The thought of blending is very strong in the Bible. In the Old Testament, there is a type of the blending for the fulfillment of God’s economy. However, if we read the Old Testament only in letters, we will not be able to see it. This type of the blending was strongly referred to by the apostle Paul. In 1 Corinthians 10:17 Paul said, “Seeing that there is one bread, we who are many are one Body; for we all partake of the one bread.” Paul’s thought of the church being one bread was not his own invention; rather, it was taken from the Old Testament. The meal offering in Leviticus 2:4 consisted of cakes made of fine flour mingled with oil. Every part of the flour was mixed, or mingled, with the oil. That is blending. Paul tells us that the church is a bread, a cake, made of fine flour. This fine flour comes from wheat grains, and the wheat grains come from the one grain of wheat, which is Christ. John 12:24 says that Christ is the one grain of wheat who fell into the earth and died and grew up in resurrection to produce many grains, which are we, His believers. We are the many grains so that we may be ground into fine flour for making the cake, the bread, of the church. Here we can see the thought of blending in the Bible.
Later in 1 Corinthians, in 12:24, Paul wrote, “But God has blended the body together, giving more abundant honor to the member that lacked.” This verse says clearly that God has blended all the believers together. But where is the blending in the recovery? We may think that the coordination in the church is the reality of the blending. However, I must tell you that even the coordination in the church is not the reality of the Body of Christ. At this point you may wonder what the reality of the Body of Christ is. This is why there is the need to set up a “university” or a “college” so that we can go on from “high school” to reach the highest peak, the reality of the Body of Christ.
A great part of the believers in the local churches are still in the natural man, but to be in the reality of the Body of Christ, we need to be absolutely in the resurrection life of Christ. We do have some good coordination in the local churches. However, I would ask, “Is this kind of coordination carried out by the natural life or in resurrection?” To be in resurrection means that our natural life is crucified, and then the God-created part of our being is uplifted in resurrection to be one with Christ in resurrection. In Philippians 3:10 Paul said that we all need to be conformed to the death of Christ by the power of His resurrection. We all need to ask ourselves whether the coordination among us is by the power of Christ’s resurrection or merely by our natural man.
I do not believe that everything I have done in the past thirty-two years in the United States has been in resurrection. I do not deny, and I cannot deny, that as I was carrying out the Lord’s ministry, especially the ministry of life to establish the churches, some part was in resurrection; but not every part. Anything that is carried out even scripturally but in the natural life is not the reality of the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ is absolutely something in the resurrection life of Christ.
It is common today that in the local churches what we can see is mostly the “church” in its meetings, activities, works, and services. But we cannot see much of the reality of the Body of Christ in resurrection, that is, in the Spirit, in the pneumatic Christ, and in the consummated God. So there is the need for us to endeavor to be absolutely in the resurrection life of Christ. We need to endeavor to reach in the church life the highest peak, today’s Zion, of the reality of the Body of Christ until we consummate in the New Jerusalem, including Zion. Dear saints, this is our need. To have the blending is to meet this need.
(Practical Points Concerning Blending, Chapter 2, by Witness Lee)