This message and the message following may be considered a review and conclusion of the ten previous messages on the church. We have seen that the church is the hidden mystery in God’s eternal economy. The church, the mystery of Christ, was first revealed by the Lord Jesus in the Gospels to the first group of the apostles. He did not reveal the church to them in a deeper and more profound way. Rather, He revealed the church to those apostles mainly in an outward way. After His resurrection and ascension, He breathed Himself into His believers as the life-giving Spirit and also baptized them in the economical Spirit. As a result, they were qualified to understand, in their spirit, the things concerning the church in a more intrinsic way. The Apostle Paul, in particular, received the deeper and more profound revelations concerning the church, the Body of Christ. In the foregoing messages we have also covered the formation of the church and the establishment of the churches. In this message we shall begin to see the two aspects of the church.
The church has two aspects: the universal aspect and the local aspect.
In the universal aspect the church is uniquely one. At the end of Ephesians 1 Paul says that the church is the Body of Christ, the fullness of the One who fills all in all. This is the church in its universal aspect, for Christ has only one Body, which is unique in the universe.
The universal church is the house of the living God, the Body of Christ, the bride that matches Christ as the Bridegroom, and the new man.
In Matthew 16:18 we have the Lord’s first mentioning of the church. In this verse He says, “On this rock I will build My church.” What is revealed here is the universal church for the unique testimony of the Lord in the universe.
The universal church is to be built by Christ, the Son of the living God revealed by the Father. When Peter declared that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, the Lord said to Him, “You are blessed, Simon Bar-jona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in the heavens” (Matt. 16:17). Only the Father knows the Son (Matt. 11:27) and can reveal the Son to us. The Son revealed by the Father is now building the universal church, not the church in a nation or the church in a city.
In Matthew 16 the Father first revealed Christ to Peter. Then, with this revelation as the basis, the Lord went on to reveal the universal church to Peter and the other apostles. The Lord said clearly that He Himself as the Christ, the Son of the living God, will build the church.
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