The Building up of the Church

an excerpt from Watchman Nee

12/28/2007

The building up of the church includes oneness and harmony. This harmony can be realized only by life. Therefore, the church must be built up through our experience of Christ as life. Then in this life we will have light, and under this light spontaneously every one of us will be controlled and will be one. We cannot simply adopt a saying, “Let us build up a New Testament church.” It is not adequate merely to come together to study the New Testament and learn certain matters from the four Gospels, the Acts, the Epistles, and Revelation to work out a formula for the scriptural way, the New Testament way, to have a proper church. We can never work out the building up of the church in this way. We may have the formula, but we will not have the life. We will not know how to be filled with Christ, live by Him, take Him as our life, experience Him, and be dealt with by the cross. In this case, even if we have a scriptural formula, we still will fight with one another. Merely to have a formula does not work. Suppose, however, that by the mercy of God our eyes have been opened to see that God’s economy is to work Himself into us as life, that we have to love Him, take Him as life, fellowship with Him, be filled with Him, and live by Him. Then spontaneously within us and among us there will be light. There will be no arguments, division, fighting, or jealousy. There will be only the oneness under the control of the light of life. We will have oneness, and this oneness will be the real building up. By this oneness, that is, by this building, God will head up all things in Christ.