In 4:4-6 we have the Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—with the Body. According to 4:15, we need to grow up into Christ in all things. This growth is for the sake of the Body, the church.
In 5:18 Paul charges us to be filled in spirit. This filling surely is related to being filled unto all the fullness of God. Through the infilling we have the water in the Word to wash away our spots and wrinkles (vv. 26-27). The result of this washing is that we are corporately sanctified. Sanctification is not primarily an individual matter, but a corporate matter, a matter for the Body. Moreover, in this chapter we see that Christ is nourishing and cherishing the Body (v. 29).
Finally, in chapter six Paul tells us to put on the whole armor of God (v. 11). We need to receive the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, by means of all prayer, praying at every time in spirit (v. 18). This is for the church to be God’s warrior.
As we consider all these verses, we see that in the genuine church there is no religion, tradition, regulations, forms, or rituals. Instead, there is just the Triune God as the all-inclusive Spirit working in our spirit to produce the Body, the new man. I hope that we all shall pray-read these verses until we see this vision of the church. Then we shall realize that God has predestinated us for this. We have been made alive for God’s dwelling place, and we enjoy the riches of Christ that we may be part of the church. The church is produced by the mingling of the Triune God with redeemed mankind. The church life is thus the corporate mingling of the divine Spirit with the human spirit. If we have Christ as our reality, we shall not have ordinances or forms, but we shall have only the experience of the living Christ in our spirit.
If we study church history, we can learn how the church became degraded. Firstly, Satan used Judaism, a religion founded and formed according to God’s oracle, to corrupt the church. In his subtlety, Satan caused Judaism to creep into the church. We have seen that the church is an entity produced by the mingling of the Holy Spirit with the human spirit. In this entity there is no room for regulations, organization, forms, or doctrines. There is room only for the Triune God as the all-inclusive Spirit mingled with our spirit in a corporate way. The church on the day of Pentecost was like this. At that time, there were no so-called services or methods of worship. The saints were not preoccupied with doctrinal knowledge, and they were not under any kind of organization. On the day of Pentecost, there was no religion. There was only a group of people living in the mingled spirit and experiencing the genuine church life.
Later, however, Judaism crept in with its forms and ordinances, especially the ordinances concerning circumcision, the Sabbath, and eating. Paul wrote the book of Galatians in order to deal with the damage caused by Judaism, by religion.
Secondly, Satan used philosophy, especially a mixture of various philosophies called Gnosticism, to damage the church. Certain forms of Gnosticism included elements of Judaism and Christianity. The point here is that Satan used knowledge and the exercise of the natural mind to corrupt the church. The Epistle to the Colossians was written to deal with this, just as Galatians was written to deal with religion. The subtlety of the enemy is to turn the church from the mingled spirit to the natural mind, that is, to turn the saints from the tree of life to the tree of knowledge. In the beginning, those in the church life were feeding on the tree of life. Then Satan came in to distract the saints from the tree of life to the tree of knowledge. William Law, a contemporary of John Wesley, saw this. In a book entitled The Power of the Spirit Law is quoted as saying the following:
...A trust in the wisdom of men and the letter of Scripture has caused the church to fall from its first gospel state in much the way that Adam fell through eating of the same tree of knowledge. The Bible teacher and religious leader who gain and hold a church position through intellectual attainments and oratorical skills can be said to differ from lesser men only as the serpent differed from the other beasts of the field—in that it was more subtle.
Furthermore, speaking of the turn from the tree of life to the tree of knowledge, Law said:
In the first apostolic church, the wisdom of words was no more sought after than friendship with the world which is enmity with God. In that new-born church, the tree of life, which grew in the midst of Paradise, took root and grew up again, spreading glory and virtue as men fed upon it. In the present church, the tree of life is hissed at as the visionary food of extremists, and the tree of death, called the tree of knowledge, has the eyes and hearts of priests and people, and is thought to do as much good to Christians as it did evil to the first inhabitants of Paradise.
At the end of Genesis 3, the way to the tree of life was closed to fallen man. But through the redemption of Christ, the church was brought back to the tree of life. However Satan intervened and turned the church from the tree of life to the tree of knowledge.