Will you please turn to Colossians 2:19?
Instead of reading it in a negative way, we would like to read it in a positive way:
Holding fast to the Head, from whom all the body, ministered to and united together by the joints and bands, increaseth with the increase of God.
Brothers and sisters, we have been sharing together on the fourfold relationship with Christ.
We mentioned that our Lord Jesus is our kinsman-Redeemer, and we are the redeemed of the Lord. What a blessing it is! How much He paid for us to redeem us, even to the uttermost.
He will redeem not only our lives; He will redeem our lost inheritance. He will redeem our spirit, soul, and body. His redemption is complete.
This is our basic relationship with our Lord Jesus: He is the Redeemer, and we are the redeemed of the Lord. It is our responsibility to present our bodies a living sacrifice to Him. That is to say, we live not for ourselves, but we live for the One who has redeemed us.
Then, following this relationship, we find that we have a second relationship. Whom He has called, He calls to be His disciples.
He is our Master. He calls us to follow Him, to be yoked together with Him, and to learn of Him, because He is meek and lowly in heart. As we are doing that, we shall find rest in our souls.
You see how many Christians today are restless. Not only are we continually troubled by the power of sin, but we find there are many things in our lives that we are unable to overcome.
So that is the reason why our Lord Jesus called us to be His disciples. He wants to train us. He wants to complete us. He wants us to be like Him.
Our every action will be like Him. To put it more clearly, it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in us. So this is what discipleship really means.
Then we find that our relationship with our Lord Jesus is even closer. Not only is He our Master, and we are His disciples, but we find that He is our Lord, and we are His bondmen.
We are just to obey Him, to yield ourselves to Him completely. And by doing that, He will be able to make us sons and daughters of God.
Now, this morning we would like to go into another relationship. As a matter of fact, it is an even closer, more intimate relationship. It is our relationship with Him as His body, and He is our Head.
Can you find a closer relationship than that? Because the head and the body are one.
A body without a head is dead. You do not see a head without a body, because there will be no expression. The head and the body—this is a relationship our Lord Jesus has formed for us.
You know, brothers and sisters, why is it that the Lord wants us to be His body? Because the eternal will of God concerning us is so glorious.
He wants us to be His body, that we may be the fullness of Him. You remember Ephesians 1:22-23:
God has made Christ Head over all things to the church,
Which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.
In other words, He wants a body that can contain His fullness.
Brothers and sisters, our Lord Jesus is the fullness of God. All the character, all the characteristics, all the glory and power rest in our Lord Jesus.
You cannot imagine the fullness of God. How full is His love! How full is His holiness! How full is His righteousness! How full are His authority and power! How full is His wisdom!
Brothers and sisters, God is infinite. You really cannot, in any way, contain Him. And yet the Bible says that all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ bodily.
So this is the fullness of Christ, the fullness of the Head. He wants this fullness to come to us, that we may be His fullness.
As Christ is the fullness of God, so we, the church, the body, are the fullness of Christ.
Now, can you imagine, with such fullness, how can any one person contain all the fullness of Christ? We are such small vessels. We may contain some of His fullness by the grace of God, but it takes a whole body to contain the fullness of Christ.
Not only are we to contain His fullness, but we are also to manifest His fullness. Just as our head has such fullness, it needs a body to express the head, to show forth what is in the head.
So you see, God’s eternal purpose is more than individuals. In the past three relationships, it is more on an individual basis. But this morning we want to emphasize the corporate basis.
Not only is each one of us to receive Christ and His riches, but it takes the whole body—all the believers—to contain the fullness of Christ. Not only one individual, this individual or that individual, can manifest the glory of Christ; it needs the whole body to express the glory of Christ.
This is God’s eternal will for us.
You know, brothers and sisters, we tend to be individualistic. We think that if we, one person, have a relationship with Christ, that is enough. No, no, no. God’s will is that we be a body of believers.
I remember many years ago, our dear brother Watchman Nee went to England. There he visited George Cutting.
I do not know whether you have heard of George Cutting. George Cutting was a person greatly used by God. He wrote a small booklet, Safety, Certainty, and Security.
That small booklet, next to the Bible, had one of the greatest publications. The Bible had the greatest publication, and next to it was that little book, Safety, Certainty, and Security, I think.
Brother Nee went to visit him. He was very elderly, and most of the time he was asleep. But sometimes he woke up.
Our brother sat by his bedside, waiting for him to wake up. When he woke up, he said to Brother Nee, “I cannot do without Him, and He cannot do without me.”
Then he went to sleep again. Now, what did he mean? He meant, “I cannot do without Christ, but Christ cannot do without me.”
