Taking Christ as our Life and Person so that Christ is All and in All in the New Man

In the new man Christ is all and in all. What does it mean in reality and in our experience for Christ to be all in all in the church as the one new man? We need to ask the Lord to make this real to us, and even to make this our reality in the church life.

God intends to make Christ, the center of His economy, everything to us our daily living. He wants the all-inclusive Christ to be everything to us, to have preeminence in us, and to be the first and everything in our being.

To God, Christ is everything, and God gives us nothing apart from Christ, the embodiment of the fullness of the Father. In His economy, God is working the all-inclusive Christ into our being so that He may be everything to us.

The new man was created in Christ and with Christ as the unique element, and the new man is just Christ – Christ spreading and Christ being enlarged. This means that, for us to be part of the new man in reality, we need to let Christ spread in our being, and we need to have Him enlarged in us.

Christ needs to be revealed in us, live in us, make His home in our heart, and be formed in us, so that our living would be Christ, our life would be Christ, and our person would be Christ.

We need to spend much time personally with the Lord, having a personal contact with Him, so that we may receive Him as open vessels. As we receive Him, as He infuses Himself into us, we are one in Him and through Him.

Christ in us is our oneness. Christ living in us and Christ being our persons, together with us being in Christ, is what makes us one. The Lord wants to work Himself into us and mingle Himself with us to the extent that it is Him who lives in us, Him who is expressed in us, and Him who is the person in us.

If we are not in Christ, we have no share or part in the new man; rather, we are through with the new man. But if we are in Christ and we live Christ, we have the reality of the one new man.

The new man has Christ as its person and life; when we take Christ as our life and person, letting Him be the Person living and being expressed in us, we are in the new man in reality.

The New Man comes into being as we’re Saturated with Christ and Replaced by Him

What does it mean that, in the church as the one new man, Christ is all and in all?

This implies that He is every brother, and He is every sister; also, this implies that every brother and every sister must be constituted with Christ to become the same as Christ – even to become Christ.

The one new man comes into being as we all are being saturated, filled, and permeated with Christ, and we are replaced by Him through an organic process.

As we behold the Lord daily, He infuses Himself into us, and inwardly there’s a metabolic process of transformation going on, with the result of us being in His image from glory to glory (2 Cor. 3:18).

Such a process is not sudden – it takes time, it takes growth, and it takes transformation.

To do something artificial and put on a show is in the principle of Babylon – it is hypocrisy, pretending to be what we are not. But we as believers in Christ are in an organic process to be saturated, filled, and permeated with Christ, and we are being slowly replaced inwardly by Him until Christ is all and in all.

The new man is Christ in all the saints permeating us and replacing us until all our natural distinctions have been removed, and until everyone is constituted with Christ (Col. 3:11).

We are all in a process of being saturated and permeated with Christ UNTIL – until our natural distinctions have been removed, until we are reconstituted with Christ. When this happens, when we’re fully transformed, we will not be conscious of who we are, what our background and race is, no matter where we are and with whom we are.

The all-inclusive Christ must be wrought into us organically day by day until He replaces our natural being with Himself; He must make His home in us daily, and He must be formed in us (Eph. 3:17; Gal. 4:19).

The new man doesn’t come into existence merely by putting different kinds of believers together; this is an organization outwardly, not the new man.

The new man comes into being as we – each one of us, each brother and sister – allow the Lord to saturate us with Himself, permeate us with His element, and replace us by Himself through an organic process.

Hallelujah, we are all in this organic process of being saturated, permeated, filled, and replaced by Christ, until we all arrive at being the one new man in reality!

Our natural distinctions are slowly being removed as we enjoy the Lord, as we behold Him, as we let Him make His home in our heart, and as He is being formed in us.

The one new man is intrinsically being worked out as we spend time with the Lord and allow Him to work Himself into us to replace us with Himself, until all our differences are removed and Christ is being expressed in us.

