The Chinese term for church readily conveys the meaning of the church as being a congregation. We cannot say that to understand the church as a congregation is wrong, but this concept is too human, natural, and religious. According to the human, natural, and religious concepts, the church is a human congregation related to a belief or a religion; it is a religious congregation. If we speak according to the scriptural utterance, however, the church is the house of God, or preferably the household, the family, of God. The house refers to mainly the dwelling place, and the household, the family, refers to the members of the house. This utterance gives the meaning of the church according to the Bible. First Timothy 3:15 speaks of the house of God, the church of the living God. The church as the house of God is both His dwelling place and His family.
This utterance is a little higher than the common concept, but it is not high enough. A higher view is that the church is the Body of Christ. This is very high, but it also is not high enough. From the time the Brethren in England were raised up in the last century, all these aspects of the church have been made known. They saw that the church is the assembly of the called-out ones, that the church is the house of God, and that the church is the Body of Christ. But the Bible does not stop here in speaking about this matter of the church. There is still a higher utterance in the Bible, and that is that the church is the one new man, a man. You need to see now that the church is an assembly, a house, a Body, and a man.
In an assembly as a congregation we are all members. But what is required of the members of a congregation? They need to love one another: We are all in one congregation; as we are all members of this congregation, we should love one another. I have heard this kind of speaking from the time I was a young boy. In Christianity, most of the speaking is concerning the church being a group of people who are of the same persuasion. The Presbyterian Church, the Baptist Church, the Methodist Church, the Lutheran Church, and the Episcopalian Church all say that each one is a member, so they must love one another.
When we advance a little, we say that the church is the house of God. The house is more intimate than a congregation or an assembly. Loving one another as members of a congregation is a far cry from loving one another as members of a household, a family. If I introduce someone as a member of my family, you know that the relationship here is much more intimate.
We would think that this is already good enough, but it is not high enough. When we advance further, we see that the church is the Body. In the Body it is a matter not of intimately loving one another but of being members one of another. Although there may be distinctions among the members, they absolutely cannot be separated. The hand and the arm are distinct, but they are inseparable. Two brothers are members of the same family and can play together when they are happy. But when they are not happy with each other, they separate; one goes to the beach at Keelung and the other goes to Mount Ali. But the arm and the hand absolutely cannot separate. They cannot even go into two adjacent rooms separately, let alone go to two different places such as the beach and the mountain, because once they are separated, they are finished.
Ultimately the Bible speaks of the church as the one new man. I cannot find any type that stands for the new man. In the Body we have the members; in the household we have the family members; in the assembly we have the assembly members. But what do we have in the man? The only thing is the person. In the new man, there is nothing but the person. This level is so high that it cannot be higher, so strict it cannot be stricter, and so intimate it cannot be more intimate. All are one new man; this one new man has only one person, and this person is the Lord Jesus.
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