The proper church, as the testimony of Jesus, testifies that Jesus is unique. In our home, in our locality, in our country, and in the universe there is only one Jesus. John 3:29 says, “He who has the bride is the bridegroom.” According to God’s divine ordination, one husband has one wife. It is wrong for a husband to have more than one wife. Polygamy is not only sinful but ugly. A bridegroom and a bride are a figure, a picture, showing that in the entire universe, according to God’s economy, there is only one Christ and one church. On the last night that the Lord Jesus was on this earth, He gave His final message, a long speaking of three chapters, John 14 through 16. These chapters are deep, living, rich, practical, and real. After this message, the Lord Jesus turned to the Father and prayed (17:1-26).
The Lord’s prayer was first for the Son to be glorified that the Father may be glorified (vv. 1-5). For many years, most of us have not understood this chapter. Almost all Christian readers of the New Testament realize that John 17 is a record of the Lord’s departing prayer to the Father for the oneness of His believers. This is right, but only in a shallow sense. We need to consider where this oneness is and how it can be realized practically. Whenever we practice the genuine oneness, the Son is glorified that the Father may be glorified in the Son. The church life is the glorification of the Son; for the Son to be glorified there is the need of a proper church life (Eph. 3:21; 1 Tim. 3:15-16). In the Bible, glory means God’s expression. We may illustrate this with electricity. Even though electricity has been installed in a building, no one is able to see it. When we switch on the lights, however, the electricity is seen. The shining of the lights is the “glorification” of the electricity. In the same way, Jesus Christ is a mystery, and it seems that no one can see Him. However, this Christ is expressed in the churches. Just as we know that there is electricity in a building by the shining of the lights, we know that Jesus is here by His “glowing” in the saints. Before His death the Lord Jesus prayed, “Glorify Your Son” (John 17:1). The intention, goal, and aim of this prayer were that the Father would build up the church for Christ. In this sense, glorify Your Son means “build up the church for Your Son.” Practically speaking, the Lord’s prayer in John 17 is a prayer for the church. The term church is not there in black and white letters, but it is there in actuality, reality, and practicality.
Just as electricity cannot be expressed without the shining of the lamps, the Son of God cannot be glorified without the church. When the Lord Jesus prayed, “Glorify Your Son,” He was asking the Father to bring the church into being so that Christ may be expressed, that is, glorified, in His Body. In this way the Father is also glorified in the Son, because the Father is in the Son (14:10-11). If the Son is concealed, no one can know the Father, but when the Son is expressed, the Father is also expressed in the Son’s expression. It is as if the Lord was praying, “Glorify Your Son in the church so that the Son may glorify You in His glorification.” We also need to pray for the Son’s glorification, His expression, in the proper church life today. When Christ the Son is expressed, the Father is expressed in the expression of the Son. We all need to see that the Lord’s prayer to the Father in John 17 is a prayer, practically speaking, for the church life. Without the church life, how else can the Son be glorified? The Lord’s prayer was fulfilled in Acts 2 on the day of Pentecost, when the Father through the Spirit raised up three thousand people and brought the church into being. It was at this time that the Son began to be glorified in the church, and in the glorification of the Son the Father was also glorified.
For the Son’s glorification in the church life, there is the need for the genuine oneness of all the Son’s believers. This is why at a certain point the Lord Jesus turned His prayer to the oneness (John 17:6-24). If there is no oneness among the believers, there is no church life, and if there is no church life, there is no practical way for the Son to be glorified. The practical key for the Son to be glorified is the oneness of all the believers. This realization allows us to enter into the depths of the Lord’s prayer in John 17. Practically speaking, it is a prayer for the church, and the church depends upon the oneness. The oneness is the crucial and basic item needed for the practice of the church life. The Lord Jesus foresaw this need, so He prayed ahead of time concerning this. On the one hand, the Lord’s prayer for the churches was fulfilled on the day of Pentecost, but on the other hand, from that time to the present generation, division has been a problem in the church. The subtle enemy, Satan, knows that as long as the oneness is damaged, there cannot be a proper church life and the Son cannot be glorified in the church. Today we must realize that for the recovery of the proper church life, the first thing that must be recovered is the oneness among the believers.
