Prayer: Lord, thank You for Your mercy that we could still be here with You. We need Your presence. Lord, You know that Your presence means everything to us. We want to meet with You, stay with You, and dwell with You in Your presence. Grant us Your rich presence. Lord, we also need You to have mercy upon us to take away all of our veils. We do not want to have anything veiling us. We want to have an unveiled face, beholding and reflecting You. Lord, give us mercy that we could see what You see and apprehend what You apprehend. Lord, reveal Yourself to us. Reveal all the secrets hidden in Your Word to us. We need this unveiling. Lord, have mercy upon us in our speaking. Oh, how much we need You in our speaking! Lord, speak in our speaking and be one spirit with us in our speaking. Lord Jesus, today is the darkest age. Vindicate Your way. Vindicate Your recovery. Vindicate Your ministry. Vindicate Your own speaking. Vindicate Your living word. Amen. Lord, defeat the enemy. We accuse him before You. We touch Your throne of authority and ask You to put Your enemy in the corner. Shame him! Glorify Yourself and bless everyone. Bless everyone who is here with You. We pray in Your mighty name. Amen.
I am very concerned for all of us. My concern is that we may read these messages and yet understand them by our natural concept. We may agree with all of the fellowship here. We may say, "What Brother Lee says is right." But it is right only according to our natural concept. We need to realize that tradition frustrates and damages us. The saints who have gone to Moscow for the spread of the Lord's recovery have seen that religious tradition still remains there. Some refused to be baptized after they believed in the Lord because they had been baptized when they were infants. Even though religion was cut off by Lenin more than seventy years ago, the Russian Orthodox tradition still remains among them.
Actually, we all have traditions which veil us from the pure divine revelation in the holy Word. You understand a certain verse in the Bible in your way, and I may understand the same verse in my way. This is because you have your tradition veiling you, and I have my tradition veiling me. Thus, I have a burden to pray, "Lord, take away all the traditions. We like to see Your Word in a pure way. We like to apprehend what You have for us according to Your realization."
Thus far, we have seen from Ephesians 1 that the church is the issue of the divine impartation and the divine transmission. In Ephesians 2 this issue is called the new man. The church is the new man created by Christ. Genesis 1 shows that the old creation with the old man was created by God directly. But the new creation was accomplished by Christ by His being crucified on the cross. While Christ was being crucified on the cross, He was not merely dying there. He was creating the Gentile believers and the Jewish believers in Himself into one new man.
In Adam we are the old creation. We are the old man. We are antique. In Adam we are all about six thousand years old. God has no intention of keeping any antiques. God does not love antiques, but God loves the newness and the freshness. As a result, God charged His anointed One, the very Christ, to bring all of the old creation to the cross. In Christ all of God's chosen people, who had become old, were brought to the cross. Satan thought that he could get rid of Christ by putting Him on the cross. But being put on the cross afforded Christ the opportunity and environment to create the new man which God wanted. He created the new man by putting the old man on the cross. Paul said that our old man has been crucified with Christ (Rom. 6:6). While He was being crucified, our old man was also being crucified. Our oldness was cleared up by Christ's crucifixion.
Furthermore, while He was clearing up the oldness, He Himself was there as the creating element. This element is never old, but ever new. He was putting this element into the new man He was creating. He crucified the old man on the cross in Himself as the element. We know according to the New Testament revelation that this new element could never be applied to us without His resurrection. His crucifixion cleared up all the oldness. Then in His resurrection His new element, the divine element, was applied to us.
While Christ was busy creating the new man, God was also busy making us dead ones alive with the resurrected Christ as life. Christ's creating and God's enlivening were in coordination. While Christ was creating the two, Jews and Gentiles, into the new man, God was enlivening. He was raising us up from the dead and uplifting us to the third heaven to be above all. Then He subjected all things under the feet of this newly created man. Furthermore, this man is one with the Head, Christ. He is Head over all things for the entire new man.
The new man includes Christ as the Head and the church as the Body. The church today is not only the Body but also the entire new man. Our physical body is not merely the part under our neck. Our physical body includes our head also. It includes everything from our hair down to our feet. The new man is Christ and the church. These two are one man. Whatever the Head is and has is for the Body. The Body can never be separated from the Head. Actually, a man's body is his entire physical being. The new man includes Christ as the Head and the church as the Body.