Luke 24:8 says, "They remembered His words (rhema)." In short what is rhema? Rhema is something the Lord has spoken previously which He is now speaking again. In other words, rhema is the word which the Lord speaks the second time. This is something living.

In Acts 11:16 Peter said, "And I remembered the word of the Lord, how He said, John baptized in water, but you shall be baptized in the Holy Spirit." While Peter was preaching to the household of Cornelius, the Spirit of the Lord fell upon them, and the word of the Lord came to Peter. It was not that Peter tried to recall the word from his memory, but it was the Lord who spoke to him, "John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized in the Holy Spirit."

We will always treasure the fact that the Lord still speaks today. He not only spoke in the Scriptures, He not only spoke to Paul and John, He is also speaking to us today. The word of the Lord has never ceased. Whenever someone who is working for the Lord stands up to speak for Him, he must expect the rhema. If the Lord does not speak to us today, we are really failures. How many times have we preached, yet the Lord did not speak a word? It is not that there was something wrong with the message, but it was all the general word of the Lord; there was no rhema in it. The problem with the church today is that it lacks the living word of the Lord; instead there are only dead doctrines. There is a real shortage of direct communication from God. There is only a passing on of man's preaching. It is pitiful that so many people have died under good doctrines! May God have mercy upon us and give us rhema. May He speak personally and directly to us today. Only when we have rhema can we move ahead and have the living water to supply to others. What we need is rhema.

In the eternal plan of God the church is without sin. The church has no history of sin; it is entirely spiritual and wholly out of Christ. But what about the actual history of the church? We know that she has not been completely out of Christ, and much of her element has been of the earth. In what way will Christ bring the church into perfection? He will do it by cleansing her with the washing of the water in the word—the rhema. We have mentioned previously that water refers to life. It typifies the life that was released through the non-redemptive aspect1 of the death of Christ. Christ is using His life in His word, His rhema, to cleanse us.

What is the meaning of Christ cleansing us by His life through His word? First, we must see the church's problem from God's viewpoint. Her defect is not that the Christ whom she has received is too little, but that she has too many things other than Christ. The church in God's will comes entirely out of Christ, without any sin, without any flesh, and containing no natural life. But what about our actual condition? Every one of us who truly belongs to Christ has a certain portion which is solely and wholly Christ. We thank God for this portion. In addition to this portion, we still have many things which are not of Christ. We need to be cleansed because of all these other things. What is the meaning of cleansing? It means to subtract, not to add. If cleansing meant an addition to us, then it would be a dyeing. Eve in Genesis 2 did not need to be cleansed, because she typified the church in God's eternal plan. But if we consider that we do not need to be cleansed today, we are deceiving ourselves. God plans to bring us to the place where cleansing is not necessary, but today we still need to be cleansed.