The Body of Christ is not an organization but an organism constituted of all the regenerated believers for the expression and activities of the Head. The Body of Christ is the issue of the incarnated, crucified, resurrected, and ascended Christ, who has come into the church. By means of the ascended Christ’s heavenly transmission, we are made one with Him, and thus His Body is produced.
On the day of Pentecost all that Christ had passed through, obtained, and attained was transmitted from the third heaven to the church. If we would experience the Body, we must have a personal experience of the heavenly transmission. Many genuine Christians neither have the experience of the Body nor sense that they are in the Body, because they do not have the vision of the transmission that has taken place from the Head to the Body. They have not seen that whatever Christ is, possesses, and has accomplished have been transmitted to the Body.
The Body of Christ is nothing of the natural man; the Body comes from the transmission of the ascended Christ. It is the transmission of the transcending Christ that issues in the church as the Body of Christ. Everything we speak in the church life, in the ministry, or in fellowship must issue from this transmission. If our speaking is of the transmission, then our speaking is of the Body. If it is not of the transmission, it is not of the Body. It is in the transmission that we have the church life and that the Body functions. By means of the heavenly transmission, the Body is real, genuine, living, and aggressive.
It is in the transmission that the Body of Christ is the fullness of the One who fills all in all, because the Christ who fills all in all is in the transmission. The transmission connects us to the all-filling Christ. In this way the church becomes the fullness of the all-filling Christ.
The One who fills all in all is the unlimited, unsearchable, all-inclusive, and omnipresent Christ—the Christ whose dimensions are those of the universe (3:18). On the one hand, the phrase all in all in Ephesians 1:23 is similar to the phrase all and in all in Colossians 3:11. In Colossians 3, Christ is all the members who comprise the new man and is in all the members. In Ephesians 1, the church is the Body of Christ, the fullness of the One who is in all the believers and who is all the believers. Christ is the One who fills all the believers and is in all the believers, and the Body of Christ is the issue of such a filling.
On the other hand, Christ’s filling all in all in Ephesians 1:23 surpasses His being all and in all in Colossians 3:11. Colossians 3:11 refers to the sphere of the new man, whereas Ephesians 1:23 refers not only to the Body of Christ but also the universe which includes time and space. Christ is not only all and in all with respect to the new man, but He fills all in all with respect to the universe. Christ is so universally vast that He fills all things. Universally, Christ is above all and fills all in all. The Body of Christ is the fullness of this great, universal Christ.
Christ today is the One who fills all things in the universe. This universal Christ, the Christ who fills all things and who is both in the heavens and on the earth, needs a Body to be His fullness. When Jesus the Nazarene was on the earth, prior to His resurrection He as a man was not omnipresent, for He was a small man limited by His flesh. Yet He descended into the lower parts of the earth, rose from the dead, and ascended far above all the heavens that He might fill all things (4:9-10). Now He can be in the heavens and on the earth simultaneously. Because He is such a One who fills all things, He needs a great Body as His fullness. The Body of Christ is His universal fullness. Christ, who is the infinite God without any limitation, is so great that He fills all things in all things. Such a great Christ needs the church to be His fullness for His complete expression.
The church as the Body of Christ is His fullness. The fullness of Christ issues from the enjoyment of the riches of Christ (3:8). Through the enjoyment of Christ’s riches, we become His fullness to express Him. The fullness of Christ comes into being by our receiving the riches of Christ to be experienced and enjoyed by us and assimilated and constituted into our entire being.