Ephesians 5:29 says, “No one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ also the church.” To nourish is to feed us with the living word of the Lord. To cherish is to warm us up. Just as a mother tenderly embraces her baby to warm him and feed him, Christ cherishes us by warming us and nourishes us by feeding us.
To be nourished by Christ is to be supplied with His riches. If we take Christ as our person, we will experience Christ nourishing us. We will continually have the sense of His inward nourishment. We need to experience the nourishment that comes from taking Christ as our person.
Nourishment brings about transformation. We become what we eat. This means that if we eat Christ, we will eventually be constituted with Christ. We will be transformed by the element of Christ that has been dispensed into us. The more we take Christ as our person, the more He nourishes us. Through Christ’s nourishment we are transformed. This means that we become a new person with a new element and substance. We should praise the Lord that He nourishes us with Himself, with the riches of all He is.
Today the need of the Lord’s people is to take Christ as their person for nourishment. We need to come in touch with the living Christ, to open to Him, and to take Him as our life and person. We should pray, “Lord, by Your mercy I want to learn to take You as my person and allow You to make Your home in my heart.”
When we are nourished, something enters into our being to meet our need. Nourishment, therefore, must come from 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. Hence, all the riches of God are in Him, 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 and that the Father is the husbandman. The Father is the Cultivator, the Planter, the Farmer, of the vine. We, the believers in Christ, are the branches of the vine. 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 the nourishing. Christ nourishes the church with the riches of the Father, which He has absorbed and assimilated. By nourishing the church, Christ meets the inward need of the church.
It is correct to say that Christ nourishes the church with His life and with His word. His life and His word are the substance of the nourishment, 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 the life supply which 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 today, we need to abide in Him to absorb His content into our being as life and the 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. This is the way Christ nourishes the church.
All the members of the church need to practice abiding in the Lord. There should be no insulation, no separation, between us and the Lord and no detachment from Him. As soon as we are detached from Him, the supply of nourishment is cut off. Along with abiding in the Lord constantly, we must daily come to the Word and take it in as our life and life supply. Then we will receive nourishment. Furthermore, all the meetings of the church should be meetings of nourishment. Morning revival and our fellowship with the saints should also be times of nourishment.
As we are nourished by the life and the life supply, we grow and we are purified. As we abide in the Lord to receive the riches of the Father and as we contact the Word to receive the life and the life supply, we are nourished by Christ. In this way Christ nourishes the church He loves.
Along with the nourishing we have the cherishing. To be cherished is to be softened by being warmed. When we are hard and cold, we need Christ to cherish us, that is, to warm our hearts. After some experiences 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. The Lord warms us and softens us as we enjoy His tenderness, sweetness, and lovingness. When the Lord sanctifies, cleanses, and nourishes us, He cherishes us with His tender warmth. His cherishing comforts us, soothes us, and calms us.
According to the New Testament, Christ’s care of the church has two aspects. The inner aspect is the nourishing, and the outer aspect is the cherishing. To be nourished is to have something imparted into us inwardly, whereas to be cherished is to be warmed and comforted outwardly.
Cherishing is related to environment. In our environment or circumstances the Lord Jesus is often real to us as a warm, tender breeze blowing upon us. As this warm breeze comes upon us, we have the sense of being tenderly soothed. Although this takes place in the environment, it is something more than the environment itself. It is even something that surpasses the Lord’s presence. When the Lord’s presence becomes a gentle breeze, we experience His cherishing. This cherishing includes soothing, comfort, and rest. In the environment of the church life, we often experience the Lord’s cherishing, although we may not even be conscious of it. However, if for any length of time we are in an environment where there is no church, we sense that the climate has changed and that the environment is different. Then we begin to sense that we have lost something, that the tender, warm breeze is no longer blowing upon us. We may have everything necessary for our material existence, but we know that something we formerly enjoyed is missing. When we return to the church life, we immediately and spontaneously enter into the environment and atmosphere of the Lord’s cherishing. Once again we are warmed, soothed, and comforted. This is cherishing.
Just as a child is cherished by the presence of his mother, so we are cherished by the Lord’s presence, which produces an atmosphere of tenderness and warmth to cherish our being. We experience such an atmosphere in the church meetings. How pleasant is the spiritual climate in the gathering of the saints! As soon as we enter this atmosphere, we are cherished by the Lord’s presence. It is by the atmosphere produced by the Lord’s brooding presence that the Lord cherishes the church. To be in this climate, this atmosphere, this environment, gives us rest, comfort, healing, cleansing, and encouragement. No atmosphere can compare to the atmosphere of the church meetings.
Nourishing and cherishing go together. Through the nourishing we enjoy the supply of life inwardly, and through the cherishing we experience the soothing, comforting atmosphere outwardly. Whenever we are in an atmosphere of cherishing, we can absorb the word of the ministry. This indicates that under the cherishing we receive nourishing. A church that is nourished and cherished in such a way will be strong and healthy.
The nourishing and the cherishing are the church’s portion, and they should be found in every meeting. If we are proper, normal, and healthy, we will enjoy the cherishing atmosphere of the Lord’s presence in the church, and in this atmosphere receive the nourishing supply of life. We should praise the Lord for the way He cares for the church. In the proper church life we have the privilege of enjoying the Lord in such a fine, tender, intimate, and real way.