In and for the church life, we all need to take Christ as our person; He came into our spirit as life, and now our regenerated spirit as the inner man is our real person.
Before we can take Christ as our person in and for the church life we need to realise that Christ is right now within us, in our spirit – He came into us through regeneration, He mingled Himself with us, and now our mingled spirit is no longer just an organ but our person, and the soul with its faculties is the organ to express the person in our spirit.
This is why we need to daily cooperate with God’s central work and let Him work Himself in Christ into our being to be our life, our nature, and our constitution. We need God to build up Christ into our intrinsic constitution, so that little by little our entire being will be reconstituted by Christ.
God’s purpose is to have a corporate expression through transformed human beings, so He first regenerates us to come into us as the life-giving Spirit, and then He takes us through the lifelong process of transformation to change us metabolically into His image.
In this way Christ builds Himself into our being and builds us into His being for the building up of the church as the house of God.
Christ builds up the church by coming into our spirit and then by spreading Himself from our spirit into all the parts of our inner being – our mind, our emotion, and our will – so that He may occupy and saturate our entire soul.
He wants to make His home in our heart, taking possession of all the inward parts of our being and saturating them with Himself, so that our heart becomes His home for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ.
Our God is not just a building God but also a builded God, for He builds Himself into our being to make us intrinsic parts of His building, the church as the Body of Christ and the one new man.
This revelation is so high, and the goal of God is so wonderful and great, but how do we cooperate with God’s central work? It is simply by being poor in spirit and pure in heart, seeking the Lord in simplicity, and opening to Him all throughout the day to be infused with Him and filled with Him.
As we seek the Lord with a pure heart, He has a way to infuse us with His element so that He may be constituted into us for the church life.
We need to care for the sense of life in our spirit and be willing to be enlightened, and the Lord will shine on us and transfuse Himself into us for His building, the church.
God’s Intention in His Economy is to Work Himself into us as our Life and Person
In His economy God intends to work Himself into His chosen people not only as life but also as their person. The divine life is in Christ, the Son of God, and he who has the Son has the life (1 John 5:12).
When we received the Lord Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we received His divine life into our spirit, and He Himself came into us as a person. This is something both wonderful and so mysterious, for now all the believers have two persons living in them: Christ in their spirit and themselves in their soul.
If we were like a box – lifeless, without any personality or opinion – then we would have no problem with Christ coming into us as our person; but we are living persons, and when Christ came into us, He came into us as our person.
Sometimes we are strong in our mind, we have a stubborn will, and we have a difficult emotion. Therefore, the Lord encounters difficulties in us, for we are still our own person.
He will never give up His person – we must be the ones who give up our person, the expression of our old man, the manifestation of our soul life. The Lord wants to be our person, and in and for the church life we need to take Christ as our person.
The Lord Himself said, when He asked us whether we want to follow Him, that for us to be His followers, His disciples, we need to deny our self and lose our soul life (Matt. 16:24). We need to deny our person and take Christ as our person for the church life.
However, we may know that this is our need, we may understand the doctrine of taking Christ as our person, and we may even agree with this, but how much experience do we have of taking Christ not only as our life but also as our person?
Does our spouse know that we take Christ as our person in our daily living? Do we just sing and praise the Lord about Christ as our person, or is He our person in our daily living in and for the church life?
We need to allow Christ to work Himself into our being and replace us with His element so that we may take Him as our person daily.
And we need to follow others, follow the saints who take Christ as their person, and imitate them by walking according to the Spirit.
Christ wants to be not only our life for our daily existence and living, but also our person for Him to be expressed in us, to live in us, to be formed in us, and to become us as we become Him. (Gal. 2:20; 4:19).
He came into our spirit – now our spirit is our real person, and we need to take Christ as our person for the church life and in the church life.
We were crucified with Christ, and it is no longer us who live – but Christ should be the One living in us (Gal. 2:20). Our old man has been crucified with Christ on the cross, and Christ is our life and person for the church life, the living of the one new man.
Lord Jesus, thank You for coming into our spirit to be our life and person. We take You as our life, Lord, to live by You, in You, and unto You. You are our daily supply for our Christian life so that we may express You. Lord, we take You as our person for the church life. You are our life and person. May our daily life be Your living and may the person living in us be no longer us but Christ. Thank You, Lord, we were crucified with You, and it is no longer us who live but Christ who lives in us.