Isn’t that real? Brother Nee tried to use this to explain further. He said, “We cannot do without Christ, and Christ cannot do without us.”
But he said further on, “I cannot do without you, and you cannot do without me.” Not only do you have a vertical relationship; you also have a horizontal relationship.
No Christian can live by himself or herself.
You know, there are some Christians who become dissatisfied with other Christians, or maybe they are hurt by some other Christians. So they withdraw themselves, and they say, “If only I have Christ, that is enough.”
So they have no fellowship with other brothers and sisters. But no—do you know what happens? I have seen people who withdrew from fellowship, and eventually they fell into the snare of the enemy.
No Christian can live alone. God has not made you His body; He has only made you a member of the body. It is the eternal will of God that He wants a body to contain Himself and to express Himself.
On the other hand, He needs His body to complete the work that He has done on earth. He has completed on Calvary’s cross the redemption and the salvation. He said, “It is finished.” That is true.
But He needs a body to carry out His victory. When you come to Ephesians 6, you find that there is a spiritual warfare going on. It is warfare between God and His enemy.
But you remember that our Lord Jesus, in Matthew 16:18, told Peter:
Thou art Peter,
And upon this rock I will build My church;
And the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
Peter believed in Him as the Christ, the Son of the living God. He had received revelation from the Father. He was no longer Simon, no longer dust; he was now Peter, a living stone.
A living stone is a piece out of the massive rock. What is this massive rock? This massive rock is Christ Himself. He is the firm foundation, and He is the foundation of the church. The church is built upon Him.
You and I are living stones. He said, “I will build My church.” He builds His church upon Himself, with many living stones.
The gates of Hades will be opened against it, but they cannot overcome it.
Brothers and sisters, do you realize that we have a warfare going on? We, as the body of Christ, are the ones whom the enemy tries to overcome, so that we may not be able to stand.
But Christ Jesus has already overcome the enemy. He has crushed the enemy’s head, and He wants His church, His body, to finish that work—to bring everything out of the hand of the enemy to the feet of Christ.
This is a work committed to the church. No one can fight the spiritual warfare all by himself. It takes the whole church, the body of Christ, to overcome the enemy and to bring in the kingdom of God.
So, brothers and sisters, we have to see the importance of the corporateness of the church. We have to live a church life. We have to live our body life, because this is the will of God.
This morning we would like to go into this matter of the relationship between the Head and the body. To put it in the simplest way, Colossians 2:19 is the simplest expression.
But we want to use it in a positive way. Why? Because you remember the church in Colossae. They had a very good beginning, and they really loved the Lord. They wanted to be perfect.
But in their search for perfection, somehow they were led astray. People came into their midst and said, “You believe in the Lord Jesus; that is good. But that is not enough. You cannot be perfect.”
The Judaizers said, “You have to be circumcised, and you have to keep some laws. Then you will be perfect.”
So these Colossian believers, in their desire to be perfect, were led away from Christ. They began to receive circumcision. They began to keep some laws, thinking that by doing that they would be complete.
Not knowing that they had fallen into the enemy’s snare, they were led away from Christ, as if Christ were not enough. They thought that they had to have Christ plus something else in order to be perfect.
This is the Colossian heresy: the adding of law and the adding of Gnosticism.
Here you find that the apostle Paul puts it in the negative way: you are not holding fast the Head, you are not being united together, you are not ministering to one another, and you are not being increased with the increase of God.
You have to return to Christ, because all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ Jesus, and you are complete in Him. Now, that is the book of Colossians.
So this morning we would like to approach it in the positive way. When you think of the relationship between the Head and the body, the body cannot be separated from the Head, because if it does, it is a corpse.
And the Head cannot be separated from the body. The Head is full of wisdom, full of ideas, but it has no expression. It is the body that expresses the wisdom of the Head.
These two cannot be separated. Christ is the Head, and we are the body of Christ. All the wisdom is in the Head, but all the expression of that wisdom is through the body.
So first, you find that you need to hold fast the Head. The body has to hold fast the Head, united with the Head, and cannot be separated from the Head.
Now, you remember that God’s will is that Christ have headship over all things—not only over the body, but over all things.
Whether it is heavenly things or earthly things, whether it is this age or the coming age, or even eternity, God’s will is that His Son should be the Head of all things.
What does that mean? It means all things will be summed up in Him. All things will be His manifestation. All things will be under His authority. All things will express the glory of Christ. This is the will of God.
You find in Ephesians 1:22 that God has made Him Head over all things. He is the authority over everything; everything is under Him. And it is to the church.
In other words, He wants the church to express Himself. So the headship of Christ is the most important thing in the church.