Lord Jesus, keep us in the organic process of being saturated, permeated, filled and replaced with Christ until all our natural distinctions have been removed and we all are constituted with Christ. Amen, Lord, permeate us and replace us inwardly as we behold You, as we spend time with You in Your word, and as we contact You day by day. May the all-inclusive Christ be wrought into us organically day by day and even moment by moment until He replaces our natural being with Himself! Amen, Lord, do it in us!

Taking Christ as our Life and Person so that Christ is All and in All in the New Man

The phrase, “in the new man Christ is all and in all” in Col. 3:11 is so simple yet so profound. What does it mean for Christ to be all and in all in the church as the new man? Is this just a doctrine to us, or is this our reality and our experience in the church life?

We need to be rooted in Christ and absorb His riches into us so that He may constitute us organically with Himself.

The riches of Christ we enjoy in His word and in the ministry, both in our time with the Lord and with the saints, become the substance that saturates us organically, until Christ is all and in all in the new man. Then, Christ becomes us, and we become constituted with CHrist; this is to grow in Christ and to be built up in Christ.

Christ is ALL – He is every member of the new man by replacing us organically with Himself, and He is IN ALL – He is in all the members of the new man.

Because Christ is every member of the new man, there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, freeman, but Christ is all and in all (Col. 3:11).

There’s no room for us, for our natural man, in the new man. There’s no room for our regional, cultural, and national distinctions in the new man. There’s no room for our race, nationality, culture, or social status in the church as the one new man. In the new man there’s room only for Christ – Christ is all and in all.

Christ is all the members of the new man, and He is in all the members of the new man. He is everything and everyone in the new man; actually, Christ Himself is the new man.

How can we experience and apply this? For us to experience the reality of Christ being all the members of the new man we need to take Christ as our life and person and live Him – not live ourselves.

If we still live ourselves and express ourselves, we are through with the new man; but when we take Christ as our life and person, we live Christ, and we experience the reality of the new man. We need to take Christ as our life and also as our person.

We can’t take Christ as our life unless we take Him as our person, for in 1 John 5:11-12 it says that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. For us to have the divine life, we need to have the divine Person of Christ, the Son of God.

We need to take Christ as our life and person and live Him. No one can do this for us. Only we can deny our self, and only we can take Christ as our life and person to live Christ. We need to learn how to do this, mainly by opening to the Lord in prayer about it and asking Him to work this out in us.

Our prayerful response toward the Lord as He shines on us will bring us where God wants us to be – into the divine dispensing, the divine infusing of God into man, so that Christ is all and in all in the new man.

Lord Jesus, bring us into the reality of Christ being all and in all in the church as the one new man. We want to take You as our life and person so that we may live Christ and not ourselves. Work Yourself into us, and replace us organically with Yourself until it is no longer we who live but Christ who live in us. Lord Jesus, show us what it really mean for us to take Christ as our life and person. Bring us into the reality of being the new man, where Christ is all and in all. Amen, Lord, work this out in us!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Ron Kangas for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Colossians, msgs. 28, 60 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Recovery of the Church (2017 fall ITERO), week 8, The Status of the Church – the New Man.
• Hymns on this topic:
  # Lord, I do thank You for another day / To practice living You, in You to stay, / Lord, grant me the grace, Your life mine to replace / Two lives one, oh what a sweet embrace. (Song on, Lord, I do thank You for another day)
  # Oh Lord, break through. / Lord, gain in me. / Lord, I want You my all to be. / Oh Lord, break through. / Lord, gain in me. / Oh Lord, replace me totally…. / Lord, we would apprehend with all the saints: / Your height and Your depth, / Your breadth and length. / And as we know Your love, / You will express Yourself through all of us / As Your fullness. (Song on, Oh Lord, break through)
  # We have found the Christ who’s all in all; / He is everything to us; / O how blest upon His name to call, / How divine, how glorious! (Hymns #1153)