«　WEEK 9　DAY 4　»

　　Rom. 15:5-6 Now the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to be of the same mind toward one another…that with one accord you may with one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

　　1 Cor. 1:10 Now I beseech you, brothers, through the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be attuned in the same mind and in the same opinion.

　　How could tens of thousands of believers speak the same thing with one mind and one mouth?… What we speak is not concerning baptisms, head covering, or foot-washing. We speak one thing—the all-inclusive Christ and His church. If we only take Christ as our life and Christ as our person, spontaneously we will all speak the same thing. Then practically we will be the new man. When you go to another country, a saint there will meet you, speaking the same thing. Wherever you go on this earth, regardless of what kind of people or what kind of language is there, you will hear the same thing. We all can speak the same thing, and we all can be attuned in the same opinion. We would have only one concept, Christ and the church. (CWWL, 1977, vol. 3, “The One New Man,” pp. 498-499)

　　The church is one new man….How many mouths does the one new man have? One. Then who is the mouth?…There is only one new man with only one person. In the whole body there is only one mouth, but who controls this mouth? It is the person.

　　The church is not merely the Body but also the one new man. The Body needs Christ as its life, whereas the new man needs Christ as his person. When you want to speak, when I want to speak, when any one of us wants to speak, we must resolve the basic question: who is the person that is speaking here? If you are the person, you have your own mouth. If I am the person, I have my own mouth. Thus…there are two mouths. When each one is a person individually and each one speaks his own matters, we have many mouths…. [However, in the new man], when you speak, it is not you who are the person; when I speak, neither is it I. When anyone speaks, it is Christ who is the person. What is the result? The result is that there is only one mouth.

　　This is why in 1 Corinthians 1:10 Paul says that all “speak the same thing.”… It seemed to me that this was impossible, but one day I understood. The church is the one new man with only one person, and this person controls our speaking, so whatever He speaks is surely “the same thing” that we all speak as the new man.

　　Many preachers and pastors in today's Christianity are all their own persons, all have their own mouths, and all speak their own things. Therefore, they have many mouths, each speaking a different thing. However, the church is not like this. The church is the one new man with Christ as his person. Whenever the brothers and sisters are about to speak something, they do not take themselves as the person; instead, they allow Christ to be the person. You let Christ be your person when you speak, and I let Christ be my person when I speak. Eventually, everyone speaks the same thing.

　　Consider the Bible. The Old and New Testaments contain sixty-six books written by more than forty different authors in many different places over a period of fifteen or sixteen hundred years. The first book, Genesis, was written about 1500 B.C., while the last book, Revelation, was written after A.D. 90. Do they all have one mouth? Do they all speak the same thing? The entire Bible has one mouth and speaks the same thing, even though it was written over a long period of time by many different people in many different places…. Although we are many and we come from many places, all of us have one mouth, and we all speak the same thing. This is because we all are the one new man having only one person. (CWWL, 1977, vol. 3, “One Body, One Spirit, and One New Man,” pp. 310-311)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1977, vol. 3, “One Body, One Spirit, and One New Man,” chs. 7-8