life is through death and resurrection. We all need to see this central point of Paul’s completing ministry.
“For as in one body we have many members, and all the members do not have the same function, so we being many, are one body in Christ, and severally members one of another” (Rom. 12:4-5).
In Romans 12 what is said about the Body is quite simple. This is because Romans 12 is preceded by Romans 8, which is surely not simple! What do we find in Romans 8? There is death and resurrection. There is the Triune God in death and resurrection all wrapped up with the tripartite man. There is the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, then Christ. God, Christ, the Spirit—with His death and resurrection—now indwells us, to make our spirit life (v. 10), to make our mind life (v. 6), and to make even our mortal body life (v. 13). Is this not a mingling? Is this not an organic wrapping up of the Triune God and us, the tripartite man? I tell you, this is the way the members of the Body will be produced.
“For even as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of the body being many are one body, so also is Christ; for also in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and were all given to drink one Spirit. But now God has set the members, every one of them, in the body, even as He willed. Now you are the body of Christ, and members in particular” (1 Cor. 12:12-13, 18, 27).
These verses tell us that this organic Body is also Christ, the corporate Christ. All the members have been baptized in one Spirit into one Body. The Body, then, is altogether something in the Spirit.
In summary I remind you of these three crucial points in Paul’s Epistles: God as our contents, Christ as God’s mystery, and the church as Christ’s mystery. Without these three points, Paul’s writings are an empty shell. These are what the Lord is going to recover. Without them, nothing is meaningful. Our God today is in us to be our contents. The mystery of God is Christ as the embodiment and manifestation of God, making God so real and so enjoyable to us. The mystery of Christ is that the Triune God through death and in resurrection is mingling Himself with us, making us the living members of His organic Body. This vision must direct us. It will keep us in the central lane, walking according to the mingled spirit and being in the Body life. This is what the Lord is after.