My mother’s grandfather on her mother’s side was a Southern Baptist in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and my mother also was baptized as a Southern Baptist, although she was not saved. Then I was born as a fourth generation Southern Baptist. When I grew up, though, I made the decision to turn from my family’s Baptist tradition to be a Chinese Presbyterian. However, I was still not saved. One day when I was nineteen, we heard an announcement that an evangelist, a twenty-five-year-old woman, was coming to our town to preach the gospel. According to the news, a thousand people were coming to listen to this young woman. I was stirred by this, and I wanted to see this preacher. I thank God for His sovereignty that one afternoon I went to hear her. Her message was on how Satan robs and usurps God’s people, just as Pharaoh did. The preaching was powerful, and after only a short time, I was fully captured. I was an ambitious young man, endeavoring to finish my studies, but I was caught on that afternoon. I told God, “Even if You give me the whole world and make me a king, I would say, ‘Thank You, but I do not want this.’ I do not want to be usurped by Satan anymore. I want to go along with Jesus.”
After this, I realized that the Chinese Presbyterian Church had nothing for me. I was hungry, and I wanted spiritual food. I loved the Bible very much. It was so sweet to me, like honey on the honeycomb. However, no one was able to present the Bible to me in a proper way. They did not know it in the way of life. They knew the Bible only according to its stories, but when I was young, my mother had taught us all the stories already. When she told us how Joseph was sold to Pharaoh, we shed tears, but now having been saved, I had received a new life, and the new life needed some new food. It was by this kind of seeking that I came into contact with the Brethren Assembly. They were famous for knowing the Bible, and this captured me. Therefore, I turned from the Chinese Presbyterians to the Brethren. I was fully satisfied there for a period of time. I sat there taking notes on the typology, dispensations, and prophecies, such as the ten horns, ten toes, four beasts, and seventy weeks (Rev. 13:1; Dan. 2:41-42; 7:3; 9:24). I heard over one hundred messages on the seventy weeks in Daniel 9. I was so happy because I came to know the Bible according to its prophecies, types, figures, and all the crucial portions of Daniel, Revelation, and Matthew. I continued in this way for seven years.
However, one day in August of 1931, as I was walking on the street, the Spirit within me checked with me, saying, “You have so much knowledge of the Bible, but look at how dead you are.” That alarmed me very much. I stopped walking, looked to the heavens, and said, “Yes, I am so dead!” I wanted to shout, but I was afraid of offending people on the street. At that time I did not yet know how to call on the name of the Lord, so I waited until the next morning to go to a mountain not very far from my home. When I got to the top, I burst out and called, “O Lord!” and I wept and prayed. On that day I turned from the Brethren Assembly to life. Day after day for a long period of time I prayed to the Lord. In the following year, 1932, the Lord sent Brother Watchman Nee to my hometown, having been invited by the Chinese Presbyterian Church through me. That was the first time we met each other. After he came, he stayed in my home, and we had fellowship together. This was the first time I had met a man with the presence of Jesus and the flavor of the church life.
On the same day he left, a brother came to me late in the evening for fellowship, and we began to practice the church life in my hometown. I did not know anything about the proper church life. I had never been in a proper meeting of the church, and we did not even have a hymnal. Only we two, this one brother and I, came together on a Tuesday to begin to practice the church life, but on the second Lord’s Day afterward, there were eleven young men coming together to partake of the Lord’s table. Some sisters also insisted on coming, but we did not have the space for them because we had begun the Lord’s table in my mother’s living room. After being with the traditional American Southern Baptists, the formal Chinese Presbyterians, and the British Brethren Assembly, I turned to life, and in life the Lord turned me to the church. From that day in July of 1932 up to the present, which is now forty-three years, I have never had a regret or the thought to have another turn. There is nowhere left to turn. The next move will not be a turn; it will simply be a step into the New Jerusalem.
From that day we began to realize that the genuine church life depends inwardly on our honest and pure heart with a seeking spirit and outwardly on the oneness. The eleven of us who began to have the church life had come out of eight different denominations. Now we were in the heavens, praying, praising, and testifying mainly of our oneness. At that time, the Baptists were for baptism by immersion, the Presbyterians were for sprinkling, and the two were fighting with each other. However, at our Lord’s table we praised the Lord for our oneness. We rejoiced over John 17 and said, “Lord Jesus, we are here as the fulfillment of Your prayer.” Still, there were only eleven of us. The leaders in the denominations said, “Forget about these young men. They are merely boys at play.” Nevertheless, from that day the church life became prevailing and stirred up the situation. This illustrates that in order to have the proper church life, the first requirement is the oneness.