The proper church life is Christ coming out of the saints for His corporate expression. When all the saints experience and enjoy Christ, He has a way to be lived out and come out of them for His corporate expression. This should be normal in the church life.
But because the church is degraded and the enjoyment and experience of Christ is lacking, there is very little corporate expression of Christ. Christ is in all His believers, and He wants to flow out and come out for His corporate expression, but the soul of most believers is so strong, and Christ cannot come forth from within their spirit.
For this reason God arranges a certain measure of suffering and breaking so that the outer man may be broken and the inner man, Christ as the Spirit mingled with our spirit, would be released and flow out.
We all need to experience the breaking of the outer man for the release of the Spirit so that Christ as be expressed in a corporate way.
On His side, God is faithful to bring about the right situations and people to break us, and on our side we need to be willing to be broken, cooperating with the Lord for our outer man to be broken so that the Spirit may flow for His corporate expression.
Whatever God can use has to first go through death and resurrection, and then He can use it.
May we be those who cooperate with the Lord’s breaking and the Father’s strengthening into our inner man through His Spirit, so that our outer man would be broken and our inner man would be released to flow forth with Christ for the building up of God’s corporate expression.
The Breaking of the Outer Man for the Release of the Spirit for God’s Expression
We cannot be useful in God’s hand unless we are broken by Him so that our inner man would flow forth. How can God be glorified and how can He use us if we still do things in our natural man, live according to the flesh, and express our self?
In order to be useful in the Lord’s hand according to God’s heart, we need to pass through much breaking by God.
Nobody likes breaking. When you build something, you do it in a careful way, according to a plan, and something beautiful and strong comes out. But when you break down a wall or an old house to build something else, you do it with no logical order, and there’s “a mess”.
Because we are born in sin, grow up and live by our natural man, and develop our self, God cannot use us for His purpose, His corporate expression.
He first needs to break us and then reconstitute us and build us up for His corporate expression. The person who experiences the most breaking is the most useful in God’s hand.
If we cooperate with the Lord and allow Him to break us, if we just accept the breaking arranged by God, we are changed inwardly and our original condition is altered: we are no longer whole, strong in the self, and fully natural; now the Lord has a way to flow from our spirit through our soul to others for His building, His corporate expression.
We do not need to pray for the breaking and we don’t need to seek to be broken; we simply need to cooperate with what the Lord arranges us in our environment to break us and deal with us.
Remember: God cannot use us unless we pass through death and resurrection. The Lord Jesus Himself had to pass through death and resurrection before He could do the greatest work throughout the ages: dispense Himself into millions of people to regenerate them with His divine life released through His death and resurrection.
The process of cross and the application of the death of Christ is the breaking of the outer man so that the inner man, the spirit mingled with the Divine Spirit, would flow forth for God’s corporate expression.
Whatever is broken by God will enter into death in order to pass through death; once it passes through death, it will enter into resurrection, and once it is resurrected, it can attain God’s goal.
The church life as the corporate expression of Christ can come into being and be realized only when the saints cooperate with the Lord by allowing Him to break their outer man so that their inner man would be released and flow forth.
The church life as the corporate expression of Christ can be realized only when the saints are willing to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death so that Christ would live in them and be magnified through them (Phil. 3:10-11).
Paul was such a one; together with his companions he was willing to allow the death of Christ to operate in them so that the life of Christ would operate in the saints. He had the response of death in himself so that he would not base his confidence on himself but on God who raises the dead (2 Cor. 1:8-9). Because of this, he suffered a lot but the Body of Christ received an abundance supply of life.
In a similar way, the extent to which we are useful in God’s hand for the building up of the Body is the extend to which we are broken by God. We need to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who operates in us both the wiling and the working for His good pleasure (Phil. 2:12-13).
Lord Jesus, gain our full cooperation for Your operation of breaking our outer man. Lord, we just open to You. Operate in us both the willing and the working for Your good pleasure. Have a way to break through in us for the building up of Your Body. Lord, save us from remaining whole, raw, untouched, and strong in our natural man. Break through in our being. Make us willing to cooperate with Your breaking of the outer man so that our spirit may be released for the building up of the Body of Christ!
