In Matthew 16:18 the Lord Jesus said that He will build His church upon “this rock.” These words refer not only to Christ Himself but also to the revelation of Christ. The church is built on this revelation concerning Christ.
We all need to see that the building up of the universal church is altogether on the clear revelation concerning Christ, the Son of the living God. This revelation is the crucial factor, the very center, of the building up of the universal church. The universal church is not built up according to any doctrine, creed, or so-called belief. On the contrary, the universal church is built according to the revelation of Christ, the Son of the living God.
Christ is unique; He is wonderful, excellent, and all-surpassing. He is the complete God and also a perfect man. He created the earth yet He lived on earth as a man, living in Nazareth as a carpenter. Eventually, at the age of thirty, He came forth to manifest God by what He was, by what He did, and by what He spoke. This means that His person, His deeds, and His words expressed God to the uttermost.
The Lord Jesus expressed God not in the Godhead but in the fatherhood, for He made the name “Father” known to His disciples. In order for God to fulfill His intention of working Himself into His chosen people, it was necessary for Him to be the begetting Father. By begetting us with Himself He becomes our Father, and we become His children.
The main thing the Lord Jesus did while He was on earth was to express the Father and make the Father’s name known to His disciples. Before that time the Israelites knew God as the Father only in a general way as their source. They did not know Him in the sense of His begetting but only in the sense of His being their origin through creation. Adam was not begotten by God but was only created by Him. Therefore, God was his origin, and in this sense God was his Father. Actually, God was not Adam’s Father. Today, we who believe in Christ are genuine, begotten sons of God, and God is our genuine, begetting Father. As a result, we know God today in the fatherhood, for we know God in the name of the Father. This was the reason that the Lord, on the morning of His resurrection, told Mary to say to His disciples that He was ascending to His Father and their Father (John 20:17). He also for the first time referred to His disciples as His brothers. Our being children of God and brothers of Christ is altogether due to the Lord’s wonderful person and to His expressing God in the name of the Father.
After living a life of expressing God in the name of the Father, the Lord Jesus entered into death, carrying out an all-inclusive death. He was crucified with a sevenfold status: as the Lamb of God to deal with the totality of sin (John 1:29); as a man in the flesh (John 1:14), in the likeness of the flesh of sin (Rom. 8:3); as the last Adam (1 Cor. 15:45b), a man in the old creation; as the brass serpent (John 3:14), having the serpent’s form but not the poison; as the Firstborn of all creation (Col. 1:15) to terminate the entire old creation; as the Peacemaker, the One who makes peace (Eph. 2:14-16); and as a grain of wheat, falling into the ground to release the divine life (John 12:24). Because the Lord died in this sevenfold status, He took away all the negative things and released the divine life so that we, His believers, could be regenerated and begotten to become the children of God.
After His resurrection He ascended to the heavens. In one sense, He ascended by Himself. In another sense, He was uplifted to the heavens by the great power of God that was wrought in Him to raise Him from among the dead, to seat Him in the heavens, to subject all things under His feet, and to give Him to be the Head over all things to the church for the producing of the Body of Christ (Eph. 1:19-23). What a wonderful person Christ is! The church is built upon the revelation of this wonderful person.
The universal church has been formed out of the all-inclusive person of Christ. He is the factor, the element, the constituent, for the formation of the universal church. The church, therefore, was not formed out of nothing but was formed out of something wonderful. This is typified by the formation of Eve out of Adam. Adam was the factor, the element, the constituent, for the bringing forth of Eve. In like manner, in contrast to creation, which was out of nothing, the church has come into existence through the wonderful person of Christ, the embodiment of the processed Triune God and a unique, perfect man. The universal church, the Body of Christ, is built on the rock of the revelation concerning the wonderful, excellent, all-inclusive person of Christ, the Son of the living God.
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