Christians who pay attention to spirituality often speak of the church as the Body of Christ. Even though this is a higher revelation, they do not see that the church is also the new man. For them the church may be the Body, but it is not a person. Nevertheless, a person is more than a body, because when a person dies, his body is present, but his person is not. This shows that a body is not the person himself but merely an organ of the person.
The church is a person, a man. According to Ephesians 2:15, Christ abolished the law of the commandments in ordinances on the cross and created the Jewish believers and the Gentile believers in Himself into one new man. This new man is not an individual man but a corporate man, because Christ created two peoples into one new man. After the new man is spoken of in verse 15, verse 16 speaks of Christ’s slaying on the cross the enmity created by the law of the commandments in ordinances, thereby making peace, and reconciling both the Jews and the Gentiles in one Body to God. This proves that the new man in verse 15 is the Body in verse 16. Both descriptions refer to the church.
According to position, every believer is saved and in the church. However, according to our actual living, many believers, including ourselves, are not in the church experientially. We should be like caterpillars who turn into butterflies by putting off the old man and putting on the new man. Many brothers and sisters, however, put on the new man only in a partial way, retaining some aspects of the old man. This is like a butterfly that comes only partially out of its cocoon. While a part of us is genuinely living in the church life, we retain some of our vestiges as a “caterpillar.” With other brothers and sisters, however, there is an expression that indicates that the likeness of a “butterfly” is truly being manifested. In the coming years I believe that many saints will put off the old man and put on the new man in order to live in the reality of the church life.
We must know that our spirit is the inner man and that Christ is the person of this inner man. In the past we experienced the power of Christ, and for this, our spirit as an organ was sufficient. But now we need to experience the person of Christ, and for this, we must know our spirit as the inner man.
Many saints can testify of their experience of Christ, but most of their testimonies are related to experiencing the power of Christ. Few can testify of experiencing Christ as their person. Gradually, the Lord will lead us to experience Him as our person, which will be a much sweeter experience. To pray for the Lord’s healing is to pray to experience the Lord as power. However, as the Lord leads us to experience Him as our person, our prayers will change. Instead of asking for healing, we will speak to the Lord in order to know His desire and intention for us during our time of illness.
One sister recently testified that her child was sick and crying continuously, so she called out to the Lord, and her child was healed. Thus, she experienced the Lord’s power. However, the Lord is leading us to experience not only His power but also His person. Later, if her child becomes sick again, her calling out to the Lord may not result in the manifestation of His power. With no seeming response, she may complain to the Lord that He has not been as faithful as He once was. She may even think that the Lord is not listening to her prayers. The Lord’s lack of a response to her requests for healing is related to His desire that she experience His person. Rather than asking only for healing, she should seek the Lord to know His intentions related to the situation. If she inquires of the Lord in this way, she will know the Lord according to His person. When she inquires of the Lord, He may show her that His earlier healing was for her sake, that is, so that she would not be stumbled in her faith. But with her faith strengthened, she should now seek and accept the Lord’s feeling in regard to the situation of her child’s illness. In this way she will experience the Lord as her person.
To take Christ as our person means to deny the self (Matt. 16:24). The self is our fallen person. We must deny our person and take Christ as our person. Many of us can testify that the Lord Jesus has listened to our prayers. If the Lord did not listen to prayer, we would not even be saved. However, after being saved for a period of time, it seems as if the Lord no longer listens to us. This is because He wants us to listen to Him. The Lord wants us to put ourselves aside and let Him be our person. We all want our children to be well behaved, respectable, smart, and well educated so that they bring honor to us. When testifying to others about our family, we may say, “The Lord Jesus is so wonderful. When I could not manage my children, I prayed to the Lord, and their behavior changed.” This may be true in the beginning of our experience of the Lord. However, as time goes by, He will no longer merely bestow His power upon us according to our limited prayers. This is because He wants to train us to experience His person in addition to His power. Eventually, we will speak less about our needs and listen more to Him. At some point we will not even ask for things; we will only speak of our situation in prayer in order to hear His feeling and His leading as our person.
In John 11 Martha and Mary were worried when their brother Lazarus was sick. They sent people to inform the Lord of his illness, saying, “Behold, he whom You love is sick” (v. 3). This word was spoken with the intention to cause the Lord to come to heal him in Bethany. However, the Lord did not listen. He remained where He was for two more days. He did not go to Bethany when Lazarus was sick, and He did not even go when Lazarus died. He waited until Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days. The Lord took His time to go to Bethany because He wanted to train Martha and Mary to take Him as their person rather than commanding Him.
After remaining in the same place for two days, the Lord Jesus decided that it was time to go and see Lazarus (vv. 6, 11). When Martha and Mary heard that the Lord was coming, they were full of grievances. Martha went to meet Him and said, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died” (v. 21). Martha was complaining because she felt that He had not listened to her request to come earlier, and that because of this, her brother had died. When the Lord Jesus said, “Your brother will rise again” (v. 23), He was telling her that she should listen to Him. But even though she heard the Lord’s word, she was not really listening, because her response, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection in the last day” (v. 24), showed that she misunderstood. This is an illustration of how we read and expound the Bible. When the Lord indicated that He would raise up Lazarus immediately, she expounded the Lord’s word by postponing Lazarus’s resurrection to the last day. When the Lord was not able to get through to them, He had to ask, “Where have you put him?” (v. 34). When the Lord came to the tomb and asked for the stone to be taken away, Martha said, “Lord, by now he smells” (v. 39). This shows that it is not easy for us to take Christ as our person. It was the people’s inability to listen to the Lord that caused Him to weep (v. 35). The Lord was not weeping because Lazarus was dead, because He knew that Lazarus was about to be resurrected. He was weeping for the foolish people, for their foolish speaking, and for their not taking Him as their person.
In the beginning of our Christian life we will experience the Lord’s power, but as we go on, He will train us to experience Him as our person. As we enter into these experiences, the church as the new man will be produced. The church today is not merely the Body as an organ to express the Lord’s power. The church today is the new man, and the person of this new man is Christ Himself. We all must take Him as our person. In His person we will have the church life.
I hope that the Lord will show us this light and lead us into experiences of taking Him as our person. We should not only know the church as the Body, but we should also take a further step and see the church as the new man and the Lord as the person of the new man. When we reach this point, we will be rooted and grounded in the Lord’s love and able to apprehend with all the saints the breadth, the length, the height, and the depth of Christ (Eph. 3:17-18). At this time we will also know the sweetness of His love, which surpasses all knowledge, and be filled unto the fullness of God (v. 19). Thus, we put off the old man and put on the new man daily (4:22-24). This new man is the church life.
I believe that the Lord’s Spirit will speak a clearer word to us and cause us to have clearer light. We will see what it means to be in the church life and to have the living of the new man with Christ as our person. Only when our self is denied and rejected will Christ be lived out in us: “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20), and “To me, to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21). This is the new man. This is the living of the new man. This is the church.