Living Stream Ministry

III. CHRIST ENTERING INTO
THE CHURCH-PRODUCING RESURRECTION

After passing through His redeeming death, Christ entered into the church-producing resurrection (Psa. 22:22-31).

A. In Resurrection, Christ Calling
His Disciples His Brothers

It was in His resurrection that Christ called His disciples His brothers. Psalm 22:22 says, "I will declare Your name to my brothers;/In the midst of the assembly I will praise You." In this verse "I" is the resurrected Christ who declares the Father’s name to His brothers. If He had remained in death, He could not have declared God the Father’s name to His brothers.

Christ was on the earth with His disciples for the three and a half years of His earthly ministry, but He never called them His brothers until the morning of the day He resurrected. On that day, the Lord told Mary, "Go to My brothers and say to them, I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God" (John 20:17). This means that the disciples became God’s sons in Christ’s resurrection. Before His resurrection the disciples were not His brothers because they had not been regenerated. But when Christ was resurrected, all the believers, including you and me, were resurrected with Him and in Him (Eph. 2:6). Through His resurrection, we were regenerated (1 Pet. 1:3). Resurrection was a big delivery, a big birth. Acts 13:33 says that resurrection was a birth to Christ. Christ was the only begotten Son of God (John 3:16), but in resurrection He was begotten as the firstborn Son of God with many brothers (Rom. 8:29), many sons of God.

First Peter 1:3 says that through Christ’s resurrection, God regenerated all of us believers. Some may think that they were regenerated at a certain point in time a few years ago. But actually we all were regenerated at the same time before we were born. I once read of a certain woman who brought forth seven children in one delivery, but this cannot compare with the great delivery of children through Christ’s resurrection. The resurrection of Christ was a delivery of millions of sons of God at the same time. He was the firstborn Son of God in resurrection, and we followed Him to be the many sons of God. On the day of His resurrection, He could say that His Father is our Father because He and we were all born of the same Father. We, His believers, His disciples, became His brothers.

B. His Brothers Constituting the Church

The second half of Psalm 22:22 is very meaningful. It says, "In the midst of the assembly I will praise You." "The assembly" is the church, and "You" is the Father God. At the Lord’s table we follow the Lord’s pattern in praising the Father. After we remember the Lord by taking the bread and the wine, we follow the Lord to praise the Father, to worship the Father. According to logic, verse 22b should say, "In the midst of them I will praise You." But the Lord changed the pronoun them to the assembly. "My brothers" became the church, the assembly. The Lord’s brothers constitute the church (Heb. 2:11-12).

(Life-Study of Psalms, Chapter 10, by Witness Lee)