IN THE NEW MAN THERE BEING ONLY ONE MOUTH
The Body is a matter of being members one of another, but for the new man the requirements are even more than what the Body requires. For many years I read Romans 15:6, which says, “That with one accord you may with one mouth glorify… God.” I felt that I did not understand this word. How could so many Christians come together and have only one mouth? I did not understand it at that time. One day, however, I saw that the church is one new man. How many mouths does a man have? It has one. Not only are we all members one of another, but we also all speak with one mouth. Do you see how much is required of us? It is already restricting enough to be members one of another, and now even when we speak, we all have to have one mouth. This is not my word; it is Paul’s word. How many mouths does the one new man have? One. Then who is the mouth? If you say that Christ is the mouth, you are too transcendent. In order to resolve this matter you must see that there is only one new man with only one person. In the whole body there is only one mouth, but who controls this mouth? It is the person who controls the mouth.
The church is not merely the Body but also the one new man. The Body needs Christ as its life, whereas the new man needs Christ as his person. When you want to speak, when I want to speak, when any one of us wants to speak, we must resolve the basic question: Who is the person that is speaking here? If you are the person, you have your own mouth. If I am the person, I have my own mouth. Thus, you have your mouth, and I have my mouth; therefore, there are two mouths. When each one is a person individually and each one speaks his own matters, we have many mouths. This is a society or a denomination, and this is the condition of today’s degraded Christianity. In the Lord’s recovery, however, the church is the Body, and the church is the one new man. The Body has Christ as life, and the new man has Christ as a person. When you speak, it is not you who are the person; when I speak, neither is it I. When anyone speaks, it is Christ who is the person. What is the result? The result is that there is only one mouth.
This is why in 1 Corinthians 1:10 Paul says that all “speak the same thing.” This verse greatly bothered me many years ago. I thought, “How could all Christians speak the same thing?” It seemed to me that this was impossible, but one day I understood. The church is the one new man with only one person, and this person controls our speaking, so whatever He speaks is surely “the same thing” that we all speak as the new man.
Many preachers and pastors in today’s Christianity are all their own persons, all have their own mouths, and all speak their own things. Therefore, they have many mouths, each speaking a different thing. However, the church is not like this. The church is the one new man with Christ as her person. Whenever the brothers and sisters are about to speak something, they do not take themselves as the person; instead, they allow Christ to be the person. You let Christ be your person when you speak, and I let Christ be my person when I speak. Eventually, everyone speaks the same thing.
Consider the Bible. The Old and New Testaments contain sixty-six books written by more than forty different authors in many different places over a period of fifteen or sixteen hundred years. The first book, Genesis, was written about 1500 B.C., while the last book, Revelation, was written after A.D. 90. Do they all have one mouth? Do they all speak the same thing? The entire Bible has one mouth and speaks the same thing, even though it was written over a long period of time by many different people in many different places. Now you can understand what it means to have one mouth speaking the same thing. In the East, in the West, in the United States, in Germany, in Great Britain, in Japan, and in Korea, we can have many people speaking, but all have one mouth and say one thing. Although we are many and we come from many places, all of us have one mouth, and we all speak the same thing. This is because we all are the one new man having only one person.
Dear brothers and sisters, what I have fellowshipped with you here is something that I know. Many times I wanted to speak, but I checked within, asking myself, “Is it I who want to speak or is it the Lord?” In other words, in the matter of speaking, is the Lord the person, or am I the person? If it is I, there will be a problem; if it is the Lord, there will be no problem. If I allow the Lord to be the person, He is the One who speaks; then two months later, if you allow the Lord to be the person, you will speak the same thing that I have spoken. We have one mouth speaking the same thing.
In Christianity today you see a pitiful condition because every preacher wants to speak his own thing, and he thinks it is a shame to speak what others have spoken. Thus, you speak your thing and he speaks his; sometimes someone will use something from someone else’s speaking, but he will do it secretly. This has actually happened in America. Fifteen years ago, before the Lord’s recovery went to the United States, almost no one spoke about the “human spirit” and “transformation,” but now these have become common terms. There are also some people who used our materials to study the book of Romans, and after they finished their studies and printed them, they said that they discovered these things themselves through their own study. This is not proper.
There is, however, another condition in which people blindly follow others: I speak whatever you speak, and you speak whatever I speak. In this way we make a show to everyone that we all have only one mouth and we speak the same thing. You must see that in neither case is the condition right. We do not want the condition in Christianity, nor do we want a condition of blindly following others. We want a condition in which the one new man speaks. There is only one new man, and this one new man has only one person, so the one new man speaks with one mouth and says the same thing.
(One Body, One Spirit, and One New Man, Chapter 5, by Witness Lee)
