The greatest enemy of the Body is the self, the soul declaring independence from God and from the Body; when we see a vision of the self and depend on the Lord and on the members of the Body, we have the Lord’s presence, are full of peace, and touch the reality of the Body.
May we see that the Lord has given us the key of denying the self and may we use this key to shut and lock up this gate of Hades, so that death would not enter and spread in the church but rather the church would be built up.
When God created us, He made us in His image and according to His likeness, and He breathed the breath of life into man, so man became a living soul.
From the very beginning, the soul was to depend on God and be one with God, but when Satan came, he injected himself into our mind, deceived our emotion, and stirred us up to exercise our will to disobey God.
Even before Eve partook of the forbidden tree, she was already poisoned by Satan in her mind, emotion, and will through his questioning and inquiring.
When the mind of Satan was injected into the human soul, the human soul became the self, the embodiment of Satan; now every man has a self, and this self is his soul declaring independence from God, and this self is the embodiment of Satan. Oh Lord Jesus!
May the Lord shine on us and shine on His word as we pray and read His word so that we may realise that the self, the embodiment of the soul-life, has Satan behind it manipulating it, and the self is expressed through the opinions of the mind!
We may be like Peter, enjoying the heavenly vision of Christ and the church from the Father in one moment, but then we open a gate of Hades the next moment by expressing our opinions and feelings apart from the Lord.
May we remain open to the Lord for what He wants to do in us, and may we constantly be in prayer before Him, calling on His name, so that our soul would diminish and be put to death, and our spirit would become the person in our being.
When we realise that Satan is behind the self, the soul-life, and the mind, we will run to the Lord, we will exercise our spirit, and we will treasure our dependence on the Lord and on the Body, for only the Lord can terminate the self, and only He can be the One who lives in us for the Body life.
Throughout history the self has done a lot of damage, has wielded a lot of destruction, and has ravaged the church, keeping the church from being built up even two thousand years later.
May we be those who cooperate with the Lord to deal with the self and deny it, treasuring our dependence on the Lord and on the members of the Body.
Seeing that the Self is the Soul being Independent of God, we Treasure our Dependence on the Lord
The self is the soul declaring independence from God; the self is the soul being independent of the Lord.
The world today and society in general teaches us to develop our self, to strengthen our self, and to express our self, and simply by growing up in the country and city we’re in we grow our self.
And when we are regenerated, the self may take a “spiritual” form by desiring to do things for God but without depending on God. Whenever we do something by ourselves without depending on God, we are in the self.
No matter what we are and what we do, as long as we are independent of God, we are in the self, and we are through with the Body.
God treasures our dependence on Him more than what we can do for Him, and He has made us with a soul so that we can depend on God for everything. However, the soul has become the self, and the self declares independence from God.
When we see this, when we realise that the self is the soul being independent of God, we will simply come back to the Lord and not be independent from Him but rather treasure our dependence on the Lord.
We will even pray and tell the Lord that He would remind us to depend on Him. By default we want to be independent of God and do things apart from Him; this is by our very nature, for in ourselves we are independent of God.
But the Lord does not have regard for what we do; rather, He has regard for our dependence on Him (Matt. 7:21-23; Josh. 9:14).
Especially in the church and for the building up of the church, the greatest enemy of the Body is the self; because the self is independent, the self is the greatest problem, the greatest frustration and opposition, to the building up of the Body.
And when we speak of the self we do not speak of the negative aspects of the self such as doing evil things or being involved in wrong activities; rather, even our good opinions, our good heart, and our good feelings when expressed can be a great hindrance to the Body.
If in His mercy the Lord shows us what is the self, how is the self expressed, and how the self as the soul declaring independence from God is the greatest frustration to the building up of the Body, we will choose to depend on the Lord and we will treasure our dependence on Him.
We may see a vision of the Body of Christ and we may realise that we are members of the Body, but then we immediately realise that, as members of the Body, we cannot be independent of the Lord and of the other members.
The independent self is independent not only from the Lord but even from the Body, from the members of the Body; such an independence, coming from an independent soul (the self) poses the greatest problem in the church life.
Lord Jesus, grant us to see a vision of the self and a vision of the Body. May we realise that the self is the soul being independent from God, and may we treasure our dependence on the Lord. Dear Lord Jesus, we love You and we love the Body; we give ourselves to You to depend on You and to also depend on the members of Your Body. May we cooperate with You to exercise the key of denying the self so that we may no longer be independent of God but rather would depend on the Lord in everything, and we would also depend on the Body!
