God’s Eternal Purpose Being Realized through the Local Churches

For the Display of God’s Manifold Wisdom to the Principalities and Powers

The local church also displays God’s manifold wisdom to His enemies, the satanic principalities and powers. When the unsearchable riches of Christ are dispensed into chosen sinners, making them sons of God in His life, God is able to have a rich display of all that He is in the local churches. This exhibition shames all the evil powers. This fact is wonderfully expressed by Witness Lee:

We have seen that the issue of the dispensing of the divine Trinity is the Body of Christ for God’s full expression. God made a plan, an arrangement, to carry out His dispensing, and this arrangement was hidden in Himself as a mystery. In the New Testament age, He revealed this mystery to His apostles, making them stewards with a stewardship to distribute the untraceable riches of Christ. Their distributing work is the divine dispensing. To distribute the riches of Christ is to dispense the divine Trinity into God’s chosen people that God may have a church for the exhibition of His multifarious wisdom to the angelic rulers and authorities in the heavenlies, especially to Satan and his angels. On the one hand, God made a plan, a divine arrangement. On the other hand, He commissioned His apostles with a stewardship to carry out His plan to distribute all the riches of Christ.

The apostles distribute the riches of Christ by preaching the unsearchable riches of Christ to the God-chosen sinners. These chosen sinners, after hearing the good news and believing in the Lord Jesus, received Him as their Savior, Redeemer, forgiveness, justification, and reconciliation. They were regenerated to participate in the divine life as one item of the unsearchable riches of Christ. When these believers come together, outwardly, they are the called-out congregation, the church. Inwardly, they are the organic issue of the Triune God to be the Body of Christ.

For these new believers to hear only the initial preaching of the riches of Christ so that they could receive Christ and become His members is not complete. This is why the apostles continued to teach the truth to the saved members of Christ. The apostles established them and raised them up as local churches in different localities. After establishing the churches, the apostles then returned to perfect the saints that they might grow in the life of Christ in order to participate in the work of the ministry to build up the Body of Christ. The apostles must minister more and more riches of Christ into the living members of the Body of Christ in order to perfect them.

(Witness Lee, Body of Christ, 35-36)

These portions from Witness Lee’s book, The Body of Christ, point out that Satan is thoroughly put to shame when local churches are established through the complete ministry of Christ. As God’s people are perfected through the continual dispensing of the riches of Christ in the local churches, the Body of Christ is strengthened organically.

God’s Purpose

Corporate Body

Displaying God’s Wisdom

Satan’s Defeat

Expressing God through Sonship

Heading Up All Things

Bibliography

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