It is several years since I received an understanding of the Corporate Christ. This subject is so amazing that it will probably take a lifetime to fully understand but we can at least begin to experience some of God's purpose for us in Christ as we are built up in all things into Him!
The article below was written from a perspective of a South African Christian leader who is seeking out God's ways with his church in various continents and how we can learn for our context in SA.
Background
In this season of Church history there has been an emergence of ministries called “Apostolic Networks”. More and more notice is being taken of these networks around the Western world, although they have been operating without such definition or recognition in other nations for some time. It is also true that, coming out of the United Kingdom, probably over three dozen “Apostolic Streams,” as they are known there, have been operating for up to thirty five years. Can you remember the second verse of Delirious’s song: “Can you feel the mountains tremble?” It has a phrase, “when all the streams join as one river” referring to these different streams of the Church.
We in South Africa
This series of pamphlets is an attempt to clarify some of the concepts that will help us to understand an apostolic paradigm. May the Lord give us understanding in all things that we need to finish the task in these days.
2 The LORD shall send the rod of your strength out of Zion
3 Your people shall be willing in the day of your power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: you shall have the dew of your youth.
4 The LORD hath sworn, and will not repent, You are a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.
5 The Lord at your right hand shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath.
6 He shall judge among the nations
Acts 3:19 Repent therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.
20 And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you:
21 Whom the heaven must retain until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.
TOGETHER IN ONE IN CHRIST JESUS
It is an eternal purpose in God’s heart that all things should be gathered together in Christ. That has to start with the Church! Oh, but that also applies to us blacks and whites being brought together in one in Christ. God’s intention is “One New Man”, because God seeks for an expression of His heart through the unity and authority of the church operating as one new man.
Eph 4:1 “I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to have a walk worthy of the calling with which every saint is called”, what is this calling? He says that in order to fulfil the calling you should “live a life worthy” of it, “with all lowliness and gentleness with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”
And then he describes some aspects of this unity in the Spirit.
Eph 4:4 “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope, ...” There is not one coloured church, one black church, one Indian church, one white church. There is one body in Christ, there is “one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all us who is above all and in all and through all… For each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift.”
Eph 4:11 “And he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ till …”
This is how long these gift ministries are given; v11 tells us what was given, v12 why they were given, v13 how, or when they are given, until we all, that is black, white, coloured, Afrikaans, English, every tribe, every nation, every tongue, “till we all come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ”; what God is seeking is a perfect man in the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. “That we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, but speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head Christ.”
The apostles know that He wants Christ formed in you, but He also wants us to be formed in Christ.
Christ being formed in you is an individual thing. We have heard a lot of teaching about Christ being formed in you and “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”, “greater is He who is in me than he who is in the world”. But now the focus in God’s mind is to get Christ out into the individuals and then to bring the individuals back into Christ. I believe the interpretation of this today is that God is wanting a corporate Christ manifested in every town and city. The believers in the churches will be so united in fulfillment of these verses that together they present the manifold wisdom of God to the world. No double witness. No double standards.
That sounds an impossibility. Turn back to Eph 1: 9&10. God has intended and purposed to gather all things together in one in Christ in heaven and on earth. He’s going to do it.
I believe that what we are looking at, what God is telling us for the future of our lives is a step in that direction.
He is wanting a corporate man.
V15 “that speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head, Christ, from whom the whole body joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.”
1 Cor 12:12 “For as the body is one and has many members”, little fingers, thumbs, legs, arms, that all “the members of that one body being many are one body, so also is Christ.” That stretches my mind that God is looking at it corporately saying, “There’s Christ”. Many members working together. Let me just add this to it:
Matt 1:17 “The genealogy of Christ, the Son of David, the son of Abraham. So all the generations from Abraham to David are 14 generations, from David to the captivity in Babylon are 14 generations and from the captivity in Babylon
Five-fold ministry was given to mature the saints until we all grow into the perfect man. That is what God is seeking. He is seeking the perfect man. I want to talk briefly on four points about this man.
- The Heart
- The Faith
- The Knowledge
- The Stature
EPHESIANS 4:1 THE HEART OF THIS CHRISTLIKE BODY
A heart of lowliness and gentleness. Take a little time to read John 13:13. “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hand, knowing that He had come from God, and knowing that He was going to God….”
