THE ONE BODY IS CHRIST'S BODY
THE ONE BODY IS CHRIST’S BODY
No truth, perhaps, has been so effective in us as the truth of the one body. It has brought us out of the systems around, out of the things in which we were brought up, and which we felt to be inconsistent with the truth. But if we fail to answer morally to what is in the mind of God as to the one body — if we become merely ecclesiastical, and are not exercised about answering to God’s mind and purpose in the one body, we become the worst sect, and the most objectionable, because the most pretentious.
The one body is a practical truth, not a mystical idea. The sects admit the truth of the one body, but they take it up as a mystical idea, and not as a practical truth. With the exception of the church of Rome, which in a sense holds the truth of the one body, all the rest hold that because there are Christians in all the systems the one body is but a mystical idea. But though a mystery it is a truth of great practical force. Testimony to the world is by the one body. See John 17: 21. How could you get that if the body were not a practical truth? It has to be verified down here. “We, being many, are one body”. It is a truth that has, as I have said, had a great effect in separating us from the systems of Christendom; but has there been an answer in us to what we are set here for according to the mind of God? Are we exercised as to answering to His mind in the truth we hold?
I do not think we can understand the truth of the body if we are not established in the truth of sonship. The body hangs on the truth that we have all been made to drink into one Spirit. By the very fact of partaking in one Spirit we are all members of one body. Christians are united in the Spirit of sonship and so constitute one body. We all stand before God in one [p. 23] common relationship to Him. All have put on Christ; that is, every member of the company stands in the same relationship as Christ, as sons, and therefore the whole body is to be descriptive of Christ; not simply the vessel of the manifestations of the Spirit, but the vessel itself to be descriptive of Christ, having spiritual affections to carry saints clean above all the distinctions that exist in the flesh, and able to rise superior to them.
The one body is to be descriptive of Christ, and man is completely displaced. The body is the vessel of the Spirit, and the Spirit is the energy of the vessel; but the body is to reproduce Christ down here. The Son of God was cast out of this world, and down here, where He was cast out, there was to be a vessel descriptive of Christ. That is the idea of the body. It is Christ’s body, His fulness, not a trait of Christ was to be lacking.
The great testimony is unity, not in the flesh, or in any levelling down, but in the Spirit, and spiritual affections. “As thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us”, etc. There is reciprocity of affection.
It is of great moment for us to understand this truth, because our position, called out as we have been, is a most critical one, and easily forfeited. The one body is for testimony on earth till displayed in glory; but if we hold the truth of the one body, we must not be content with a mere ecclesiastical unity; we ought to be exercised as to entering into the mind and purpose of God, which is, that the body should be a reproduction of Christ here.