THE DAMAGE OF OPINIONS
Opinions are another source of division. In one Lord’s table meeting, I saw a situation which illustrates this. In this table meeting, the cup and the bread were covered with a cloth. After a short time, one brother stood up to take off the cloth. His reason was that the elements should be seen in order to display the Lord’s death. But later another brother came back to put the cloth back on the elements. His reason for doing this was to protect the bread and the wine from a fly in the meeting. Both of these brothers were bothered with each other. They were opinionated. Could that table have been blessed by the Lord? If the one brother was afraid to receive some sickness through the fly, the wise thing would have been not to say anything or do anything. When the cup came to him, he simply could have not taken it and passed it on to someone else. He should have had no opinion.
I would like to give another illustration to show how opinions can frustrate things. Three brothers were going to take a car from Anaheim to Los Angeles. Before they started, they began to argue about which was the best way to take. They argued with one another for a long time. By that time they would have already arrived in Los Angeles, regardless of what way they had taken. This shows how opinions can delay us.
For over sixty years I have been serving the church and ministering the word to the churches. It has been hard to see a brother who was not opinionated. Anyone who is opinionated does not see the Body. If you check with the brothers who have been working together with me for the past five years here in Anaheim, they can tell you that I never argue with them. If they ask me about their feeling to go somewhere, I will tell them to pray and that if they feel led of the Lord and can be spared, to go. These brothers can tell you that I am not opinionated. Many times the sisters are very opinionated. They may not express their opinions to others, but they will to their husbands. We need to reject our opinions, because they damage the Body of Christ.
THE BODY BEING THE INTRINSIC
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CHURCH
We need to see the way Paul presents the Body of Christ in Ephesians 1. Paul said that God raised up Christ, seated Him in the heavens, subjected all things under His feet, and gave Him to be Head over all things to the church. Right away in the following phrase he said, "Which is His Body" (v. 23a). The church is the Body. This indicates that the Body is the church’s intrinsic significance. The church without the Body means nothing. In Greek the church is the ekklesia, the called-out ones coming together. But the significance of this gathering is the Body.
In the recovery today there are over twelve hundred churches around the globe, yet we all are one Body. If we consider ourselves as individual churches or as individual believers, we are through. We should consider ourselves as one Body. If the parts of our physical body would keep their own jurisdiction and be autonomous, our body would be finished. But thank the Lord that all the members of our physical body are submissive to one another so that our body can act and operate smoothly. Suppose that we wanted to go somewhere and that all the parts of our body agreed except our feet. If the feet could talk, they might say to the other members, "Don’t you know that we are tired. You have no love. You don’t sympathize with us. You want to go, but we will not go, because we do not have the strength to go." What kind of physical body would this be? In practicality, there would be no body. This is to be "disbodied." Today among the Christians concerning the Body of Christ, it is like this. They are "disbodied."
(The Issue of the Dispensing of the Processed Trinity and the Transmitting of the Transcending Christ, Chapter 6, by Witness Lee)
