THE APPEARING OF THE NEW MAN BEING ENTIRELY A MATTER OF SPIRITUAL LIFE
In this message I want to give a further word of fellowship. Please remember that the appearing of this new man is not a movement. Rather, it is entirely a matter of spiritual life, and this spiritual life is our Lord Jesus truly and practically being our life. It is not that you stir me up and I stir you up; instead, it is that each of us lives out Christ by enjoying and experiencing Him. This is altogether a story of Christ’s life. On the one hand, we are now excited because we have seen that the six continents have become one new man. On the other hand, however, we do not want to have any outward activity because of our excitement. What we want is to experience Christ inwardly as our life and thus spontaneously produce the new man as its result. We are the new man. The reason we are the new man is that each of us has Christ in us as our life.
Some in Christianity say that the new man cannot be realized. This is because they do not know Christ as their life; at the most they know Christ as their Savior. But today in the Lord’s recovery the Lord wants to have an absolute, thorough, and complete recovery of the all-inclusive Spirit as our daily life. Regardless of which continent we come from, we each must live by this all-inclusive Christ daily in reality, and this is done by taking Him as our life and our person. Moment by moment we enjoy Him, experience Him, and allow Him to live out of us; therefore, in Him we cannot be anything else but one. We do not need to endeavor to be united; we are one spontaneously. “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There cannot be Jew nor Greek, there cannot be slave nor free man, there cannot be male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:27-28). We are one new man. This is not a movement, a stirring up, or an organization. We are one new man because we live by Christ and allow Him to live out of us. Even though we are of different nationalities, races, and languages, we have one thing in common: Christ is our life.
Ephesians 4:14-15 says, “That we may be no longer little children tossed by waves and carried about by every wind of teaching in the sleight of men, in craftiness with a view to a system of error, but holding to truth in love, we may grow up into Him in all things, who is the Head, Christ.” Then verse 16 continues to say, “Out from whom all the Body, being joined together and being knit together.” First we grow up into Him; then we are out from Him. First there is the growing into Him, and then there is the coming out from Him. In any organization there are liaison officers, but in the church we do not need such liaison officers because Christ is our “liaison.” We can be joined and knit together because the entire Body is out from Him. If we want to be out from Him, however, we must first grow up into Him. When you grow up into Christ in all things, then out from Him you can spontaneously be joined and knit together with all the saints. If we are not in Christ, or if we have not grown up into Christ in so many things, then we cannot be joined together even with our own flesh brothers. If, however, we have grown up into Christ in all things, then we can be joined together. One brother may be from Ghana, Africa, and another brother may be from Taipei, Taiwan. They come from two different places that are distant from each other, and they have different customs, skin colors, languages, and concepts, yet when they meet each other, there is something within them that joins them together. They do not need a liaison in order to be joined together because they have already been joined together. They both have grown up into Christ in all things, and now they are joined and knit together out from Him.
(One Body, One Spirit, and One New Man, Chapter 8, by Witness Lee)
