«　WEEK 2　DAY 4　»

　　Eph. 1:22-23 "And He subjected all things under His feet and gave Him to be Head over all things to the church, which is His Body, the fullness of the One who fills all in all."

　　Eph. 3:8 "To me, less than the least of all saints, was this grace given to announce to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ as the gospel."

　　The Body of Christ is the continuation of Christ's life on earth. When He came to the earth and lived on earth, He expressed Himself through a body. Today He still requires a body to express Himself.…The function of the Body is to be the full expression of Christ. We cannot manifest our personality through any one member of our body—the ears, mouth, eyes, hands, or feet—alone. Similarly, Christ cannot manifest His personality through any one member of His Body. It takes His whole Body to manifest Him. We must see that everything of Christ is expressed through His Body. This is not all. The Body of Christ is the extension and continuation of Christ on earth. He spent more than thirty years on earth to reveal Himself. He did this as the individual Christ. Today He is revealing Himself through the church. This is the corporate Christ. Formerly, Christ was expressed individually; now He is expressed corporately. (CWWN, vol. 44, p. 793)

　　Chapters 1 and 4 of Ephesians both mention fullness, while chapter 3 mentions the riches of Christ. What is the difference between the riches of Christ and the fullness of Christ?…If you put a big pile of food here, it would not be called fullness; it would be called riches. However, once you have eaten these riches item by item and have digested them, they become your cells and the elements of your body. Consequently, your body is constituted with what you have eaten and digested. This constituted body is a fullness.…The riches of Christ are boundless, immeasurable, and unsearchable, but you still need to eat and assimilate these riches of Christ. The more Christ you eat and the more Christ is assimilated into you, the more element of the fullness you will gain.…[The fullness of Christ] is Christ experienced by you, assimilated by you, and constituted into your being to become your element; this is the fullness, which is the Body of Christ.

　　Strictly speaking, …as a natural man, you are not a member of Christ. It is only when the life of Christ, the nature of Christ, and everything of Christ have entered your being to regenerate and reconstitute you that you become a member of Christ.…In order to be a member of Christ you must be reconstituted.…Christ has to enter into you to regenerate you, and He has to continue to enter into you, to dispense His element into you, in order to constitute you. As a result, your entire being, from the inside to the outside, will pass through a process of thorough reconstituting so that you will no longer be what you were originally, but you will be a regenerated and transformed person. Only this regenerated, transformed person can be a member of Christ.

　　The Body of Christ is the fullness of Christ, which comes out of our enjoyment of the riches of Christ. Therefore, the fullness is Christ Himself enjoyed by us, assimilated by us, and constituted into us as our element. This fullness is absolutely subjective to us. We may say that the riches of Christ are objective and outside of us, but the fullness of Christ is altogether subjective to us and is in the element of our entire being. This means that when we are the Body of Christ, it is no longer we, but it is Christ who lives in us, just as Galatians 2:20 says, “I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” When we allow Christ to live in us, we have put Him on and have put off our old man, our natural man. We have put on Christ Himself. It is in this Christ that we all are one. It is in this Christ that we all are His Body, His fullness. It is in this “oneness, “this fullness, that there is no natural man: no Chinese, no foreigner, no Honanese, no Hopeinese, no male, and no female. In this fullness everything is Christ. (CWWL, 1977, vol. 3, “One Body, One Spirit, and One New Man, ” pp. 272-273, 275)

　　Further Reading: CWWN, vol. 44, ch. 98; CWWL, 1977, vol. 3, “One Body, One Spirit, and One New Man, “ch. 2