There are many important matters related to the church life, but the first two main items for our practice and experience are the content of the church and the standing, or the ground, of the church. The content of the church is Christ, not merely in teaching or doctrine, but in practice, reality, and experience. Christ as the very life, content, and everything for the church is the basic, main, and first aspect of the church life. What we are practicing is not something in vain according to a form or certain teaching. We are practicing a life with Christ as its very life, content, and everything. The church life, the life of the church, the practice of the church life, is a life with Christ as everything.
The second main point of the church life is the standing, the ground, of the church. In order to build a house, there are two items that are most important: the materials and the site. When someone builds a house, he first must decide what material he will use to build it. A house can be built with cement, stone, wood, adobe, or even gold. Second, he must decide in what place, on what ground, he will build, whether on a mountain, by a river, or in the plain. For the building of the church, Christ as life is the material, the content. On what ground, then, on what standing, should we have the church life? We are building the church as the house, even the temple, so where must we build it? Can we build the temple in Babylon, Egypt, Syria, or somewhere else?
According to the revelation of the Scriptures, the ground of the church is very important. This is particularly true in the Old Testament types of the church. In the Old Testament no one dared to build the temple in any place he chose. There was only one place, the place chosen and appointed by God. For a thousand years, not one Israelite dared to build a temple in any place that he liked, because all the Jews realized that there was only one place, one site, where they could build the temple legally and properly. To build the temple in any other place, no matter what kind of temple it was, would be illegal. It would not be proper because it was not on the proper ground. We have to be very clear about this matter.
In at least the first eight or ten years of my Christian life, I did not know what the ground of the church was. I never saw such a term in the writings and messages in Christianity. The term church ground was first used by Brother Watchman Nee in 1937. Before that time, this matter was not very clear, and this term was not in use. I hope that we all can be clear about the word ground. We use this word with a meaning that is different from foundation. The foundation is the basic part of the construction of a building. The ground, however, is not a part of the construction. It is the place, the piece of land, the site, the standing, on which the foundation is laid. We can construct a building with its foundation on a certain site or lot, or we may construct the same building with the same foundation on another lot. The building with the address 1101, for example, could have been built at the address 1103. By the term ground, we refer to the lot, the site on which we build. A lot is the site, and upon this site we place a foundation; then upon the foundation we construct a building. This is what we mean by the ground of the church.
In the large city of Los Angeles, for example, there is a big entity called the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church claims to be built upon Christ as the foundation. There is another entity called the Presbyterian Church that makes the same claim, that it is built upon Christ as the foundation. Likewise, the Baptists, the Methodists, and the Episcopalians also claim the same thing, that Christ is their cornerstone and foundation. It is the same with the Church of Christ and the Nazarenes. Not one of the so-called Christian churches fails to claim that Christ is their foundation. All have Christ as their foundation, but they have neglected the proper ground of the church.
The Catholic Church claims to be built upon Christ as its foundation, but this building is on a particular ground, the ground of Roman Catholicism. The Presbyterian Church also claims to be a building upon Christ as the foundation, but this building is upon the ground of the presbytery. Likewise, the Southern Baptist Church claims to be built on Christ as the foundation, but it is built on the ground of baptism, just as the Lutheran Church is built on the ground of Luther. All are so-called churches with the same foundation, that is, Christ; however, all are built upon different grounds. It is the grounds that create trouble. If the Roman Catholics would be willing to give up the ground of Roman Catholicism, the Presbyterians to give up the ground of the presbytery, and the Southern Baptists to give up the ground of baptism, eventually and spontaneously they all would be one. Then there will be no division. If we remove all the different names and different grounds of the denominations, what is left will simply be the church in Los Angeles with Christ and all the saints, without divisions or denominations. There will be no separating lines between us. There will be saints of one kind with one Christ to form one unique church in Los Angeles, composed together to be built up upon Christ as the foundation and standing on the local ground as the local church in Los Angeles.
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