We need to see what the Lord’s recovery is. We may be accustomed to speaking about the recovery, yet I am concerned that even those who have been in the church for many years do not adequately know what the Lord’s recovery is. We do not need to learn a complicated definition. The Lord’s recovery is simply the recovery of Christ. This simple definition is adequate because Christ is everything to us. Some may define the Lord’s recovery as the recovery of the genuine oneness, but genuine oneness is simply Christ Himself. Others may define the Lord’s recovery as the recovery of the proper church life, but the proper church life also is Christ. Thus, the Lord’s recovery is the recovery of Christ as everything to us.
God’s eternal purpose and His economy is to work Christ into His chosen people so that they may become the Body of Christ. To become the Body of Christ is to become a part of Christ. A person’s body is simply the main part of the person. A complete person is composed of a head and a body. Just as we cannot say that a person’s head is not the person, neither can we say that a person’s body is not the person. If neither the head nor the body is the person, there is no person. Every part of a person, even a little finger, is the person. Some may say that in order to be accurate, we must say that a finger is only a part of the person, not the person. This may seem logical, but if we follow this line of thought to its ultimate conclusion, we will see that it cannot be true. If we say that a person’s finger is not the person, we must also say that the hand is not the person, that the arm and shoulder are not the person, and so on until eventually there is nothing that is the person. Therefore, every part of a person is the person. We need to see that the Lord’s recovery is to recover Christ and that God’s eternal purpose and His economy is to work Christ, to dispense Christ, into our being to make us a part of Christ, the Body of Christ. We also need to see that the Body of Christ is simply Christ. The Head is Christ, and the Body also is Christ (1 Cor. 12:12).
The apostle Paul did not say, “To me, to live is Christ’s Body.” Rather, he said, “To me, to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21a). Like Paul, we should have the boldness to say this because Christ lives in us (Gal. 2:20) and is being formed in us until our being becomes Christ (4:19). Because Christ is our life (Col. 3:4), our person (3:10-11), our love, our kindness, our humility, our long-suffering, our holiness, our righteousness, and our everything, we are Christ. To us, to live is Christ. God’s intention is to work Christ into us and to make us a part of Christ.
To be a Christian is to be a Christ-man, a man of Christ. A steel chair is a chair made of steel; the whole chair is steel. Likewise, to be a Christian, a Christ-man, is to be Christ. Our whole being should be Christ. However, our daily living reveals that we are not entirely Christ; rather, we are partially a Christ-man and partially the old man. We may be a Christ-man in name, but we may not actually have very much of Christ in our being. This does not mean that we are not Christ when we are evil and that we are Christ when we are good. Only when we are living Christ are we genuinely Christ. We need Christ to be our love, our humility, our holiness, and everything positive to us. Negative things such as our pride and our looseness are Satan. All negative things are Satan, but not all positive things are Christ. Some love is Christ; some love is not Christ. If a young brother fights with his siblings, it is obvious that his fighting is not Christ. However, if the brother is kind to his siblings, his kindness also may not be Christ. I have seen many unbelieving young people behaving properly, but their good behavior is certainly not Christ. Evil things are not Christ; neither are good things necessarily Christ. Only Christ is Christ.