The Body of Christ is the mingling of God and man, and the way for us to live in the reality of the Body of Christ is to be in the organic union with Christ in our mingled spirit.
The Lord Jesus told us that He is the vine and we are the branches, so we should abide in Him and He will abide in us, for apart from Him we can do nothing.
This means that through our faith in Christ and baptism into Him we have been cut off from the old Adam, the old and natural man, and we have been grafted into Christ. Now our source is no longer the natural man, the self, or anything of the world and Satan, but Christ Himself, the all-inclusive One.
We and Christ have an organic union, a union in life, in which we enjoy the constant dispensing of all that He is, and He is being infused into us for the mingling of God and man.
But how does this take place, and where or how can we experience it? Our being joined to the Lord as one is in the spirit, the mingled spirit.
Our organic union with Christ is not in our mind – it is not a matter of doctrinal understanding or mental apprehension. Our being joined to the Lord is by means of the divine Spirit who came into our spirit to be mingled with our spirit as one spirit.
We can see the principle of mingling in the Old Testament with the meal offering made of fine flour mingled with oil. In the mingling two substances or elements are being put together and mixed until they are mingled, but there’s no third element produced but rather, the two elements can be seen in the mix.
For example, when tea is put in water, tea mingles with the water and the water mingled with the tea, and the result is tea-water, that is, tea mingled with water. So when we drink the tea, we drink the water, and when we drink the water, we drink the tea.
It is similar with the mingling of the divine Spirit with our human spirit – at the time of our regeneration the divine Spirit has come into our spirit and has mingled Himself with our spirit.
Now when we walk according the mingled spirit, the righteous requirement of the law is being fulfilled in us, for the Spirit in us fulfills this requirement. When we exercise our spirit, when we turn to our spirit to touch the Lord, we touch the Spirit with our spirit, and we are being mingled with God.
This is what God desires to gain today – He wants to gain the mingling of God and man, which is the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ is the mingling of God and man.
We need to see what is the reality of the Body of Christ from the perspective of the mingling of God with man, and when we see this, we will exercise our spirit to live in the mingled spirit for the Body of Christ.
God’s Purpose is to Mingle Himself with us to Produce and Build up the Body of Christ
What is God’s purpose, His central purpose, as seen in the Word of God?
Many Christians say that God’s purpose is to redeem us and bring us to Himself in heaven, so that we may be with God and enjoy everlasting joy and peace and prosperity. Others say that God’s purpose is to save us and take us through sufferings so that we may be worthy of Him.
There are many aspects of God’s purpose, and the Bible speaks of many things that God does to fulfill His purpose. But God’s central purpose is for Him to work Himself into us until He becomes our life, our nature, and our everything, and we become His corporate expression as the Body of Christ.
God’s central purpose is for Him to mingle Himself with us for the producing and building up of the Body of Christ. God’s unique purpose is to mingle Himself with us so that He becomes our life, our nature, and our content, and we become His expression (John 14:20; 15:4-5; Eph. 3:16-21; 4:4-6).
We need to open to the Lord and ask Him to unveil us to see His purpose, for without revelation we can only mentally understand something but not enter into its reality.
Yes, God wants to save us and bring us to Himself so that, where He is, we would also be, but He does this in the way it mingling Himself with us. Yes, God does take us through sufferings and He arranges all things to work for good for us, but He does this so that He may mingle Himself with us more.
When God and man are mingled together, this doesn’t produce a third person or a strange creature but a God-man, and in this combination we see God and we can also see man; what we see is God with man and man with God.
This is what the church life is: the church life is filled with God-men, men who enjoy God, are mingled with God, and live one with God.
When we are mingled with the Lord, we don’t cease to be; we are not replaced or exchanged but rather, we pass through death and resurrection and are mingled with God even more.
In eternity past God designed the plan according to His good pleasure; in this plan He purposed to express Himself through His Son, Jesus Christ, and to have Jesus Christ expressed through a group of people.
This is how the hidden and invisible God would be manifested, and at the same time, Christ would be glorified. How can God obtain His purpose? It is by mingling Himself with us.
Christ should have the preeminence, the first place, in all things; this depends on one thing – that Christ be wrought into us to be our all in all, and we, being mingled with the full measure of God’s life in Christ, would be a living Body to Christ. Amen, Lord!
Lord, unveil us to see God’s unique purpose to mingle Himself with us so that He becomes our life, our nature, and our content, and we become His expression. Amen, Lord, mingle Yourself with us more today so that we may live a life in the mingled spirit, in the mingling of God and man. Lord, we give You the preeminence in all things, and we take You as our life, our person, our content, our joy, and our everything. May You gain what You are after, the mingling of God and man, the Body of Christ!