If you knew that the Father had given all things into your hands, that you had come from heaven from the Father, and you knew that you would return to the Father, don’t you think there would be security in that? Knowing what you’ve got, knowing where you’re from, and knowing where you are going. Jesus had such security that, in fact, He was quite apart from and different from his disciples sitting around Him at the last supper.
Because they hired a hall in which to have the Passover; because it was not the house of the host, with the host having servants there, they forgot something at the last supper. When they all came in to eat the Passover together, they had forgotten to organize a servant to meet them at the door to wash the street dust from their feet.
Jesus noticed that when supper was ended. Knowing that God had given all power and authority into His hands, knowing that He came from God and was going back to God, He laid aside his garment, took a towel, girded it around his waist. Taking a basin full of water He washed every person’s feet. What God is looking for in this corporate church, is servant leadership. Leaders who will serve the people, not leaders who will Lord it over the people, (1 Peter 5 or Matt 20). God wants leaders who will serve in lowliness, and who will serve one another.
There is security that enables you to serve in humility without you feeling - “Hey man! That guy is going to feel that he is better than me!” It doesn’t even enter your mind.
EPHESIANS 4:2 FORBEARING IN LOVE
Jonathan and David loved one another so much that they made a covenant with one another. 1 Samuel 18:1 says Jonathan loved David as his own soul. They make a covenant, and Jonathan starts to work out his part of the covenant when Saul makes plans to kill David. Jonathan brings news to David so that David can escape Saul’s wrath. They were in covenant, he loved David enough to protect him against his own father who was King.
You know the story, how that though Jonathan was in covenant with David, David was anointed to be King, and was exiled from the court. In the wilderness, Jonathan chose to stay with his father. He stayed with the wrong flow of what God was doing in the earth. The anointing had left Saul, but Jonathan chose to stay with him because he was the next in line to be King. But God chose the love of a covenant heart in David.
When he hears the news that Jonathan and Saul are dead, David weeps for Jonathan and for Saul with a heart of love, forbearing with them, just as he had through all of his days of exile, when Saul hunted him, when he had the opportunity to kill Saul and didn’t because he honoured the anointed of God.
David cries out and says, “Oh is there no one of Saul’s household that I can show the kindness of my heart to for the sake of Jonathan” and he finds Mephibosheth. You know the story. Read it, it is a beautiful story of covenant love. We are going to be tested because there are times when we have to part our ways from people, and it is so easy to close our hearts to people. If we are going to have this kind of love that was in the heart of this man, we have to be willing to keep our hearts open to receive and to give. It’s so easy, when you part way with people of different vision, or out of disagreement or whatever reason, to close your heart to people and to stop receiving and giving to people. But this kind of covenant heart of love is willing to keep receiving and giving to people what Christ would give to them through you. So the heart of the man is a covenant heart.
Covenant Relationships raise our tolerance level if we are in the body of Christ; there is a deposit of God in our brother or sister. Let’s look for what it is, let’s look for what Christ wants to say to us through them. We’ve got to raise our tolerance level, we have to stretch our comfort zones. We do it so differently in our churches, and we go into another church and they do it differently and we say this is not the right place for me. Let’s stretch our comfort zones and include them in our heart.
EPHESIANS 4:13 THE FAITH OF THE MAN
This man has a characteristic, (Eph 4:13) “till we all come to the unity of the faith”. The faith of the man. Pick up one aspect: Col 1:27 “Christ in you the hope of glory, Him we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus”, to this end - to what end? That he wants to present every one of you perfect in Christ! “I labour, striving according to His working which works in me mightily.”
Don’t we give up on people so easily? We give up too easily. When we come into this maturity, we will have the kind of mature faith that can believe for every one of them, even if they have bad-mouthed us; even if they walk away from us; even if they compete with us. However, we will have faith for every man to be presented perfect in Jesus Christ. The kind of faith that this man has got is what Jesus wants.
Heb 12:2 “Who for the joy set before him endured the cross despising the shame.”
Isaiah 53:11 “He shall see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied.”
What is the difference between a copier and a creator? A creator starts with a picture in his mind, works with the raw material knowing what the end is intended to be. A copier tries to copy something and gets disappointed when he can’t get it right. He can’t get it exactly the same as the creator.
The creator looks at you and I and He sees already in us not just the potential of what we can be in Christ, but he already sees us like that, completed. And every contact He has with us, everything that He says and does in our lives, everything that He tells us is to guide us towards that full blueprint that He’s got, of what you are to be conformed to - His image, the image of His dear Son.