You remember that the simplest explanation of what the church is is found in Matthew 18:20:
For where two or three are gathered together in My name,
There am I in the midst of them.
That is the simplest explanation of what the church is. One person cannot be the church. You need at least two or three, and these two or three are gathered together, not separated.
They gather together unto His name. There are many gatherings, but you can gather together for any other name. But the Lord said, “If there are two or three gathered together unto My name.”
What does that mean? It means that these two or three put themselves under the name of Christ Jesus. And what does that mean? It means that they come under the authority of Christ.
The best way to explain it is like a lady married to a gentleman. When she is married to the gentleman, she takes the name of her husband. In other words, she makes the husband her head.
She is going to be the body to express all the wisdom and power of the head. This is what is meant by being gathered together unto the name of Christ.
A body can only have one head. If the body had many heads, that is a monster.
Brothers and sisters, the church is the body of Christ. The saints gather together unto the name of Christ. Christ is the only authority in the church. It is not under any other name, perhaps a famous name; it is under the name of Christ.
In other words, every member of the body submits to the headship of Christ. Now, how can it be done?
All the information that the members of the body have gathered together from their side goes up to the head: what your eyes have seen, what your ears have heard, what you smell with your nose.
Everything that the members of the body have gathered as information goes to the head, and the head gives His command to the members of the body to carry out what the head wants the body to do.
Physically, this is done through the nervous system. In every cell, you find that nerves extend to it. Through the nervous system, the head is to be the head and the body is to be the body.
If there is any damage to your nervous system, then some of the members will not respond to the head. Then you are paralyzed.
Brothers and sisters, this is how the physical body works. Now, in the spiritual body of Christ, there is also a nervous system. What is that? It is the Holy Spirit.
When we believe in the Lord Jesus, not only are our sins forgiven, but we receive a new life. We are born again. We receive the life of Christ in us.
But there is more. When you are born again, you have a new spirit, a new human spirit, because your old human spirit was dead in sin and transgression.
So you had no connection with God, because He is Spirit. But immediately when you are saved, you have connection with God. We can cry to God, “Abba, Father.”
Maybe before you believed in Christ Jesus, you were raised in a Christian family, just like I was. So you knew how to pray, and you had been praying. But when you were praying to God, there was no relationship.
But after you believe in the Lord Jesus, the first thing that happens to you is that you cry to God, “Abba, Father,” by the Holy Spirit. Isn’t that so?
I remember one of my co-workers. When he got married, the first time he went to his father-in-law’s house, according to Chinese custom, you call your father-in-law “Daddy.”
But he said, “When I called my father-in-law ‘Daddy,’ it felt so unnatural, because he is my father-in-law; he is not my father. But when I call my own father ‘Father’ or ‘Daddy,’ that is real; that is natural.”
Before you really believe in the Lord Jesus, you call God “father-in-law.” But now you call Him Father. Wonderful!
More than that, when we believe in the Lord Jesus, He puts His Spirit into us. The Bible says, “If you do not have the Spirit of Christ, you are not of Christ.” So every believer has the Spirit of Christ in us.
Now, what is the function of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us? Why is it that every one of us has the Holy Spirit in us? It is God’s nervous system.
It is God’s way of communicating Himself to us, and it is God’s way for us to communicate with God. Through that nervous system, the headship of Christ is upheld.
Brothers and sisters, as members of the body of Christ, one thing is very, very important: we need to obey the Holy Spirit.
When the Holy Spirit moves among us, when the Holy Spirit speaks to us, when the Holy Spirit grieves in us, we should not quench the Holy Spirit. We should learn to obey the Holy Spirit.
This is the only spiritual life we can live. Brothers and sisters, I believe all of you have some experience of how the Holy Spirit within us speaks to us.
You know, we all have our opinions. We have all our reasoning. We try to say, “Now, this is something I can do.” But somehow, deep down within you, there is a small voice saying, “No.”
There is a check within you. The Holy Spirit is conveying to you the mind of Christ.
Now, whether you obey or not depends on you. But if you rebel against the voice of the Holy Spirit, your spiritual life will suffer. If you respond to the voice of the Holy Spirit and go on, your spiritual life will grow.
This is the way that the headship of Christ is maintained in the body. Every member of the body has the responsibility to respond positively to the Holy Spirit.
If you do not do that, then your member will enter into death. It is the same as you find in John 15.
Our Lord Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches. The branches are in the vine, and the vine is in us. As long as the branches and the vine are united, all the riches of the vine will go to the branches, and the branches will bear fruit.
