Christ’s producing of the members for His Body was His receiving of the gifts from the Father, because the Father is the source. At the same time, this receiving of the members was also the giving of the members to the Body as gifts. The producing was the receiving, and the receiving was the giving.
Where are we? We are included in this producing, this receiving, and this giving. We are the members of the Body, and since we are members, we are gifts to the Body. If a certain brother were not a gift to the Body, the church in his locality never would have come into existence. The gifts, as members of the Body, were produced by the flowing out and flowing back of the Triune God. This producing started on the day of resurrection and was accomplished on the day of Pentecost. We all were produced as members on the day of resurrection and the day of Pentecost. Paul, Peter, James, John, you, and I were all produced at the same time.
When were you saved? You have to say, “At the same time that Peter was saved. When Peter was saved, I was saved.” The crossing of the Red Sea is a type of this fact. All the people of Israel were saved through the Passover and the crossing of the Red Sea. It was not that Moses crossed the Red Sea at one time, and the rest of Israel crossed many years later. In the eyes of God, the whole of Israel, including the great and the small, held the Passover and crossed the Red Sea at the same time. With God there is no limitation of time. Likewise, by the resurrection and ascension of Christ, we all were produced as members, that is, as gifts. These members were received by the Father, because He is the source. Then the Son as the Head of the Body received the members from the Father as the source. This was the producing of the members. At the same time, all these members were given to the Body as gifts. Therefore, the producing was the receiving, and the receiving was the giving. While to the Father and the Son it was a giving, to the Body it was a receiving.
Now we can see where we are and how we were produced. It was through Christ’s incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension all the way to our regeneration that we the fallen men were made members of the Body. To regenerate is to produce a member from a fallen man. What kind of man is the fallen man? Sin is in his body (Rom. 7:23), the self is in his soul (Matt. 16:24-26; Luke 9:23-25), and death is in his spirit (Eph. 2:1, 5; Col. 2:13). The soul became the evil self when it became independent of God. Moreover, fallen man is dead not in the body or in the soul but in the spirit. Before we were saved, when we were living in the body and very active in the soul, we were dead in our spirit. In such a condition, our whole being was under darkness, that is, under the power of Satan.
How could such a person be made a member of Christ? It is by the all-inclusive dose coming into him. When this all-inclusive dose comes in, it brings the element of Christ’s death to dissolve sin, self, and death, and it also brings the resurrection power to free us. This is on the negative side. On the positive side, this dose contains the incarnation that brought God into man and the ascension that brought man into God. This produced a mingling, and this mingling has come into us to regenerate us and to make us a part of the universal mingling. This universal mingling is the Head with the Body, which ultimately is the New Jerusalem. Therefore, to be a part of the universal mingling is to be a member of the Body. We all have been made a part, members, of this mingling.
All the negative things—sin, self, death, Satan, and darkness—have been solved and dissolved, the mingling of God with man has been brought into us, and we have been made a part of this mingling. This means that we have been made a member of this universal man, the universal mingling of God with man. This mingling has been injected into us, so we have become members, and these members are gifts given to the Body. Strictly speaking, it was not Saul of Tarsus who was a gift; it was Paul. Therefore, we all have to change our muddy, earthy “name”; that is, we all have to be transformed.
Now we are clearer about Psalm 68:18, and we have a newer understanding of the ascension. The meaning of the ascension is that man has been brought into God by incarnation, but this is only half of the mingling of God and man. When Christ ascended to the heavens, He brought man into God. By this, the mingling is now complete. Everything has been accomplished. Everything has been done on both the negative and positive sides. Now this all-inclusive dose comes into us to produce the members, to make us the members of the Body, to take those who were received from the Father and give them to the Body as gifts. If our eyes are opened to see all these things, this will be a real release and delivery to us. There is no need to struggle to overcome our failures or to apply the cross to ourselves. If we have the vision that everything on the negative side has been dealt with and everything on the positive side is ours, we will be released.