A Digital Newsletter from Living Stream Ministry
Regrettably, however, many Christians today would say that they care only for Christ and not for the church. If we care only for Christ and not for the church, we can gain only a limited portion of Christ. We can gain much more of the riches of Christ when we care for both Christ and the church.
Thus, we need to pray, “Lord Jesus, I care for You, and I care also for Your Body, because I know that You are the Head and that the church is the Body. I cannot have the Head without the Body.” We should pray, “Lord Jesus, I know that today You are no longer only the individual Christ but also the corporate Christ, the Head with the Body. You are the Body-Christ. Therefore, Lord Jesus, I receive You as well as Your Body. I receive the Body-Christ, and I desire to walk in this Christ.”
Most [Christians today] are spiritually poor and weak simply because they care only for Christ and not for the church…[But] many of us in the Lord’s recovery can testify that since the day we came into the church and began to care for the church, there has been a great difference in our spiritual life. We have the inner sense that we are rich. Everyone in the church is a spiritual billionaire; we are all rich. (CWWL, 1973-1974, vol. 1, “The Vision and Experience of the Corporate Christ,” pp. 496-497)
The Christian life is a life not of seen things but of unseen things. Anything that belongs to the Christian life is invisible. The degradation of the church is due to the fact that Christians have moved from the unseen things to the seen things, whereas the Lord’s recovery is the recovery of His church from the seen things to the unseen things.
When we care only for things that are seen, we are fallen. But when we care for the living God by walking according to our mingled spirit (Rom. 8:4), both of which are unseen, we are being recovered to the normal Christian life and church life.
In order to regard the visible things, we do not need faith. To regard the visible things is to walk by appearance and not by faith. To walk by faith means that we regard the invisible things. In the church life we are walking not by sight, by appearance, but by faith (2 Cor. 5:7). We know that we are saved through faith (Eph. 2:8). This faith causes us to experience the divine birth with the divine life. When we were regenerated, the divine life, something invisible to the natural senses, was imparted into us. As a result of this impartation of life, we became brothers and sisters in the Lord. Even though neither the divine birth nor the divine life can be seen, we have an ability within that is able to substantiate the divine life in one another. This substantiating ability that is able to sense the invisible divine life within us is faith (Heb. 11:1). (CWWL, 1975–1976, vol. 3, p. 90)
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