«　WEEK 2　DAY 3　»

　　Eph. 1:22-23 …The church, which is His Body, the fullness of the One who fills all in all.

　　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 is not merely a composition of a group of the called-out ones; the Body is the fullness of Christ. The Body is not only the expression of Christ but also the fullness of Christ. How does this fullness come into being? It is by your receiving the riches of Christ into you to be enjoyed and assimilated by you and even to become you. We may compare this to eating fish, chicken, and bread. After about five or six hours, they are digested into you to become you. It is at this time that you are the fullness. (CWWL, 1977, vol. 3, “One Body, One Spirit, and One New Man,” p. 284)

　　I have eaten a great amount of the riches of Taiwan, and these riches have been assimilated into me and have become me. Now, therefore, I can stand here full of life and energy. This is the fullness. The church is the fullness of Christ.

　　[The] universal Christ, the Christ who fills all things, the Christ who is both in the heavens and on the earth, needs a Body to be His fullness. When He was on earth as Jesus the Nazarene, He could not be in Judea at the same time that He was in Galilee, nor could He be in Jerusalem when He was in Samaria. This was because He was a small Jesus,… limited by His flesh….Today He has risen from the dead and ascended to the heavens, so He fills all things. He can be in the heavens and on the earth simultaneously; He can be in one place in the heavens, and at the same time He can be in millions of places on the earth. He is such a One who fills all things, so He needs a great Body as His fullness. Thus, today we can say that because He has such a great Body on earth, He is in heaven and He is also in Taipei, in Hong Kong, in Manila, in Singapore, in London, in Germany, in the United States, in Africa, in North America, and in South America. His Body is everywhere. What is this Body? It is…His universal fullness.

　　The Body is the fullness of Christ. In doctrine the church is the Body, but as to reality there is still a question of how much element of the Body is there. Brothers and sisters, we should not condemn others; we must see our own condition. At this time we all must confess in the light of the Lord that even we ourselves up to this day may live only thirty percent by the Spirit, leaving seventy percent that we live by ourselves.…The Lord does not merely need a church in each locality; He needs a Body. As soon as we do not live by Christ, as soon as we are not living by the Spirit, we are not the Body. In name we are still the church, but in reality we are not the Body. Why? Because the Body is the fullness of Christ.

　　Do not forget the word is in Ephesians 1:23: “[The church] is His Body, the fullness of the One who fills all in all.” This means that the church is the Body, and the Body is the fullness. These two levels of “is” are in succession rather than in parallel. It is not that on the one hand the church is the Body, while on the other hand the church is the fullness. Rather, it is that the church is the Body, and the Body is the fullness. According to doctrine, the fullness equals the Body, and the Body equals the church. But according to reality, a man can be in the church and still not live in the Body. All the brothers and sisters who meet in Hong Kong are in the church, but who is living in the Body?… Strictly speaking, that which can fulfill God’s eternal purpose is not the church in name but the Body. The Body is the fullness of Christ. I repeat that if you look from this angle and measure with this yardstick, you will see that today on earth in the churches there is not much of the element of the Body. (CWWL, 1977, vol. 3, “One Body, One Spirit, and One New Man,” pp. 284, 286, 288-289)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1977, vol. 3, “One Body, One Spirit, and One New Man,” chs. 3-4, 6