Our Regenerated Spirit is our Inner Man with the Indwelling Christ as its Person
We all have a body (our outward being), a soul (our inward being composed of mind, emotion, and will), and a spirit (the inner man, an organ to contact God).
Before we were saved, the soul was our person; all our actions and words were directed by the self, the person in the soul, and our spirit was merely an organ which was not used almost at all.
At the time of our regeneration, Christ came into our spirit as a Person; He came to live in us and be expressed through us. Now our spirit is no longer only an organ to contact God, receive God, and contained God – our regenerated spirit is our real person, the inner man, and Christ is the person living in us.
This is why the Lord says that we should deny the self and follow Him, for He as a person lives in our spirit, and we should refuse, repudiate, put aside, and deny the self and the soul life so that we may allow the Person in our spirit to live.
Our soul is no longer our person; our soul is now an organ to express Christ, the real person in our spirit. Our regenerated spirit is our real person.
The outward man includes our body and our soul, with the body as its organ and the soul as its life and person. The inward man includes our regenerated spirit with our renewed soul with the regenerated spirit as its life and person, and the renewed soul as its organ.
We need to deny the life of our soul (the expression of our fallen man, the living of the self – see Matt. 16:24-25), but the functions of our soul – our mind, emotion, and will – must be renewed and uplifted by being subdued by the Lord (2 Cor. 10:4-5) to be used by the spirit, which is the person of our inward man.
Hallelujah, Christ as the life-giving Spirit came into our spirit, He regenerated our spirit, He mingled Himself with our spirit, and caused our spirit to become our inner man with Christ as the person dwelling in our spirit.
When we are strengthened with power into the inner man (Eph. 3:17), the Christ who is in our spirit will come forth into our heart – which is our acting agent. Our heart represents us, and Christ wants to spread from our spirit into our heart to be the Person living in us and being expressed through us.
If we don’t allow the Lord to be our person by making His home in our heart, we in effect hold Him as prisoner in our spirit. If we live by the old man, if we still express the self, and if our soul-life is enjoyed by us, it is impossible to have the church life.
If we would take Christ as our person, we must see that our regenerated spirit is no longer merely an organ for us to contact God but is our person. Our real person is not our self or the soul – our real person is our inner man, our regenerated spirit!
When the saints touch our inner man, they touch the real us, the Christ who lives in us. In our inner man we have Christ not only as our life but also as our person (1 John 5:11-12; Col. 3:4; Eph. 3:17a).
Our inner man consists of our renewed soul as its organ and our regenerated spirit indwelt by Christ, the person, as its life and person (Rom. 12:2; 8:10; Eph. 4:23; 2 Cor. 4:16).
Our outer man is being consumed and worn out by the killing work of death, but our inner man is being nourished with the fresh supply of the resurrection life. We need to learn daily to turn to our spirit and live by the inner man, the new man, which has Christ as its life.
To live by the inner man is to live by Christ as our person, because Christ Himself is in the inner man as its life.
Lord Jesus, we take You as our life and person in and for the church life as the living of the one new man. Thank You for coming into our spirit to regenerate us and become the indwelling Christ, our person. Hallelujah, our real person is no longer our soul but our regenerated spirit, our inner man, with Christ as its person! Praise the Lord, our outer man is being consumed and worn out by the killing work of the cross, but our inner man is being nourished with the fresh supply of resurrection life! Amen, Lord, we want to live by our inner man, our real person!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message given by Ron Kangas for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1970, vol. 2, pp. 337-341, 493-499, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Taking Christ as our Person and Living Him in and for the Church Life (2018 spring ITERO), week 1, Experiencing the Central Work of God and taking Christ as our Person in and for the Church Life.
- Hymns on this topic:
# Christ as my Person must possess my heart / And be preeminent in every part. / The former owner died but haunts it still. / O Lord, move in; my mind, emotion, will / Now welcome Thee. (Hymns #1179)
# My old person has been nullified; / With my Lord upon the cross he died; / Now in nothing shall he be applied; / He’s dead to me. / My new Person in my spirit dwells; / Springing in me as a bubbling well; / Flowing out until each part He fills / With abundant life. / Christ, my Person, in my spirit lives. (Hymns #1180)
# God hath us regenerated / In our spirit with His life; / But He must transform us further- / In our soul by His own life. / Spreading outward from our spirit / Doth the Lord transform our soul, / By the inward parts renewing, / Till within His full control. (Hymns #750)
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