He’s got faith for you.
EPHESIANS 4:13 THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE MAN
“Till we all come to the unity of the faith and to the knowledge of the Son of God.”
The Book of Isaiah talks of the servant of God, eg Chapters 42, 49 and 52 speak about God’s servant as “My servant”. I always knew that they were prophetic about Christ, but now I’m beginning to see that they are talking about a reflection of what Christ wants in the Church. He wants us to be like Christ.
Isaiah 11:1 “There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, (Jesus Christ). A branch shall grow out of His roots, (The Church).” If you do a word study of the branch it ends in the Old Testament, and its picked up by Jesus in John 15: “I am the vine you are the branches”. Paul picks it up in Romans 11 and says, “if you were a wild olive branch grafted into the true vine then if the root is holy then the tree is holy.”
“There shall come forth a rod from the stem of Jesse”, that’s Jesus, “and a branch shall grow out of His roots”, growing out of Jesus, the branch which is the church shall come forth.
V2 “The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him.” Upon Whom? The Rod or the Branch? Both the Rod AND the Branch!
“The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.”
Let me tell you it is not enough to have revelation knowledge about the Word, have you heard that phrase? You’ve got to have revelation knowledge, revelation knowledge is just information. After you get information, there has got to be interpretation, and after interpretation there’s got to be application and manifestation, in order to make a difference in the world.
It’s not good enough to have revelation knowledge, that is why God says that upon the Rod and the Branch there is going to be “the Spirit of Wisdom and Understanding, the Spirit of Counsel and Might, the Spirit of Knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.”
Let me put it to you in this way. With wisdom there has got to be counsel and there’s got to be knowledge. Why? Because knowledge brings you revelation, counsel gives you interpretation of what God is saying and interpretation allows you to make application of what God has said, that is where the word of wisdom comes in. It’s not good enough to have knowledge, you have to have wisdom.
It is like getting a word of knowledge from the Lord about something but you and I so easily blow it, and offend that person, and they run away from God. Why? Because we didn’t wait for the interpretation and for the application by wisdom. How do you minister to that person? How do you say to a person, “You’ve got a Spirit of adultery, or you’ve got a spirit of this or that”? I have bitten my tongue many times because I lacked discretion and I lacked wisdom, in applying the knowledge I’ve got from the Holy Spirit.
Let me put it to you in this way. With wisdom there has got to be counsel and there’s got to be knowledge. Why? Because knowledge brings you revelation, counsel gives you interpretation of what God is saying and interpretation allows you to make application of what God has said, that is where the word of wisdom comes in. It’s not good enough to have knowledge, you have to have wisdom.
It is like getting a word of knowledge from the Lord about something but you and I so easily blow it, and offend that person, and they run away from God. Why? Because we didn’t wait for the interpretation and for the application by wisdom. How do you minister to that person? How do you say to a person, “You’ve got a Spirit of adultery, or you’ve got a spirit of this or that”? I have bitten my tongue many times because I lacked discretion and I lacked wisdom, in applying the knowledge I’ve got from the Holy Spirit.
Now what is the effect of this kind of knowledge going to have on that man?
Isa 11:3 “His delight is in the fear of the Lord, And he shall not judge by the sight of His eye, nor decide by the hearing of His ears.“
It's amazing how many people have come to me as a leader to tell me: “Do you know what this person is going to do?” “Do you know what that person has said?” “Do you know what that person has done?” I make it a habit never to act on hearsay. If you start acting on what other people have said you are going to be running around in circles that become ever diminishing.
I want to tell you, that is why the book of Proverbs deals with backbiting and tale-bearing. It says that where there is no talebearer strife ceases. Where there is no wood on the fire the fire goes out. Never react on something someone tells you of what another person has done or said, don’t decide on the hearing of the ears. Get before God and say “God what shall we do about it”.
Look at what David said in Psalm 12 about backbiting; “They were risen up against me, the things they were saying they wanted to eat me alive but I waited on the Lord.” We need to learn God's ways to deal with these things.
Ps 103:7 “God made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the children of Israel
When the Holy Spirit comes down in our meetings and does a miracle, or calls someone out and changes their life with a prophetic word, every one of us would know God had done a work amongst us. It would be difficult for us to say that it is not God. We would all know. The children of God knew when God had performed miracles, signs and wonders in their midst. The children of Israel
And this is the kind of knowledge of the man that God is looking for - knowledge that does not just know the works of God but that knows the ways in which God deals with His people.
