Outline
B
To learn Christ is for us to be replaced with Christ by eating Christ; the reality that is in Jesus (the God-man living of the individual Jesus) becomes the reality of the Body of Christ (the God-man living of the corporate Christ) by our eating Christ to enjoy Christ as our supplying, energizing, empowering, and enabling supply, so that we may choose and carry out the will of God for His glory in the church—John 6:57; Isa. 7:14-15; John 17:4; Heb. 5:8; Phil. 2:8; John 6:63; Jer. 15:16; Heb. 4:16; Rom. 5:5, 17; 12:2; 2 Cor. 5:14; Eph.3:20-21.
C
We are learning Christ by being awakened by Him morning by morning so that we can have the ear and tongue of an instructed one to sustain the weary with a word; as the Lord's disciples, His instructed ones, we should rely on Him, trust in His name, and not generate our own light—Isa. 50:4-5, 10-11.
D
We are learning Christ as the One who is meek and lowly in heart, as the One whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light, and as the One who gives us Himself as rest (perfect peace and full satisfaction) for our souls—Matt. 11:28-30.
E
We are learning Christ as our indwelling secret of sufficiency to express God's attributes in Christ's human virtues, living Him for His magnification in every kind of environment, situation, and circumstance—Phil. 4:5-13.
F
We are learning Christ as the One who desires mercy according to His loving and forgiving heart and His shepherding and seeking spirit—Matt. 9:12-13.
G
The disciples who followed the Lord for three and a half years saw what He did, how He behaved, and how He spoke; the Spirit of life and of reality who was breathed into them (John 20:22) would guide them into all the reality of what they had observed of the Lord (16:13).
H
The Lord Jesus was a person living a human life in resurrection, not by Himself but by another source, that is, His Father; when we live in our humanity by another life, by the Christ who indwells us, this kind of living makes us the Lord's genuine disciples.
I
The disciples of the Lord have the real presence of the Triune God as their exceeding joy to make them persons who are "Jesusly human," those who are sweet, charming, and attractive to those whom they contact, without any deception or hypocrisy—Matt. 1:23; Psa. 43:4; Rom. 14:17; Neh. 8:10; Phil. 1:25; 4:5, 8-9; 1 Tim. 4:15-16.
J
The followers of Christ were discipled through Christ's human living on the earth, as the model of a God-man—living God by denying Himself in humanity (John 5:19, 30), revolutionizing their concept concerning man (Phil. 3:10; 1:21a).
K
"I was in the recovery observing how Brother Watchman Nee acted for eighteen years. All that I observed in him became things discipling me" (The Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1994-1997, vol. 5, "The Vital Groups," p. 76).
Morning Nourishment
Rom. 12:5 So we who are many are one Body in Christ, and individually members one of another.Phil. 3:10 To know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.
[Some] may consider that the recovery is for the recovery of the local churches. I say yes with a but…The local churches are too much in the expression of physical things. You have to arrange the elders and set up the deacons to take care of so many outward affairs. But with the Body of Christ there are no physical things. The local churches are nearly ninety percent physical, but they should be for something spiritual, and this spiritual thing is the Body of Christ.
The reality of the Body of Christ is a kind of corporate living, not a living by any individual. This corporate living is the aggregate of many saints who have been redeemed, regenerated, sanctified, and transformed by the processed and consummated God within them. By this indwelling consummated God, these redeemed saints have been made actual God-men. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 1, “The Practical Points concerning Blending,” p. 127)
Today’s Reading
In regeneration a person is made a God-man, but he is not a matured God-man…The procedure in the church work is to beget, to nourish, and then to teach and perfect so that the saints may be mature to be built in the local churches for the building up of the Body of Christ.We know that God became a man to be a God-man…He appeared to His disciples and to the people as a genuine man…Yet this man would not live by Himself, by His own human life. Rather, He rejected His human life. He denied Himself…He told us that whatever He did and whatever He spoke were not of Himself but of the Father who sent Him (John 14:10, 24). He was a real man living there, yet He was dying to His natural life…That dying to His natural life is the cross, and His living by the divine life is in resurrection. [Jesus was a human being, a genuine man], but He did not live by that genuine man. Instead, He kept that genuine man on the cross. Then, in the sense of resurrection, He lived God’s life. God’s life with all its attributes was lived within this God-man Jesus and expressed as this God-man’s virtues.
This life [in an individual man, Jesus Christ], has now been repeated, reproduced, in many men who have been redeemed and regenerated and who now possess the divine life within them…The reality of the Body of Christ is the corporate living by the perfected God-men, who are genuine men but are not living by their life but by the life of the processed God, whose attributes have been expressed through their virtues.
Paul lived by dying to live [cf. Gal. 2:20]. He was dying to his natural man and living by his new man with the divine life. So he said that by the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, he lived and magnified Christ (Phil. 1:19-21a).
The reality of the Body of Christ is not just a corporate living but a mingling living…This living is not completed; it is still going on…Such a mingling living is in the resurrection of Christ, and the reality of this resurrection is the Spirit.
If among us there is, if not in full at least in part, such a living, the reality of the Body of Christ is among us…Anyone who lives such a mingling life would never be a trouble to anyone. They have been delivered out of themselves and have been transformed and perfected. They would not despise or condemn anyone, nor would they be bothered by others. They would not have anything to do with dissension, rebellion, or division. Instead, they would be here in the recovery as the high peak, Mount Zion, in Jerusalem. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 1, “The Practical Points concerning Blending,” pp. 127-131)
Further Reading: CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 1, “The Practical Points concerning Blending,” chs. 4—5; CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 3, “The God-man Living,” chs. 1—2, 8, 10—11, 13—15