THE BODY OF CHRIST
THE BODY OF CHRIST
The present display in christendom now, as a body, or representing it, so that man’s eye could see it, is your idea of the meaning of ‘manifested unity’. I do not believe that man’s eye could see the body at any time. In Jerusalem before the mystery was revealed there was a manifested unity. Your own statement, ‘I know the body is on the earth’, is the divine citadel from which your faith must work and combat the hosts of [p. 361] difficulties arrayed against the Christ; and we cannot be too lowly or too meek in maintaining the unity of the Spirit, which never would have been disturbed, but for man’s temper; this member and that member refusing to be controlled by the declared mind of the Head. Any one really in the Spirit owns, according to his light, his corporate responsibility, and though he would not claim, as you, ‘to be a representation of the body’, yet essentially he could not meet on any other ground. If there were only five members of the body, in any true sense or faith of their corporate responsibility, they would meet on that ground, and they would have the Head sustaining them, however lacking they were corporately. Their faith would help others, and thus recovery would progress by that which every joint supplieth.
The Head is what makes the church what it is, and this is the thing insisted on in Colossians. In Colossians 1 we have Christ as Head, and there His pre-eminence is insisted on, as Head of the body, the church. The nail of my finger is necessary to, and sensibly connected with my head, though not equal to it; and you do not touch it without affecting my head. It is said the damage done to it would be felt by the head before it was by the finger itself.
Paul does not speak of the Head in 1 Corinthians 12; the eye is there used as an illustration. “Head of every man” is very different from “Head of the body”. There is no mystery in the first; the mystery is that Christ is the one Head of a multitude of believers, the members of His body, however small, livingly connected with Him, as are members of our own body. Christ is everything. If you look again at Colossians 2: 17, you will, I think, see that “the body is of Christ” does not refer to the church, that it means the substance is Christ. I need hardly say that “the body of the flesh” does not refer to the mystery. I do not say the body is seen, and I am quite sure the joints and bands, the [p. 362] ministry by which the blessing comes from the Head, is internal. In Ephesians, the gifted persons were for the edifying of the body.
The more heavenly any one is, the more the body is before him for Christ’s sake; so the body, in Ephesians 4: 16, edifies itself everywhere, not in the meeting only, as in 1 Corinthians 12. In Corinthians we have the house, which is the manifested thing, up to chapter 10. It is responsibility only, and not revelation of the mystery in Corinthians. There is nothing about the body in Galatians, nor in Peter. As to 1 Corinthians 6 nothing can be plainer than that it is our natural body that is spoken of there throughout; you surprise me by conjecturing anything else. The body is the Lord’s. In verse 17 it is “he that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit”. The path of the assembly here is marked out by the position and present place of the Lord. He is received up into heaven, seated at God’s right hand, invested with all power over everything, Head to the church. His place determines our place, we are heavenly because He is heavenly.
You are looking at Christ as to how man treated Him, but not as to the way the Father honoured Him. It is with reference to the latter that our present path and position are determined. He has declared the Father, and He asked the Father to glorify Him. “Glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee” (John 17: 1).
I am not looking at a display of the body, but I believe in its existence on the earth; and I am sure that any decision arrived at by the Lord, in the midst of His own, in any place, is binding on the whole of His own in every place. I believe, dear brother, that if you look from heaven instead of with man’s eye, you will regard the church - the body of Christ - as His object and His interest on the earth; and the nearer you are to Him, the nearer will His object, as a whole, be to you.