That does not depend on the last thing the Holy Spirit told you. Now here we have to find balance, hearing the voice of the Spirit and obeying it. Acting on the basis of the wealth, not only of information, not only of revelation but of experiential knowledge. Knowing by experience the way that God does things. Every time you get a word, if you do not check it against the Word of God, the Scriptures, and if you don’t check it against godly experience then you can go off on a tangent and miss God when you thought you heard Him.
God reveals His Word to us so that we may know His mind but when you have heard it once or twice from Him then He expects you to get in the habit of doing it that way. Do you understand why? Because He wants the Christ-nature to be formed in you, and that includes thinking the way God thinks about things - developing the mind of Christ in us. So when you get a new Word that contradicts what God did last time, don’t just say, “Hey, we’re going to change the way we do things!” Check it out and test the word to see if it is God or not. God may well be saying something new, but it may equally well be that you misheard or misinterpreted something, or your understanding was incomplete. We have to know the condition of our heart when we are evaluating these things, because sometimes our own moods can affect the way we see and interpret things.
This is what God gets sick with: in Jeremiah 23, the prophets prophesied the imagination of their own hearts, they never heard from the Lord, but they said, “Thus said the Lord.” Where did they get their revelation from, from their own imagination, their own heart.
God also gives us the security of team-work. We can be accountable to trusted leaders. They can help us check out the things we are hearing, to help us so that we won’t miss God. But who are our leaders to be accountable to. Sometimes they get things that the local elders can’t help with. Who do they go to then? Thank the Lord, they can go to their peers in the team of ministry that they work with at that level. All of these experiences have the purpose of developing the “mind of Christ” in us.
EPHESIANS 4:13 THE STATURE OF THE MAN
“Till we all come to the unity of faith, to the knowledge of the Son of God to a perfect man, to the fullness of the measure of the stature of man, Christ Jesus.”
How many of you know what the writer of Hebrews mentions are the principles of the doctrine of Christ? These are essential principles to bring forth the life of Christ in us, but they are just the beginning!
Hebrews 6 gives us the Foundation Principles of the Doctrine of Christ
- Repentance from Dead Works
- Faith towards God
- Doctrine of Baptisms
- Doctrine of Laying on of Hands
- Eternal Judgment
- Resurrection of the Dead
- Going on to Perfection
In many churches today you see the first four demonstrated in different ways.
Repentance from Dead Works: to serve the Living God.
Faith towards God: for greater things than we have had in past generations.
Baptism in Water: into the Body of Christ; in the Holy Spirit; and in Suffering, (we don’t want too much suffering nowadays.)
Laying on of Hands: Ministering Healing, Ministering the Gifts, etc.
ETERNAL JUDGMENT
But start looking for the principle of Eternal Judgment - where do you find it? Peter said that judgment must begin in the house of God. If God is going to reserve judgment to the Great White Throne of Judgement, He is never going to have standards to raise in this world which He will have to judge the world by. God always raises a standard for people to see what He wants before He does anything to bring judgment.
Look at the precedents in scripture:
- God sent Lot, righteous Lot, to preach to
- God sent Noah to preach to his generation;
- God sent Jonah to
- God sent John the Baptist to the nation of
- God sent Jesus Christ.
God always raises the standard in the earth before He judges them. What is God going to send before He judges the world? He will raise up the Corporate Christ as an example of His standard.
RAISING THE STANDARD
Was it Billy Graham who said: “God will have to apologize for Sodom and Gomorrah if He doesn’t judge America
God will only judge America
That is why the “Church of the Living God” is called “the Pillar and the Ground (Foundation) of Truth!” Our work in the ministry is to lay a foundation of truth in the lives of our people so that our lifestyle will be like a pillar that holds up the truth of God for all to see. Now, today, the Word is becoming flesh again in us! The Word of God which is eternal, which is “forever settled in heaven”, is being received by those who believe it, “not just as the word of man but, as it is in truth, as the Word of God, which works mightily in those who believe!”
The local Church is the representative of God’s Kingdom that raises the standard in its community. What an awesome responsibility! What an awesome opportunity! To see the Lord accomplish what He has promised through us, “to make all men see this mystery”, “to demonstrate to the principalities and powers in heavenly places the manifold wisdom of God, by the Church!”
That is why the Apostle Peter is concerned that we should get our house in order.
1 Peter 4:17 “The time has come for judgment to begin in the house of God.”
Especially in disputes between believers, we are able to bring wise godly judgment.