But if you are outwardly connected with the vine and inwardly not connected, what will happen? That branch will dry up and be cut off. So it is important that we abide in Christ.
Now, how can we abide in Christ? I asked a group of young people, “How are you going to abide in Christ?” The young people answered me in many different ways: “I need to read the Bible. I need to pray,” and this and that.
But brothers and sisters, it is very simple: to abide in Christ is to obey the Holy Spirit.
The anointing within you will teach you all things, small things and great things. If you abide in the anointing, you abide in Christ. That is 1 John 2:27.
So you find that it is very simple. The headship of Christ is maintained by the power of the Holy Spirit.
How important it is that in our daily life we learn to listen to the Holy Spirit and learn to obey the Holy Spirit. That is how the headship of Christ is maintained.
Now we talk about the body. So far as the body is concerned, how can we live as the body of Christ? I think there are two basic things.
Number one, you find in Ephesians 4 how we can fulfill our calling. In Ephesians, the calling of God is to call us to be the body of Christ.
To really be the body of Christ, there are two basic things. Number one, Ephesians 4:3:
Giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
First of all, we have to be diligent. We have to diligently keep the unity of the Spirit in the uniting bond of peace.
What does that mean? It means that to every believer, God has given us the unity of the Spirit. When He places us into His body, there is a unity of the Spirit there. Otherwise, you cannot be in the body.
All the members of the body have something the same. What is the unity of the Spirit? The unity of the Spirit is explained from Ephesians 4:4-6:
There is one body, and one Spirit, even as also ye were called in one hope of your calling;
One Lord, one faith, one baptism,
One God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all.
The unity of the Spirit is that sevenfold oneness: one Spirit, one body, and one hope of your calling.
We become one body of Christ through the Holy Spirit. You find in 1 Corinthians 12:13:
For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free;
And were all made to drink of one Spirit.
This is what the baptism of the Holy Spirit really means. When you think of Pentecost, probably we think of Pentecost only in terms of sight and sound.
You hear a great wind blowing through the house, and you see tongues of fire falling upon the heads of the one hundred and twenty gathered there. We are attracted by the spectacular scene.
But brothers and sisters, these things are only secondary. What does Pentecost really mean? What does the baptism with the Holy Spirit really mean?
This is explained in 1 Corinthians 12:13: we have all been baptized with the Holy Spirit into one body.
The one hundred and twenty believers assembled together for ten days, and they were praying together. But before the Holy Spirit came, they were one hundred and twenty individuals.
They were gathered together, the best, if I can say, of Christians, and yet they were individuals. But when the Holy Spirit came, He baptized them into one body.
They were no longer one hundred and twenty members of a congregation. They were now one hundred and twenty members of the one body of Christ.
On the same day, three thousand were added to it. This body has been growing throughout the centuries. Whoever believes in the Lord Jesus, the Holy Spirit has baptized him or her into the body of Christ.
This is what Pentecost really means.
So, brothers and sisters, when the Holy Spirit baptizes us into one body, we have the sevenfold oneness. We have the Holy Spirit, we have the body, and we have the hope of our calling.
What is the hope of our calling? The hope of our calling is to be the body of Christ. What is the hope of the body? When the body is fully grown, the body becomes the bride of the Lamb. That is our hope.
Then we have one Lord, one faith, and one baptism. We have only one Lord, Jesus. We have only one faith: that He is the Christ, the Son of the living God. That is the simplest expression of our faith.
We have only one baptism. This baptism is water baptism. We are baptized unto the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
So in Christ Jesus, we have these three onenesses. Then we have one God and Father of us all. We have one Father.
The Holy Spirit has already given us the sevenfold oneness. If you do not have the sevenfold oneness, you are not saved; you are not in the body of Christ.
Everyone who believes in the Lord Jesus is in the body of Christ, and every one of us has the same sevenfold oneness. This is the basis for our fellowship.
Why is it that I can fellowship with you? Is there a sameness, a oneness, among us? Yes, we have the sevenfold oneness, and on that basis we can fellowship with one another.
But brothers and sisters, it is very sad. You find that God’s people are separated. Even though we have the unity of the Spirit, we are separated. We cannot fellowship with one another because we receive different interpretations of the Bible and have different experiences of Christ.
But if you read Ephesians 4, you find there are two unities. In verse 3, you have the unity of the Spirit. That is something you already have, and you need to diligently keep it.
Why diligently? Because it can be easily lost. It is so precious, and it can be easily lost. So we need to diligently keep it. Do not lose it. Stand on it, no matter what.
