Before we go any further, we need to see something of great importance to our understanding of God’s full salvation. The goal of God’s salvation is not many individual people who have been saved by God, but one corporate man. What is a corporate man? Men, as we know them, are all individuals, independent from one another. How can there be such a thing as a corporate man?
As we saw in the last lesson, the sons of God all have God’s life. Actually, God’s life is not a thing but a Person, God Himself. To have this life is just to have a living Person in us, the living God Himself. When these many individual people become filled with the one living God, they become one corporate God-man. They are no longer many individuals. They have all become the many parts of this one corporate man, the many members of the Body of Christ.
Consider yourself. Inside your body you have only one life, one person living there. When you go to school, your whole person goes. When you do a job, your whole person does the job. All that you do, you do in oneness, because within you there are not two persons but only one.
How about God? He too is in oneness, and His purpose is to be expressed in this oneness. When so many individual people receive Him as life, they become one with Him, and they are called the church, the Body of Christ. In eternity future, these people will be called the New Jerusalem. This is what we call the corporate man that God desires. This is what makes God happy.
If you read Ephesians 3:9-11, you will see that the church is not a thing that just happened after many individual people were saved. No! Rather, the church was planned in eternity past. It was for the church that the many people were saved. It was planned in eternity past. Then, in time, through our salvation in Christ, the church was brought about to express God. According to Revelation 21 and 22, it will continue on into eternity as the eternal goal and dwelling place of God.
What is the church? The church is a people filled up with God as their life. They are no more just individuals who care for their own things. Instead, they are many individuals who are being filled up with God as their life and are being built up together in Him. When they are living in this one life, they have the one image of God. They are His one expression and they represent God with His authority.
In all of God’s creation, this corporate man, the church, is the most marvelous of all God’s works. Ephesians 2:10 tells us that the church is God’s “masterpiece.” Not even the heavens with all of its marvels, nor the earth with all of its beauty, can compare with the church. The church is God’s unique desire. It is His purpose from eternity, and it is the product of His economy—His heart’s desire.