In these days I have been very happy because for many years I have been waiting for an opportunity to release some messages specifically concerning the Body of Christ. Now I feel that I have such a good opportunity for us to focus on the Body. If we do not know the Body well enough, we will never be able to thoroughly know the church. Until now, very few Christians have known what the church is. It is important that we all have a clear knowledge of the church.
I must first paint a background. The worst kind of concept Christians have concerning the church is that the church is a chapel, to consider that a building, a chapel, is the church. We all know that this is a great mistake. This kind of knowledge is not even worth mentioning, and we can throw it aside. The Brethren rose up in the last century to strongly teach that a chapel, as a building for worship, is not the church. They told people that the church is not a place but a group of people. They found the light in the New Testament to prove that the church is a gathering together of the redeemed ones. In Greek the word for church means the gathering together of the called-out ones. On the surface it is right to say that the church is not a place or a hall but a gathering together of the ones called by God. Yes, such a gathering is the church.
There is, however, a problem here. I can describe it by means of an example. We may be a group of about one hundred people. All of us have been called, and we have the opportunity to gather together at this time. Of course, according to the letter, all of us gathered together are the church. However, suppose that none of us lives in the spirit, that all one hundred of us are living in one hundred different minds. Some are from Singapore with a Singaporean mind; some are from Tokyo with a Japanese mind; some are from Seoul with a Korean mind; and some are from Germany with a German mind. None of us knows what it means to live in the spirit. We all have our own opinions, our own views, and our own backgrounds; the only thing we have in common is that we have all believed in the Lord Jesus and have become Christians. With regard to our sins having been washed away by the precious blood, we all are the same. With regard to the Lord Jesus being our Savior, we also are the same. Concerning our belief of the Bible, we all are carrying the same Bible. We all say that we are those who belong to the Lord. Apparently we are the church when we gather together, but what about the reality of this? Three Christians may be totally French, another three are completely German, and another eight are wholly Singaporean. We all feel that our sins have been washed away, and we have been saved; we also feel that the Lord loves us, and we belong to Him. However, none of us lives in the spirit or by the Spirit. On the one hand, we are the church, but on the other hand, we cannot say that we are truly the church. We are not the church because we are all in our minds. Although we have Christ, our Christ is on the throne in the heavens and in our minds, but He is not in our spirit or in our living. We do not live by Christ, and we cannot say, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” Moreover, when we come together we cannot say that here there is no French, no German, no Singaporean, no Filipino but all are one in Christ. You can see that apparently we are the church, but in reality we are not at all the church.
It is true that we are the assembly of the called-out ones, and based on this we acknowledge that we are the church. In reality, however, we are not the Body of Christ. This word is hard. How can we say that we are the church but not the Body of Christ? I tell you that according to reality this is the case. Apparently, we are all Christians, and we are the church when we come together; however, from the viewpoint of the Body, we are not the Body of Christ, nor are we the fullness of Christ. Some of us are the fullness of France, some of us are the fullness of Germany, and some of us are the fullness of Singapore; but we are not the fullness of Christ.
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