Then you find in verse 13 there is another unity:
Until we all attain unto the unity of the faith,
And of the knowledge of the Son of God,
Unto a fullgrown man,
Unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
Here you find another unity, and this unity is something to arrive at. That is to say, you do not have it now, but it is something you must diligently try to arrive at.
What is this unity? It is the unity of the faith and of the full knowledge of the Son of God.
This faith here is different from the one faith in verse 5. In verse 5, the faith is our basic faith: we believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.
But in verse 13, this faith means all the truth you find in the Bible. In other words, we have the same interpretation of the truth of God. We all receive the Holy Spirit’s interpretation instead of man’s interpretation.
And we come into the unity of the full knowledge of the Son of God. The full knowledge of the Son of God is that we all experience Christ Jesus in the same way.
This is something still in the future. It is to be arrived at: that we have the same understanding and the same experience.
These are the two stages of unity. You begin with the unity of the Spirit, and if you diligently keep it, then one day you will arrive at the unity of the faith and of the full knowledge of the Son of God.
But unfortunately today, God’s people do not diligently keep the unity of the Spirit, and they demand the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of God. We are divided and break up the body.
I remember in the 1960s, I went to Chile to visit an American couple. They were missionaries in Chile. They loved the Lord.
Half the year they lived in a boat, sailing through the Amazon River and visiting different people. Half the year they lived in their truck, climbing the high mountains and visiting villages.
I spent three weeks with them, sharing with them in the Amazon and in the truck, seeing how the Lord was working there.
Before I left, they had a conference in a small town that you had to fly into; there was no other way to get in. The natives would come through the jungle, and we had a conference.
Because I was to leave the next day, they asked me to speak during the first evening. But during the day, another missionary from a neighboring village came, and he had supper with us.
This missionary began to question me. I knew his background. He came from the Exclusive Brethren. When he began to question me, I knew what he was trying to find.
Gradually I found that his questions were getting closer and closer. Finally, he said, “What do you think of rapture?”
I knew what the Exclusive Brethren believed, but unfortunately, I did not agree with them. But I tried to avoid controversy.
So I said, “I believe all believers will be raptured.” He was not satisfied. He said, “How many times?”
The Exclusive Brethren believe that the whole church will be raptured before the great tribulation. It so happened that I was different.
So I told him what I believed, and I tried to cover myself. I said, “This is the way that I see today. If the Lord shows me otherwise, I am willing to change.”
You know what he said? He said, “You do not believe the Bible.”
I said, “Brother, I believe the Bible just as you do. But somehow, on this matter of rapture, we have different interpretations. That does not mean that I do not believe the Bible.”
He said, “You do not believe the Bible.” So after supper, we walked to the meeting. He walked by my side and said, “If you speak, I will not speak.”
I was a visitor. How could I speak? So I told my brother, “I am not going to speak.”
The next day, the natives came. They wanted to know why I did not speak.
Brother, do you see my point? We have not arrived yet. If we stop fellowshipping, we will never arrive.
If we are still willing to fellowship in spite of differences, if we do not insist, if we are open, God will bring us into the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God.
But if we cut it short, then there will be no hope. How important it is that we diligently keep the unity of the Spirit in the uniting bond of peace.
And number two: if you read 1 Peter 2, you know that we are not only the household of God; we are also a kingly priesthood.
Every believer is a priest. By priest, it simply means that we live for God and serve God.
We may serve Him in many different ways, but that is our life; that is our ministry. This is the universal priesthood of believers.
This is what the Lord has made every member of His body. God has given to every member grace and gift.
Can you imagine that God would give us a body with eyes that do not have the gift of seeing, or ears that cannot hear?
In other words, when the Lord puts us in the body of Christ as various members, He has given us enough grace and gift to fulfill the work of the member.
We are different members: some are eyes, some are ears, some are noses, and some are mouths.
The eye cannot say, “I do not need you.” The hand cannot say to the feet, “I do not need you.” Each has to be faithful to what the Lord has given.
We serve the Lord and serve the body, so that the body may be increased with the increase of God.
So, dear brothers and sisters, you cannot be a lazy member. You cannot say, “Hey, I am just saved, so what can I do?” As long as you are saved, there is something that the Lord has given to you.
Serve the Lord faithfully with whatever He has given to you, and serve together with your brothers and sisters in the high priesthood of Christ.
That is the way that we live as the body of Christ.
This is something that I want to share with you. May the Holy Spirit lead us to hold fast the Head, to be united together, to minister one to another, and to increase with the increase of God.
Lord, we want to thank Thee for all Thy goodness to us. Thy plan for us is so glorious, much more than we can even understand.
We bow before Thee and ask Thee, Lord, to glorify Thy Son in and through us.
In the precious name of our Lord Jesus.