When our Soul is Subdued and Broken, Christ is Expressed through All His Saints
The word of God is not only milk (2 Peter 2:2) and solid food; it is also living and operative, sharper than any two-edged sword, and able to discern the intents and thoughts of the heart (see Heb. 4:12).
We need to pray over the word of God and allow the word to operate in us in a living way to discern and separate the soul from the spirit, piercing through our soul and making an opening for the Spirit to be released and flow forth.
The more breaking we receive, the more our spirit will be released and flow forth. In whatever matter we experience the breaking, our spirit will be released in that matter. But if we close to the Lord and don’t allow Him access to our inner being as He exposes us and breaks us, we will not be useful for the building up of the church.
When our soul is subdued and broken, Christ can be expressed through us for the church, and the church life will become the corporate expression of Christ. If we all accept the discipline of the Holy Spirit, we will live a life part of the corporate expression of Christ.
If we are not broken by the Lord, we cannot build up the Body; we either are broken or are not – we cannot engineer this. We need to not only understand the doctrine and principle of the cross but also cooperate with the Lord by allowing Him to break through our soul and release our spirit.
If we save ourselves in a certain matter, the Lord cannot use us in that matter. If we don’t allow the Lord to break us so that the inner man would be released, He cannot use us for the building up of the church in that matter.
The more loss we suffer, the richer we are in the experience and enjoyment of Christ, and the more we can be useful in the Lord’s hand. May we not protect ourselves or excuse ourselves when the breaking comes.
May we be those who enjoy the Lord today, open to Him willingly, and allow Him to break us as He sees fit so that the inner man would flow forth and Christ would be lived out for His corporate expression.
May the Lord gain a group of people who cooperate with His breaking work, some who are willing to pass through death into resurrection so that Christ would be corporately expressed in the church.
May we be those who have many transactions with the Lord concerning this, praying personally to Him and opening to Him in many things and concerning many situations so that He would have a way to break and subdue our soul for Christ to flow forth and be expressed through us.
When the Lord gains His corporate expression in such a way and with such people, in this expression we are all one, and what others see among us is Christ being expressed corporately (see Eph. 3:21; 4:3-6; John 17:22).
Lord Jesus, gain the proper church life as Your corporate expression. Break through in all the saints. Lord, have a free way in our being. Save us from hindering You or delaying You from fulfilling Your hearts desire. Lord, gain Your glory in the church as the mingled spirit of the saints is free to flow. Lord, save us from our self-expression and self-likeness. We yearn to see You corporately expressed through all Your saints.
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, bro. Ron Kangas’ sharing in the message for this week, and portions from, Collected works of Watchman Nee, vol. 54, “The Breaking of the Outer Man and the Release of the Spirit,” chs. 1-2, 6, 9, as quoted in, the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Vision, Practice, and Building up of the Church as the Body of Christ, week 4 / msg 4, Crucial Experiences in the Practice of the Church Life (1) – Our Soul Being Subdued and Saturated with Christ as the Spirit and Christ Being Released from the Imprisonment of the Soul.
- Picture credit for 2 Cor. 4:16 and 1 Cor. 1:9 and more spiritual quotes on this topic via, Christian Pictures blog.
- Hymns on this topic:
– Here, Lord, we give ourselves to Thee; / Receive us into Thy wise hands; / Bend, break, and build together in Thee / To be the house to meet Thy demands. / Break all the natural life for us, / Deal Thou with each peculiar way, / That we no more independent be / But with all saints are one for aye. (Hymns 837)
– Hymns 749, Stanza 4. Oh, how the Lord our self must break, / Our outward man does so impede! / It must be broken thoroughly, / And thus the Spirit will be freed.
Stanza 5. This is the reason why the Lord / For us a certain measure makes / Of circumstantial suffering; ‘Tis thus our outward man He breaks.
Stanza 6. The outward man, the self, the soul, / Must be consumed, must be decreased; / The inner man, our spirit, then / Shall with the Spirit be released.
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