In this series of messages, we want to see the crucial points in the practice of the Lord's recovery. Many of us have been brought into the Lord's recovery, but we may not have an adequate realization of the Lord's recovery. This is why I am burdened to cover all the crucial points in the practical working out of the Lord's recovery, which I call the practice in the Lord's recovery. The first basic item we need to know is the oneness of the Body of Christ. I hope that we can spend some time to dive into all the basic points covered in this message with the accompanying outline and Scripture references. If we do this, we will have a thorough realization of the crucial need of the oneness of the Body of Christ in the practice of the Lord's recovery.
The Body of Christ is unique. In the whole universe there is just one Body of Christ (Eph. 4:4a). The church as the Body of Christ is also God's family, God's house (Eph. 2:19; 1 Tim. 3:15). As God's family, as the house of God, the church is uniquely one. Furthermore, the church as the Body of Christ is the wife of Christ (Eph. 5:23-25). For a man to have two wives or two families is a shame. Our Lord has only one Body, one family, one household which is His home, and one wife.
There is one Body in the universe, and this Body is the new man (Eph. 2:15). This truth abolishes all the differences among us, making us one in Christ. In Christ and in the Body life, there are no racial differences. Instead, Christ is all the members and in all the members (Col. 3:11; 1 Cor. 12:12).
The oneness of the Body of Christ is kept and expressed by each local church in its locality. In the practice of the church life, there is only one church in one city (Acts 8:1a; 13:1a; Rev. 1:11). The local churches are the local expressions of the one Body of Christ in the universe. There should not be more than one local expression of the one Body of Christ in a locality.
Now we need to see the base of the oneness of the church. This base is of four items: the seven factors of our Christian faith, the oneness of the Spirit, the oneness of the divine Trinity, and the oneness for which the Lord prayed.
The base of the oneness of the church is firstly the seven factors of our Christian faith (Eph. 4:4-6, 13). In Ephesians 4:4-6 Paul presents these seven factors, which are seven "ones." Then in verse 13 he says that we believers need to be perfected until we all arrive at the oneness of the faith. This shows that the seven "ones" listed in verses 4 through 6 are the seven factors of our Christian faith.