Scripture Reading: Matt. 16:18, 21-26; Gen. 1:26; Col. 1:18b; John 17:11, 21-23; 1 Cor. 15:31
Ⅰ
Because the church has become degraded through the many centuries of its history, it needs to be restored according to God's original intention and standard as revealed in the Scriptures—cf. 2 Kings 22:8; Ezra 1:3-11; Neh. 2:11, 17; Matt. 19:8; Rev. 18:4:
A
Recovery means the restoration or return to a normal condition after a damage or a loss has been incurred.
B
After Satan's destruction, God came in to redo the things that He had done before; this redoing is His recovery, which is to bring back whatever has been lost and destroyed by God's enemy, Satan—1 John 3:8b.
C
Satan's authority of darkness shall not prevail against the will of God to build up His church for His corporate expression—Matt. 16:18.
Ⅱ
God's original intention is that man may receive His divine life and divine nature and thereby become God's expression—Gen. 1:26; 2:7-9:
A
In creating man, God made a duplicate, a copy, of Himself (1:26); all the other living things were created according to their kind (vv. 11-12, 21, 24-25), but man was created according to God's kind (cf. Acts 17:28-29a).
B
God created man in His image (Gen. 1:26), and Christ is the image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15; 2 Cor. 4:4); thus, Adam was created in the image of Christ (Gen. 1:26):
１
This shows that God intended that Christ would enter into man and be expressed through man—2:9; John 10:10b; Phil. 1:20-21a; Eph. 5:27.
２
Created man is a vessel, a container, to contain and express Christ—Rom. 9:21, 23; 2 Cor. 4:7.
Ⅲ
The Lord's recovery is to recover the expression of God:
A
God's desire is to have a recovery purely and wholly of the person of Christ:
１
The Lord's desire is to "Christify" every believer until they have a total "Christification"—Gal. 1:15-16a; 2:20; 4:19; 1 Thes. 5:23; Rom. 8:10, 6, 11.
２
This "Christification" is the expression of God, which is the fullness of Christ and the fullness of God—Phil. 1:19-21a; Eph. 1:22-23; 3:16-21.
B
Satan's strategy is versus the Lord's recovery—Isa. 14:12-15; Ezek. 28:12-19; John 14:30; Matt. 16:18; Eph. 6:10-11:
１
Satan has a strategy to spoil and damage the expression of God—2 Thes. 2:7; cf. 1 Tim. 3:15-16a:
ａ
The first category of Satan's activity is to produce many substitutes for Christ, such as human philosophy (Col. 2:8; cf. 1:12), Judaism (Heb. 8:6; 9:23; 10:5-10), the law (Gal. 3:1-3, 24; 1:15-16a; 2:20; 4:10), and gifts, signs, and human wisdom (1 Cor. 1:22-23; 12:31).
ｂ
The second category of Satan's work is to divide the Body of Christ; the sects, denominations, and divisions in the Body wipe out the corporate expression of Christ—1:10-13a; Gal. 5:19-20.
ｃ
The third category of Satan's work is to kill the function of all the members of Christ's Body by the clergy-laity system; we need to have the Lord's hate for the works of the Nicolaitans—Rev. 2:6; 1:5b-6; 1 Pet. 2:5, 9.
２
The Lord has a recovery to fulfill His consummate prayer for the full expression of God, the glory of God—John 17:21-23:
ａ
The Lord's recovery is the recovery of Christ as our center, reality, life, and everything—Col. 1:18b; Rev. 2:4, 7, 17; 3:20.
ｂ
The Lord's recovery is the recovery of the oneness of the Body of Christ—John 17:11, 21; Eph. 4:3-4a; Rev. 1:11.
ｃ
The Lord's recovery is the recovery of the function of all the members of the Body of Christ—Eph. 4:15-16; 1 Cor. 14:4b, 26, 31.
Ⅳ
In order for the Triune God to gain His corporate expression in the building up of the Body of Christ, the self must be condemned, denied, rejected, and renounced—Matt. 16:21-26; Luke 9:23-25:
A
The self is the soul declaring independence from God; the self is the independent "I," the independent "me."
B
The enemy of the Body is the self; the greatest problem, the greatest frus-tration and opposition, to the Body is the self—Matt. 16:18; cf. vv. 23-26.
C
In the oneness of the divine glory for the corporate expression of God, the believers' self has been fully denied—John 17:22:
１
If we live by our life and our nature to express ourselves, there will be no glory of God; in the expression of ourselves there is no oneness but only division—cf. 3 John 9.
２
Only when the self is renounced will we have the Body and be genuine members of the Body.
D
In the type of the cleansing of the leper, shaving the hair means dealing with the difficulties of our own self—Lev. 14:9:
１
The hair of the head signifies man's glory in self-display; the beard, man's self-assumed honor; the eyebrows, man's excellencies, merits, and virtues issuing from his natural birth; and all the hair of the body, man's natural strength and ability.
２
All the aspects of the self must be daily "shaved with a razor," which means that they must be dealt with by the cross—Luke 9:23; 1 Cor. 15:31.
E
The blending of the Body requires the self to be crossed out; blending requires us to be by the Spirit to dispense Christ and to do everything for the sake of His Body so that God may have His corporate expression—12:24.