If we are going to carry out the organic building up of the Body of Christ, we must have our life changed from our natural life to the divine life, from our temporal life to the eternal life. Our human life is good for our existence, but it is altogether not qualified and not able to do the things to accomplish God’s New Testament economy. This divine New Testament economy is altogether accomplished, completed, and consummated by the divine life, but not by the divine life alone. God’s New Testament economy is accomplished by the divine life living in the human life. Our human life is good for our existence, but it is also good as a container of the divine life. The divine life does everything, but the divine life does not do everything by itself and in itself. The divine life does everything through our human life and in our human life.
To say that we need the divine life does not mean that we take away our life and replace it with the divine life. This does not work. Our human life has been grafted together with the divine life. This is according to the truth of Romans 11:24, which says that the wild olive tree was grafted into the cultivated olive tree. Our human life has not been put away to be replaced by the divine life. Our human life has been grafted into the divine life so that this divine life can live through it. This is the mingling of two lives. Our human life is only good for the divine life to live through it. We cannot do anything for God by our human life. Whatever we do in our human life will not be accepted by God. Therefore, we need to let the divine life live through us and do everything through us. This is grafting. We are the branches who have been grafted into Christ.
Galatians 2:20 says, “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith...” This verse says that it is no more I that live but Christ lives in me, but the second part of the verse says “and the life which I now live.” We are crucified, yet we still live. How can we explain this? We still live, but we live by someone else, not by ourselves. We live by this One’s faith. We may not fully understand this verse, but we just need to say “Amen” to it. We have been crucified with Christ, and we no longer live. Instead, Christ lives in us, and we live by Christ as our faith. Christ has to live within us and through us. He has to do everything, not by Himself alone but through us in a mingled way. We need to be mingled with Him.
The divine life of Christ is the life that can accomplish everything that we have fellowshipped in the previous chapters. All of us have to admit that we ourselves are not qualified to carry out God’s New Testament economy. We need to be mingled with Christ as life. Our life needs to be mingled with His life. Then His life can work and move in our life, through our life, and with our life. This is really wonderful! While we work, He works within us. While He works within us, we live so that He may live to do whatever He wants to do through us. If we preach the gospel by ourselves, this will not work. We have to carry out the gospel preaching work by a mingled life. The life of God is the life that works, and the life of man matches God’s work to do the work. By the life of God we can accomplish what God wants us to do in the New Testament.
The life that we need for the organic building up of the Body of Christ is the divine life of Christ—Christ Himself as the life-giving Spirit within us (John 14:6a; 1 Cor. 15:45b). God became a man. By becoming a man, God was mingled with man. Today the life of Christ is a mingled life. It is the human life mingled with the divine life. We have such a life, and this life is Christ Himself as the life-giving Spirit. We do not need to try to analyze this life. We may not understand the food that we eat every day, but we enjoy it and are nourished by it. Christ as the embodiment of God is the mingling of the human life with the divine life, and this life today is the life-giving Spirit. This Spirit is within us for us to partake of and enjoy.
This life is also the crucified life (1 Cor. 2:2; Gal. 2:20a). This is a life under the subjective death of Christ, a life conformed to His death (Phil. 3:10b). Every day we need to take up the cross (Matt. 16:24), and the life that we live should be a crucified life. To be crucified means to get rid of our natural life, our old man, and our flesh. We all need to be crossed out. We should not think that we are so useful. We are only qualified to be crossed out. When Jesus lived on this earth, He always lived under the killing of the cross. He did not speak His own word, do His own will, or seek His own glory. He spoke the Father’s word (John 14:24), did the Father’s will (6:38), and sought the Father’s glory (7:18). This indicates that He was living a life under the killing of the cross to give the Father the opportunity to work through Him. Today we need to live such a life, a life that is under the killing of the cross. This is a life that is conformed to the death of Christ. When we stay under the killing of the cross, we will be conformed to Christ’s death. The life of Christ has become a mold into which our life can be conformed. We are being conformed into the form of Christ’s death.