Deny the Self through the Dealing of the Cross to Depend on the Lord and on the Body
Many believers say, I depend on God! and yet they do not want to be related to their fellow members in the Body, and they do not have a real dependence on the Body of Christ.
For us today, being independent of the Body is the same as being independent of God. We cannot say that we are dependent on God yet we are not dependent on the members of the Body, for the God on whom we depend is a corporate God, a corporate Christ, the Body of Christ.
When we depend on the Lord, we will also depend on the Body, and when we depend on the Body, we will also depend on the Lord in a real way.
If we check with our experience in the church life, we will realise that every time we were independent of the brothers and the sisters the Lord put us with, we had a sense that we were also independent of God.
For us to depend on the Lord whom we do not see is for us to depend on the saints in the Body whom we see; Christ today lives and is expressed through His members, and the Lord put us in the Body for us to depend on the Lord and on the Body.
Sometimes we wonder why we don’t have a deep sense of the Lord’s presence; the reason this happens is because we are isolated from the Body, we are not properly related to the Body, and we are not depending on the members of the Body.
We need to endeavor to be built up with the saints and be right with the Body, for if we are right with the Body and are built up in the Body, we will surely sense the Lord’s presence.
If we realise that the Lord has more regard for our dependence on Him than for what we can do for Him, we will ask ourselves, Am I independent of the Lord or am I dependent on Him as I do this or say that? Am I depending on the Body or am I independent of the members of the Body as I go there and do that?
If we are dependent on the Lord, He in us will cause us to be dependent on the Body; if we are dependent on the Body, we will also depend on the Lord.
The Lord Jesus on whom we depend is one with the Body; if we depend on Him, we depend on His Body, but if we’re independent of the Body, we are also independent on the Lord.
When we are independent on the Lord, we are spontaneously in the self; when we are in the self, no matter how many good things we intend to do, we are incorporated with Satan – the self is the “general manager” and Satan is the “president”, and whatever we do is not in and for the Body.
Oh may we realise that the greatest enemy of the Body is the self, and may we cooperate with the work of the cross to deal with the self and deny the self, so that we may depend on the Lord and on His Body!
May we realise that, in order for the Body to be built up, our self – our independent soul – must be dealt with; when the self is denied, we are in the Body, and when we live in the self, the Body is gone, and we do not have peace.
Only when the self-life has been utterly dealt with by the cross are we able to touch the reality of the Body of Christ and we come to know the Body.
Only when we cooperate with the Lord to deal with the self and deny the self can we depend on the Lord and depend on the Body, and only then will we honor the Body, care for the Body, know the Body, and respect the Body.
When this happens, we will touch the reality of the Body and we will come to know the Body.
Lord Jesus, may we realise that the Lord is one with the Body, so when we depend on the Lord we must also depend on the Body. Amen, Lord, strengthen our dependence on You, and bring us back to You and to the Body for fellowship and coordination in everything. May we be those who allow the cross to operate in us to deal with the self so that we may no longer live independent of God or independent of the Body. May the self-life be utterly dealt with by the cross so that we may touch the reality of the Body and come to know the Body!
This article can also be read in the Romanian language / Citiți acest articol în limba română vizitând următorul link, Să lepădăm sinele prin cruce ca să depindem de Domnul și de Trupul lui Cristos.
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by bro. Minoru Chen for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1965, vol. 3, “The Heavenly Vision,” chs. 3-4, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Development of the Kingdom of God in the Church Life and the Christian Life (2019 spring ITERO), week 5, The Exercise of the Kingdom for the Building Up of the Church.
- Hymns on this topic:
# Freed from self and Adam’s nature, / Lord, I would be built by Thee / With the saints into Thy temple, / Where Thy glory we shall see. / From peculiar traits deliver, / From my independent ways, / That a dwelling place for Thee, Lord, / We will be thru all our days. (Hymns #840)
# Serve and work within the Body, / Never independently; / As the members of the Body, / Functioning relatedly. (Hymns #913)
# Lord, breathe Thy breath of life upon me, / To me a true dependence give; / Deal with my death and isolation, / That in Thy Body I may live. (Hymns #843)
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