In addition, in your study of the church and the very contents of the church, eventually you will realize that the content of the constitution of the church is actually of three aspects of one source. In the first place, the content of the church is of Christ. In addition, it is of the Spirit, and it is also of life. The church is constituted with Christ as the Spirit to be our life. The source of the content of the church and also the very constituents of the constitution of the church are Christ, the Spirit, and life. First you need to study how Christ is the source, the very constituent for the constitution of the church in the fourteen Epistles of Paul. Then, in the same way you need to study how the life-giving Spirit is the source and the constituent of the constitution of the church and, further, how the divine life, the zoe life, is the source and the constituent of the constitution of the church.
All of these items are big and crucial aspects in Paul’s writings, and all of them have not been covered adequately. I have simply given you some illustrations or some hints to help you study these fourteen Epistles. In these matters I do not encourage you to study all the twenty-seven books of the New Testament at this time. Simply by studying Paul’s writings, you will be very much enriched, and all the churches under your teaching will be enriched. How much we need this enriching so that none of us will be poor any longer. There is no need to pick up subjects other than the ones we have mentioned. The riches are here.
The crucial point we need to see is that Paul’s part in the New Testament ministry is exactly the continuation of the section of the ministry of the Lord Jesus. The only difference is that the Lord used Paul to go on further from Christ to the church. In the Acts and Epistles we have seen clearly that the Lord used Peter to continue His own ministry, but we must say that Peter somewhat became stuck to the oldness. The Lord always knows the real situation. By that time the Lord knew that there was no way for Peter to go on. Therefore, the Lord needed a new one, someone who would drop anything old. That one was Saul of Tarsus. The Acts and the Epistles show us clearly how the Lord used Paul to go on further from Christ to the church.
This is the New Testament ministry. From the initiation of John the Baptist, the New Testament ministry goes on to Christ as its major part and its foundation. From that point there was the need for a new one to go further to produce the church, to build the church, and to have a Body to express Christ. This is a crucial point.
Brother Nee gave a series of messages on the Body of Christ, and I would say that the matter of the Body was covered adequately to the fullest in those messages. Nevertheless, in Brother Nee’s time some of the points that we have seen today were not touched. One point that was not touched was the fullness of Him who fills all in all (Eph. 1:23). The fullness of Christ was not touched, nor was the matter of the fullness of God, which is the church (Eph. 4:13; 3:19). It was not until we moved to Taiwan that the Lord began to show us that the Body of Christ is the fullness, not only of Him, but also of God. In Brother Nee’s time we did not have a clear and adequate definition of the term fullness. In addition, even the matter of “the unsearchable riches of Christ” was not emphasized in his time. I do not believe you could find this expression in any of Brother Nee’s writings that have been published.
Surely Brother Nee did his best to present the Lord’s recovery to us, and I can certainly testify that he did his utmost. I am surely grateful to him, but in these past thirty-five years there has been a continuation. No new field has been opened, and no other major has been set up for you to study. The major, Christ and the church, has remained the same; nevertheless, again and again this major has been further developed. This is a crucial point, and all of us surely need to pay attention to this matter. I believe these points help us to understand Paul’s part of the New Testament ministry.
Paul’s part of the New Testament ministry is to minister Christ as the incarnated One, as the One who lived a particular, special, wonderful, excellent human life on this earth. This One died a death that is all-inclusive, and He entered into His resurrection in which He became the life-giving Spirit who indwells our spirit to make us members of Christ in order that a Body could be formed to be the fullness of Him who fills all in all for the full expression Christ. This is Paul’s part in the New Testament ministry. If we are clear concerning this matter, we will know where the Lord’s recovery stands today.