WE BEING THE MEMBERS OF CHRIST CONSTITUTING HIS BODY AS HIS INCREASE
We must remember what kind of people we are. We have God who came into us through regeneration. Not only so, we have also entered into God in resurrection. This is a glorious fact. When we believed in the Lord Jesus and called upon His name, we received the Lord Jesus into us. We can testify that before we believed in the Lord and called upon His name, we were empty within. However, once we believe in the Lord, there is something within us that burns, shines, rebukes, encourages, and comforts. Who is this? This is Jesus Christ. He was incarnated, passed through human living, died, resurrected, and ascended, and today He has come into us. This is too wonderful!
When He comes into us, we become His multiplication and increase. What are Christians? Christians are people who have received the living Jesus into them to make them the duplication of Jesus. Therefore, we are His multiplication and His increase. In other words, we have become a part of Him; we have become members of His Body. Consider the four major limbs and the other hundreds of members in our body. Each member is a part of our body, that is, a part of us. We must realize that today we are a part of Christ. Individually we are His members, and corporately we are His Body. This Body is the church.
The church is the expression of Christ. I am expressed through my own body. If I did not have a body, if I were a spirit or a soul floating in the air, you could neither see nor touch me. Moreover, if you heard my speaking, you all would become frightened and run away. However, since I have a body to express me in an appropriate way, when I speak boldly, you can enjoy my speaking and not be the least bit afraid. Likewise, Christ needs a church to be His Body in this universe. His Body is not small as ours is; it is all-inclusive, and the believers in it are of all sorts of nationalities and races. It is also eternal and boundless; no one can count the number of the believers. It is needless to speak of those who have passed away; even the number of the living ones is hard to estimate. If today we arrive at a figure, by tomorrow morning another group of believers will be produced, and before we can finish counting them, still another group will be produced. Can we say how many people repent and believe in the Lord every day all over the globe? We cannot. For this reason the Body is eternal and boundless.
Dear brothers and sisters, you must definitely know that you should not be religionists. Rather, you must be included in Christ. You must be His multiplication and His increase. This is not merely to live for Jesus; this is to live as Jesus. To me, to live is Christ. I still exist, but this “I” has passed through death and has been resurrected.
(The All-Inclusiveness and Unlimitedness of Christ, Chapter 3, by Witness Lee)
