Taking the Way of Enjoying Christ as the Tree of Life - 6

Message Title: Becoming a Reproduction of Christ as the Tree of Life for the Ministry of Life

Those who are in the process of becoming such a duplication of Christ, will be ministering life to anyone and everyone they contact. 

we all want the Lord to come back. but the Lord is coming back for whom? for His bride, the church as the built up Body of Christ. 

the time will come when we all stand before the judgement seat of Christ, and He will judge us mainly related to two matters:

1. our person and living

2. our work and service

we can see this in Matther 25, the virgins with oil in their vessels; the slaves, the servants. 

why does God want you to eat, enjoy, and live by the tree of life? why does God need you to eat, enjoy, and live by the tree of life?

the first mention of the tree of life is in Genesis 2:9. Genesis 2 comes after Genesis 1. Genesis 1:26 says "And God said, Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of heaven and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth." and verse 28 says "And God blessed them; and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of heaven and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." the key phraise here is "subdue the earth". this is why we were born, we were saved, and are still kept in the church life. we are here, created, redeemed and saved for God's purpose, that we would express Him, represent the Lord and His government and authority to deal with the enemy. we are eating for the fulfillment of God's purpose.

our human spirit is our spiritual stomache. the function of our spirit is to worship, contact, receive , retain, and digest God. what we have taken from the tree of life needs to spread into every part of our being. so on our part, we need to allow the Spirit to spread into us. 

I. In God's economy, we are not only eaters of the tree of life, but we are also branches of this tree, and we may eventually become a small tree of life, a reproduction of Christ as the tree of life. 

John 12:24 Truly, truly, I say to you, Unless the grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

God's intention is that all the believers in Christ become a reproduction of Christ, the God-man. we are all the graines produced by the one grain Christ, and our grain shells will be broken so that we can be blended into one loaf. Romans 8:29 shows that to become the same even as He is, is our destiny, because we all have been predestinated for this. the only question is when? when will we be conformed to the image of the Firstborn Son, during our life time, our journey on the earth, or during the 1000 years in ourter darkness? if we realise that this is the central work of God to transform and conform us, to saturate our entire being, then our view, our attitude, our living, and our prayer will all be changed. 

II. As a reproduction of Christ as the tree of life, we have the ministry of life.

the ministry of life is the capacity to impart life into others, as the result of our becoming the reproduction of Christ. 

the service in the church is a life-ministering service, - a sercive of supplying others with the divine life. if we would supply the saints with life, we must release our spirit, for the divine life is in our mingled spirit. if our spirit cannot be released, the divine life has no way to be released. 

if we would live as a reproduction of Christ as the tree of life, we need to be deeply impressed with the necessity of being able to minister life. why is there the necessity? because we are not living alone as individual Christians, but we are members in the Body of Christ. we need to grow in life for the Body. we pass through certain sufferings and trials, for the Body. in order to minister life to others, we need to be joined to Christ, abide in Christ, and give Him the groud in us to fill us so that His life, nature, likes and inclination become our life, nature, likes and inclination.

To minister life is to have the outflow of life; our service is God's flowing out to supply others with the divine life. Life is the content of God and the flowing out of God. sometimes, when we come to the meetings, there is no outflow of God. we do not want to be like that. we must have the outflow of God. but this does not mean that we need to be anxious, but we need to be willing to allow God to work in us, and to flow out of us. in order for life to be released from our spirit, our outer man must be dealt with and broken. God is dwelling in our spirit as the divine life, from where He desires to flow out. but our spirit is surrounded by many parts of our outerman. if our outerman is not broken, there cannot be a pure flow of the divine life. 

Having the outflow of life requires that we be one with Christ in His life-releasing death; this is to be identified with the smitten Christ typified by the smitten rock. when we are one with Christ as the smitten rock, the divine life as the living water flows out of us. 

Matthew 16:18 And I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.

if we would minister life to others, we need to be aware of the attack upon the church by death, the gates of Hades. in the church, everything that issues from God is life, and everything that issues from Satan is death. Satan's greatest fear with regard to the church is her resistance to his power of death. the eternal life within us can overcome death both in ourselves and in other members of the church. as a reproduction of Christ as the tree of life, we need to experience eternal life and minister this life to others by being a channel through which eternal life can flow. 

concerning God's economy, what is the goal of our eating, enjoying, and living by the tree of life in the present age? what does the Lord want to complete in this age? 

the goal is the building up of the organic Body of Christ. we are here, to be perefected, to be supplied, and to be shepherded. 

Ephesians 4:11 And He Himself gave some as apostles and some as prophets and some as evangelists and some as shepherds and teachers,

Ephesians 4:12 For the perfecting of the saints unto the work of the ministry, unto the building up of the Body of Christ,

Ephesians 4:13 Until we all arrive at the oneness of the faith and of the full knowledge of the Son of God, at a full-grown man, at the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,

Ephesians 4:14 That we may be no longer little children tossed by waves and carried about by every wind of teaching in the sleight of men, in craftiness with a view to a system of error,

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

Ephesians 4:16 Out from whom all the Body, being joined together and being knit together through every joint of the rich supply and through the operation in the measure of each one part, causes the growth of the Body unto the building up of itself in love.

"When I was in England, Brother Austin-Sparks asked me what chapter in the Bible is the hardest to fulfill. I told him that the hardest chapter should be Ephesians 4 on the perfecting of the saints. After reading that chapter, I am very concerned that this chapter will not be fulfilled. I am confident about the other chapters. But I do not as yet have the confidence about this chapter. For the past two thousand years, Ephesians 4 has not yet been fulfilled. According to the present condition, I am afraid that given two thousand more years, this chapter will still not be fulfilled. If this is the case, humanly speaking, the Lord will not be able to come back. It is true that the church is in desolation outwardly. But the question today is whether or not there is a group of people who will stand on God’s side to receive God’s riches, and who will pay the price to appropriate these riches."

- "Collected Works of Watchman Nee" vol 57 PP 176-177