The next evening we were waiting to have dinner together; afterwards, we would go to the meeting hall, which was across the street. All of a sudden, we heard someone knocking on the door. The sister who was serving the dinner went to open the door. That older sister, to whom we wrote the note, was at the door. She said to the sister, "To wash people's feet is love, but the water was too hot! It burns." Then she went away. This shows that to be a good elder in the church is not easy.

It is difficult to be an elder because we members in the church often act, behave, speak, and even "prophesy" in the meetings in the old man. We are too much in ourselves. Whatever is done out from our natural life, our old man, and our self is not the Body. That is Adam. My burden in sharing these messages is to bring us some light from the Lord so that we can see what the real church life is.

What is the real church life? The real church life is the acting, the working, the behaving, the prophesying, the speaking, and the serving in the new man. The new man created by God includes the crucifixion of the old man on the cross. When the elders say that each saint should speak for no longer than one minute, we should function for no longer than one minute. When an elder stands and asks us to shorten our sharing, we should not speak anymore. We may think that this is a strong centralization of control. Actually, this is not control; this is Christ. The church is not a theater for all of us to act and to demonstrate something in the old man.

I hope that we have seen what is covered in Ephesians 2. The old man was crucified by our dear Lord. When the Lord was crucified on the cross, the old man was cleared up. From henceforth, we should have the desire not to do anything out of the old man. The Lord has crucified the old man on the cross, and His divine element has been applied to us in His resurrection. At the same time, God the Father has also worked with Him to enliven all of us, to raise us up, and to uplift us to be seated with Christ in the heavenlies. Christ's creating and God's enlivening have produced the new man.

The church life should be in the reality of this new man. The church life is a matter of Christ being dispensed into our being and being mingled with us to make us a new man, who is the mingling of the crucified, resurrected, and ascended Christ with us in our resurrected, uplifted humanity. This is the church life—nothing is of the flesh, of the old man, of the self, or of the natural life. Everything that comes out of us has to be out of Christ mingled with our resurrected, uplifted humanity. This is the way to save the church from quarreling, from arguing, from fighting, and even from division.

The church is a human entity comprising all nationalities and all kinds of people. How can we be one? If you act according to yourself, and I act according to myself, we cannot be one. It would then be impossible to practice the church life. But in the new man, the cross is here, the resurrected Christ is here, the ultimate consummated Spirit is here, and we are also here, not in the old man but in the uplifted, resurrected humanity. This is what Ephesians reveals to us as the church life. How I thank God! I am so grateful to the Lord for Ephesians. I love this book. In my old Bibles, the section where Ephesians is, is very worn because of being handled so much. We all need to see the intrinsic view of the Body of Christ in this wonderful book.