The Body of Christ is the Enlargement of Christ as the Mingling of God and Man
According to Luke 1:31-35 and Matt. 1:18-20, the baby conceived in Mary’s womb was of the Holy Spirit, and this baby had both the divine essence and the human essence; Jesus Christ was by birth the mingling of God with man.
He had the divine essence from the Holy Spirit, and He also had the human essence from Mary; when He was born, He was a new species of man – He was not just a man, and He was not just God, but a God-man, the mingling of God with man.
What we see in the Gospels is this God-man’s birth, living, work, death, and resurrection in His earthly ministry. God’s desire is to gain such a God-man, even a corporate God-man, a group of people mingled with God, so that in them He would be expressed and represented on earth.
Why does Christ need a Body? Isn’t He OK by Himself, and He perfect and complete? Yes, in Himself Christ is complete and perfect, but He is not complete in what He wants to do.
Christ doesn’t want to remain an individual Christ – He wants to be a corporate Christ with the Body of Christ as His fulness, and this is why He wants to gain a Body as the enlargement of the mingling of God and man.
We need to understand the Body of Christ from the perspective of the mingling of God and man; the Body of Christ is the enlargement of Christ as the mingling of God and man, and we experience and live in the Body in our mingled spirit (1 Cor. 6:17).
Just as the individual Christ was the mingling of God and man, so the corporate Christ is the same; the Body is the enlargement of Christ.
In the Gospels what we see is that the mingling of God and man produced the Head of the Body, Christ; then, in Acts, we see that this mingling of God and man was enlarged to produce the Body of Christ (Eph. 1:22-23; 4:15-16).
Christ as the Head is the mingling of the Triune God with His life, His nature, and His Godhead, with the man Jesus; Jesus Christ is a Triune-God-man, not just a God-man. In Him all the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily (Col. 2:9), and He has not only divinity and humanity but also the Godhead.
We as the Body of Christ, however, are also a mingling; we are a mingling of the God-man Jesus Christ with man.
The entire Body of Christ is a mingling of God with man; the Head is a mingling and the Body is also a mingling.
In other words, the processed and consummated Triune God mingles Himself with us, His chosen and redeemed people in our humanity, and this mingling is the Body of Christ; this mingling is also the genuine oneness of the Body of Christ (see John 17:21-23).
If we remain in the mingling of God and man, we will have no problem with the oneness. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are one by being mingled together; their oneness is a coinhering oneness – the Father is in the Son, the Son is in the father, the Father and the Son are in the Spirit, and the Spirit is in the Son and in the Father.
The Three in the Godhead don’t “struggle” to be one, and they never have an argument or difference of opinion; their oneness is a mingling oneness.
The genuine oneness of the Body of Christ is nothing less than the Triune God being mingled with man; the oneness of the Body is the enlarged oneness of the Triune God to include humanity, and this oneness is in the mingling of God with man.
Lord Jesus, grant us to see that the Body of Christ is the enlargement of Christ as the mingling of God and man. Uplift our view of the Body and increase our appreciation for Your desire to mingle Yourself with us. Keep us in the mingling today. Amen, Lord, mingle Yourself with us a little more today for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ. Keep us in the mingling of God and man so that we may remain in the genuine oneness of the Body of Christ in our experience. Amen, Lord, more mingling today!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Mark Raabe for this week, and portions from, The Church as the Body of Christ, chs. 3, 5 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Reality of the Body of Christ (2018 Thanksgiving Conference), week 3, Being in the Reality of the Body of Christ by Living in the Organic Union and in the Mingled Spirit and by Being Conformed to Christ’s Death.
- Further reading on this topic:
# What is the mingling of God and Man? (via LSM radio)
# The Vision of God’s Building – the church, the enlargement of Christ (via ministry books).
# Experiencing the Mingling of God with Man for the Oneness of the Body of Christ (book by bro. Lee, here)
Hymns on this topic:
# The processed and consummated Triune God, / According to the good pleasure of His desire / And for the highest intention in His economy, / Is building Himself into His chosen people / And His chosen people into Himself / That He may have a constitution in Christ / As the mingling of divinity with humanity / To be His organism and the Body of Christ / As His eternal expression and the mutual abode / For the redeeming God and the redeemed man. (Song on, The processed and consummated Triune God)
# Only Christ, our Person, must remain; / From our aims, our goals we must refrain, / Till the church be only Christ Himself / Built up as the one new man, / Thus fulfilling God’s great plan of— / Mingling fully with the human race / To obtain a proper dwelling place, / ’Stablishing His kingdom’s rule and grace; / Over all the earth. (Hymns #1180)
# As the body is the fulness / To express our life, / So to Christ the Church, His Body, / Doth express His life… / Thus the Church and Christ together, / God’s great mystery, / Is the mingling of the Godhead / With humanity. (Hymns #819)
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