CHRIST'S BODY - THE SECRET OF GOD

CHRIST’S BODY — THE SECRET OF GOD

Gladly I answer your letter, and certainly not to ‘expose mistakes’. In my opinion you are confounding the manifested corporate state with the actual state. The Holy Ghost baptises every believer into one body. The saint walking in the Spirit is sensible of his corporate relation to all believers; “buried with him by baptism unto death” is true of us all as touching the old man. The Spirit unites ^[p. 147] the new man, baptism sets aside the old. There is no connection in my opinion between the two. The secret of God is that Christ’s body is on the earth, where He was refused to be bodily.

Beware of types unless you can explain them by anti-types. You never can complete a type, and nothing has done more mischief than types taken by themselves. Eve’s position is not yet arrived at, the church is not yet presented to Christ; the marriage has not yet come; but Eve was of Adam’s flesh and bones before presentation or marriage. Christ is Head now of His body: it could not be His body if not united to Him. When it is His fulness (complement) it will be manifested corporately. Now the church is His body, and we are responsible to maintain corporate relationship. Each member is to hold the Head.

The quotation you adduce from 1 Corinthians 6: 17 refers to the individual body (our bodies are members of Christ), and then it is “the Lord”; “he that is joined to the Lord”. The body is the Lord’s. It is in the new man that we are members of His body. If this is not satisfactory to you, pray write again.