In this message we shall consider further what Christ is in His person in the church. Then we shall go on to see Christ in God’s building.
Ephesians 5:29 tells us that Christ nourishes and cherishes the church. This reveals that in the church Christ is the Nourisher and the Cherisher. To nourish is to feed. When we are nourished, something enters into our being to meet our need. Nourishment, therefore, must come out of a supply. Without a supply, it is impossible to have nourishment.
Christ nourishes the church with all the riches of the Father. Christ is the embodiment of the fullness of the Godhead (Col. 2:9). Hence, all the riches of God are in Christ, and He enjoys these riches. Then He nourishes the church with the very riches of the Godhead that He Himself has enjoyed. This is proved by John 15, where the Lord Jesus says that He is the vine, that the Father is the husbandman, and that we, the believers in Christ, are the branches. The vine nourishes the branches with what the vine absorbs from the soil. God the Father is the soil, the water, and everything to Christ as the vine. The vine absorbs the riches from the soil and the water, digests them, and then transmits them to the branches. This is nourishing. Christ nourishes the church with the riches of the Father that He has absorbed and assimilated. By nourishing the church in this way Christ meets the inward need of the church.
It is correct to say that Christ nourishes the church with His life and His word. But neither His life nor His word is the source. The source is the Father. What Christ receives of the Father becomes the life and life supply that are embodied in the Word. For this reason, the Word is the word of life, even the bread of life, or the supply of life. If we would be nourished by Christ, we need to abide in Him to absorb His content into our being as life and life supply. In order to experience this in a practical way, we daily need to contact the living Word, for the Word is the embodiment of life and of the life supply. The more we abide in the Lord and contact the Word, the more we experience His nourishing.
As we are nourished by Christ, we are cleansed and transformed. The nourishment we receive makes the cleansing possible. If the nourishment ceases, the cleansing will cease also. But if we continually take in the spiritual supply, the elements we absorb into our being will cleanse us inwardly. The more we come to the Word, the more we are nourished. The nourishment we receive brings about an inner cleansing from the defects caused by the natural life.
Only by experiencing Christ’s nourishing can we endure the Lord’s metabolic cleansing of our disposition. Any cleansing that is not accompanied by nourishment is not genuine. Whenever we try to cleanse ourselves, we shall have the sense of spiritual starvation. But if Christ does the cleansing, He will supply the nourishment, and we shall enjoy sweet satisfaction. The more the Lord purifies us, the more of His nourishment we receive. Instead of suffering under the process of purification, we enjoy Christ and His abundant life supply.
Christ’s nourishing of the church also causes transformation. We become what we eat. This means that if we eat Christ, we shall eventually be constituted of Christ. We shall be transformed by the element of Christ that has been dispensed into us. Through Christ’s nourishment we are transformed and thereby become a new person with a new element and substance.
Christ’s care of the church includes cherishing as well as nourishing. “Cherish” is a word of utmost tenderness. To cherish is to nurture with tender love and foster with tender care. As the Lord nourishes us, He cherishes us. He is like a mother who cherishes her child even as she feeds him. How the little ones enjoy the warmth and comfort of their mothers! When the Lord nourishes us, He cherishes us with His tender warmth. His cherishing comforts us, soothes us, and calms us.
To be cherished is to be softened by being warmed. When we are hard and cold, we need Christ to cherish us. We need Him to warm our hearts. After some experience of His warming, we are softened. Just as a mother cherishes a child by holding the child to her breast, so the Lord cherishes us by holding us close to Him. How tender, sweet, and warm the Lord Jesus is! By resting on Him, we who once were hard and cold become soft and warm. Such a change takes place through Christ’s care for us from within. He warms us and softens us as we enjoy His tenderness, sweetness, and lovingness. Christ truly is the cherishing One.
Christ’s presence in the church produces an atmosphere of tenderness and warmth to cherish our very being. For this reason, in the church we enjoy the atmosphere of the Lord’s cherishing. Actually, it is by the atmosphere produced by His brooding presence that Christ cherishes the church. When we are in this atmosphere we experience the rest, warmth, comfort, and encouragement that come from Christ’s cherishing of the church.
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