1 Corinthians 6:7ff “Why do you take these matters before the law courts, do you not know that you shall judge the world, do you know that you shall judge angels, surely the least among you should be able to judge these simple matters.”
God is going to judge angels by the Church.
God is going to judge angels by the Church.
But the most awesome responsibility is that we are raising the standard of Christ for all to see, for there will be a day in which all who did not turn to Him will be judged.
Acts 17:31 “God has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained, He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.”
I want to tell you just as Jesus Christ was raised from the dead as an example to the world in the early part of the first century, God is raising from the dead a vibrant church in the image of the corporate Christ to be seen in every town, in every nation of the world. That corporate man is you and I, being drawn together in Christ, in right relationships. First it will start with the leaders, then it will happen with the people. The truth is you and I are part of what God wants to do in these end-times, He wants to build us together in the right place. This is the task of the gift ministries, to help fit us together into the corporate Christ, with wise judgment.
OUR PRIESTLY OFFICE
The Psalmist had a glimpse of this in Psalm 133:
“Behold, how good and pleasant it is for the brethren to dwell together in unity. It is like the oil upon the heads that runs down the beard, even Aaron’s beard - down to the hem of hem of his garments - like the dew of Herman on the mountains of Judea - for there the Lord commanded His blessing, life forevermore.”
Aaron was the first high priest, the high priest had a nice big beard. The central part of the Psalm is the high priest preparing to go into his office of ministry with the anointing oil coming upon his head, flowing down the beard, and flowing down the robe. It is also a picture of the corporate Christ-church, anointed for its priestly ministry in the end times. It is a picture of the anointing coming down on the body of Christ: what we can call the corporate anointing. The corporate anointing is not just the Spirit moving in a meeting, it is not the same thing, it is the anointing that comes upon the Corporate Christ church.
If you look at this picture of the High Priest, standing with his robes on, you will see that the first time he was dressed in this robe, (Exodus 28), it was Moses who put the robe upon him, but after that he would put the robe upon his body himself, with his own hands. Then Moses anointed his head with oil and it ran down his head, his beard and his robe.
Let me interpret the picture for you: Christ is the head of the body;
The anointing comes over the head of the body;
The robe speaks of the Priestly office that the church takes on;
Everything that is under the robe where the anointing runs down to the hem of the garment, everything that is covered by the robe is under the anointing.
How does the robe get put on to cover the body? Did you notice what he used?
The hands are extensions from the shoulders of the body.
The hands are a picture of the five-fold ministry.
The apostle is represented by the thumb that can touch all of the other ministries. The teacher can get through to us through the ear, like our little finger.
The pastor is the one who is married to the flock, represented by the ring-finger.
The evangelist is like the longest finger, the one who reaches out furthest to the lost.
The prophet is the one who pinpoints things, like the index finger, to bring correction and direct us, showing Gods heart for His people.
The apostle is the one who can touch all the ministries as the anointing comes upon him to do it. And he has grace to govern all the offices.
Notice that it is not just one finger that puts the robe on. It needs two ministries to put it on.
The hands are an extension of what the head wants done to the body, but they are extensions to the shoulders, the robe rests and hangs on the shoulders.
Is 9:6 And the government shall be upon His shoulders.
God is extending the government of Christ into the Church, through the five fold ministries, to see that every person is brought under the robe for ministry in the last days.
Every one who is in their right place in the body will come under the corporate anointing. Eph 4:12 “for the equipping of the saints.” Equipping (katartismos in Greek), also means “fitting the bones together” after a compound fracture so that they can knit together and grow strong. That is part of the work the ministries do. Sometimes it is painful, but if done with wisdom it will bring us to maturity.
HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE?
Let us co-operate with the ministries that God has given us in the last days. Let’s work with one another to see the body raised up and let God have what He is seeking for:
Ezekiel 22:30 And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none.
All it will take is for this generation of saints to be captured by the vision of Our Lord Jesus Christ to be our supreme desire. We want Him to be our foundation, our supreme overlord, our life, our all. We want to live and move and have our being in Him. We want to be prepared by Our Friend – Holy Spirit – to be living in the sanctified freedom that Jesus has given us – so cleansed and devoted to Him that we can be filled with all of the fullness of Christ!
SHALL WE RISE UP TO BE THE ONE NEW MAN THAT THE LORD FINDS IN THIS GENERATION?
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