Knowing, Experiecing, and Living the All-inclusive Christ for the Genuine Church Life - 3

Message Title: Taking Christ as Our Person for the Church as the One New Man

Many believers know Christ as their Savior; some believers know that Christ is their life and life supply; but even fewer believers know that Christ is their person. God does not just want to give us some blessing, but God wants to give us Himself. God is no longer the God who is just in heaven; He has entered into us to dwell in us. but we need to realise in a deeper level that this Christ is dispensing Himself into us to be our life, our life supply and our everything. but in the deepest level, God is also dispensing His very person, His very self into us. in our experiencing God's dispensing in His economy, there are different levels of experience. therefore, we should not be content in a shallow level, but we should desire to get deeper into the very deepest level. 

I. We need to take Christ as our person; this is the highest and richest experience of Christ

John 5:30 I can do nothing from Myself; as I hear, I judge, and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will but the will of Him who sent Me.

John 6:57 As the living Father has sent Me and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me.

the gospel of John shows that the Lord took the Father as His person and He lived because of the Father. the Lord considered the Father as His everything.
Just as the Lord lived because of the Father by taking the Father as His person, so also we should live because of the Lord by taking Him as our person. 

Ephesians 3:16 That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit into the inner man,

Our regenerated spirit is the inner man with the indwelling Christ as its person. not only the life of God has been imparted into us, but also another person has been imparted into our being. in our spirit, another person has come in. our regenerated spirit indwelt by the Spiritis now the inner man with a person inside, and that person is Jesus Christ. for anyone to come into the church life, he needs his spirit to be enlightened, the eyes of his heart to be opened. That enables you to enter into the church life, to live in the church life. but after entering into the church life, how you will be built up, how you will be established in the church life is another thing. for this, you need the second prayer of Paul in Ephesians 3, that we would be stregthened into our inner man, that Christ may make His home in our hearts through faith. in our inner man we have Christ not only as our life but also as our person. there is the difference between life and person. the trees only have life but no person. however, as a man, we have both life and person. today, for God's economy to be accomplished, He needs more than just life, He needs to have a person, the new man with Christ as the person within. since now, Christ is the person in our inner man, we need to deny our former person, our soul, and take Christ in our spirit as our new person. 

in the gospels, the Lord told the disciples to deny their souls and follow Him. what does it mean to deny our soul? our soul has many likes, dislikes, and inclinations, like to do this, like to eat that. the Lord says that we need to deny all these, and listen to the inner man, the person within us. we may not like certain brothers or sisters in the church life, but the inner man, the Lord within us says, no, you need to love one another and go to visit them. 

1 John 4:19 We love because He first loved us.

to take Christ as our person is not to force ourselves to submit to Him but to live according to His preferences because of our love for Him. Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us. now this One is living in us and wanting us to take Him as our person because of our love for Him. we love this person so much and we just like to do everything according to this person. All our work, all our services for the Lord should come out of our love for Him. if it is not out of our love for Him, all our work mean nothing. sometimes, we are so concerned for our work, that we forget about our love for the Lord. 

Ephesians 4:15 But holding to truth in love, we may grow up into Him in all things, who is the Head, Christ,

if we take Christ as our person, we will be able to grow and mature. our growing is the growing up into this person, Christ, who is the Head. as the Head, Christ must control every part of the members. 

Ephesians 3:17 That Christ may make His home in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love,

Christ desires to make His home in our hearts. we take Christ as our person by allowing Him to make His home in our heart. when Christ makes His home in our heart, we will take Him as our person in an adequate way; His mind will become our mind, His emotion will become our emotion, and His will will become our will. 

II. We need to take Christ as our person for the church as the one new man
the issue of our taking Christ as our person is the genuine church life. 

the church, the Body of Christ, is the one new man to accomplish God's eternal purpose. 

the Bible reveals that the one new man is a corporate, universal man. We, the believers in Christ, are all one with Christ to be the new man; thus, we all are parts, components, of the corporate one new man. 

Christ is both the life of the Body and the person of the new man. in the one new man the natural man has no place; we all have no place in the new man, for here Christ is all and in all. What God cares for is whether or not we take Christ as our person. 

our standard for being a Christian should not be right or wrong, good or bad, but a person; the crucial matter is not what we are doing but who is doing it. we should always say, "Lord, we are nothing. Lord, we take You as our person."

when we live our daily life by taking Christ as our person, especially in making decisions, our living will be the living of the new man. 

when the one new man is perfected, that will be the time for the Lord's coming, and the perfected new man will be the bride. today in the recovery we need to rise up together to take Christ as our person for the one new man, for the prepared bride.