the church is the house of the living God, the supporting pillar and holding base of the truth

The third great pillar in the Lord’s recovery is the church. The church is something produced out of Christ and it is His Body, of which He is the Head. Christ is the Head and the church is the Body of Christ. The church is not an organization but an organism, something organic, something of the divine life. All the believers in Christ are organic members of the Body of Christ. Also, as it regards to the truth, the truth brings in life (life is contained in the truth) and once we have life, we become the church!

The church is the house of the living God

1 Tim. 3:15-16 says that the house of God is the church of the living God, and Eph. 2:22 says, “In whom you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in spirit”. In Christ all the believers are built up to become the church, the house of the living God, the dwelling place of God.

In the church as such a wonderful dwelling place, God can have His rest and He can put His trust. Here, in the church as the house of the living God, God can live and move and accomplish His will to satisfy the desire of His heart.

We express ourselves in a natural way in our own home, our house – the kind of person we are is expressed by our house. In the same way, God expresses Himself on earth the way He wants – in His church, His dwelling place.

It is in the church that God can practice His New Testament economy, He can speak forth what is in His heart, and He can manifest His glory! God feels at home in no other place but in the church, and it is here that He expresses Himself and manifests Himself – all He is, all He’s doing, and all He wants to obtain are to be expressed in the church as God’s dwelling place.

The church is the divine-human incorporation

It is not enough for us to see that the church is the house of the living God – we need to see that, according to the high peak of the divine revelation in the Bible, the church is the enlarged divine-human incorporation! In eternity past the Triune God held a council (see Gen. 1:26 and Acts 2:23) and took the decision to send the second from among Them to become a man and pass through the processes of human living, death, and resurrection.

In His resurrection, all the redeemed and regenerated believers of God have been incorporated into God’s incorporation to be the enlarged divine-human incorporation.

This is what God desires – He wants to be enlarged and expanded to include humanity in the Triune God. For this, God became a man and passed through the processes of human living, death, and resurrection, so that He would bring man into God.

Now we as the believers in Christ are the enlarged, universal, divine-human incorporation of the Triune God with man in the universe! This incorporation has been enlarged starting with the resurrection of Christ (John 14:20) and will consummate in the New Jerusalem as the ultimate consummation of the divine-human incorporation, the tabernacle of God with man (Rev. 21:2-3).

The church is the pillar and base of the truth

We see in 1 Tim. 3:15 that the church is the pillar and base of the truth. A pillar supports the building, and the base is what holds the pillar – the church is the supporting pillar and the holding base of the truth. The real things revealed in the Bible concerning Christ and the church are being constituted into our being until we, as the church, support this truth and hold this truth forth in the universe for all to see! Christ is the mystery of God (Col. 2:2) and the church is the mystery of Christ (Eph. 3:4) – these two mysteries are testified and upheld by the church as the pillar and base of the truth!

[sharing inspired from, Truth, Life, the Church, and the Gospel—the Four Great Pillars in the Lord’s Recovery (by brother Witness Lee), chs. 8-9, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Four Great Pillars in the Lord’s Recovery. Picture source: supporting pillars.]

Thank You Lord for all You went through to open a way for us to come into God and be part of the divine-human incorporation! Continue to work Yourself into us day by day, Lord, and continue to mingle Yourself with us! Gain the church as Your dwelling place, the place of Your rest and Your trust. O, Lord, we want You to be satisfied and rested! Gain what You are after, Lord Jesus! Continue to enlarge the divine-human incorporation until You obtain the New Jerusalem!