The Scriptures reveal that God’s eternal purpose, His intention, is to express Himself through His Son, Christ, and through the church as the Body of Christ (John 1:18; Heb. 1:3; 1 Tim. 3:16). What God has done in the past, what He is doing in the present, and what He will do in the future are all for this goal—to gain a group of people who are saved and filled with Him to be the Body of Christ as the expression of God in Christ as the Spirit. This is God’s heart’s desire and the central matter in the Scriptures.
The book of Romans reveals to us the full gospel, which comprises everything in the counsel of God. The first matter that Romans deals with is the matter of our sins and God’s condemnation. Then it deals with our justification, our redemption, our salvation, and our sanctification, that is, our deliverance from the nature of sin. The last point, unveiled in chapter 12, is that all of the saved and sanctified ones are the many members of the one Body of Christ, the church (v. 5). However, most of the Lord’s children neglect this matter. Most expositions of the book of Romans cover the first eight chapters, dealing with condemnation, justification, and sanctification, and neglect the teaching of the Body in chapter 12.
The very last matter mentioned in the entire Scriptures is the holy city, the New Jerusalem, which is built with precious stones (Rev. 21:18a, 19-20). Thus, the Scriptures tell us that God’s intention is to have not a pile of stones but a building and that we saved ones are living stones for the building (Matt. 16:18; 1 Cor. 3:9; 1 Pet. 2:5). However, most Christians pay attention to the stones and forget that the stones are for the building. If we know God’s intention and know the Word, we will realize that although there are groups of Christians all over the earth, most of these groups are like heaps of stones instead of something built up. In Christianity there is no spiritual building as the house of God.
This is due to the strategy of God’s enemy. God’s enemy will allow the Lord’s children to do almost anything except to build up the genuine, living church. The enemy may allow the Lord’s children to preach the gospel or to bring people to the Lord, but he will always fight against the building up of the church. This is where the battle is, and this is what the enemy attacks. He knows that this is a strategic point in the battle between him and God, because if God can gain the genuine, living church on the earth, He can accomplish His purpose.
In Ephesians 4 Paul says, “He Himself gave some as apostles and some as prophets and some as evangelists and some as shepherds and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints unto the work of the ministry, unto the building up of the Body of Christ” (vv. 11-12). The Lord has given the apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherds and teachers for the building up of the Body. However, what we see in the Christian world today is not the building but many gifted persons who are individual, spiritual giants. People exalt these gifted ones, the preachers and ministers, forgetting that they alone are not the building. Many Christians today are even seeking to be spiritual giants or something special in the Christian world. However, this is not the Lord’s way to accomplish His purpose. The Lord’s way is to use ordinary believers as stones for the building. Most physical buildings are formed not of one large piece of special material but of many ordinary pieces of material.
In the New Testament age, Peter, John, and Paul were great apostles, yet what they built up was not their own ministries but the local churches. The apostle John was the last of the great apostles and was very experienced, spiritual, and successful in his ministry. However, the Lord did not want to build him up; the Lord wanted to build up the local churches. In Revelation the apostle John portrayed each of the seven churches in Asia as a lampstand (1:11-12, 20). He did not say that the apostles were like lampstands; rather, he said that the local churches were the lampstands standing for the Lord’s testimony. The testimony of the Lord is with the local churches because the local churches are the genuine expressions of the Body of Christ.
Our work in China and Taiwan during the past thirty years has been to build up the local churches, not to build up anyone’s ministry. In the United States Brother Watchman Nee’s ministry has become somewhat famous through his book The Normal Christian Life, but in Taiwan many of the saints do not know who he is. This proves that our goal is the building up of the church, not the building up of Watchman Nee’s ministry. When I left Taiwan to live and work in the United States, there was no need for me to make arrangements before my departure, because the whole work in Taiwan was in the hands of the brothers, not in my hands. The more we worked in Taiwan, the more the church was in the brothers’ hands, because we were building the church, not our own ministry. The same thing happened when I moved from Shanghai to Taiwan in 1949. I had been working in Shanghai for a period of time before the war, and the church had been blessed by the Lord. However, in 1949 I received a cable from Watchman Nee saying that I should leave immediately because the Communists were very close to occupying Shanghai. Two days after receiving the cable, I left Shanghai. I could leave in such a sudden way because the church was not in my hands but in the hands of the brothers. Our testimony is that we are building up the church, not any person’s particular ministry.
Although most ministers today take the direction of building up their ministry, the right direction is to build up the local churches. We who are in the work are merely the Lord’s co-workers in building up the church (1 Cor. 3:9), which is His house (1 Tim. 3:15). In other words, the church is not ours but His, and the church is the house of the saints. When we work with the goal of building up the local churches, our work is prevailing because we bring all the saints into function. When the saints come to the meetings, they do not have the feeling that they are coming to someone else’s church; rather, they feel that the church is theirs. On the other hand, if we build up our own ministry or keep the church in our own hands, we will at the very least hinder the building work. If we build up a church so that it is in our own hands, the saints will have the feeling that they are coming to our church, and this feeling will hinder them from taking up the responsibility to build.
This is what happened in China when the missionaries from the West went to China and began to build up their own denominational churches. Those who attended their churches felt like they had to help that particular missionary and honor him by going to his church. However, the feeling in the genuine church is different. The saints in the genuine churches are always grateful whenever the co-workers visit, but their feeling is that the church is theirs, not someone else’s. They take the responsibility of building up the church and feel that the church is their home, their house, which they must care for. When a brother comes to help them, he does not take up the burden or responsibility of the church; he simply helps the saints build up their church.