IV.　The function of the Body is to express Christ—Eph. 1:22-23:

A.　The universally great Christ needs a Body to be His fullness, His expression—Eph. 1:22-23:

1.　The fullness of Christ issues from the enjoyment of the riches of Christ—Eph. 3:8.

2.　Through the enjoyment of Christ's riches, we become His fullness to express Him:

a.　The fullness of Christ is Christ experienced by us and constituted into us.

b.　The objective riches become the subjective fullness, and this fullness is the Body of Christ.

B.　The Body of Christ is the extension and continuation of Christ on earth.

C.　The purpose of us believers being members one of another in the Body of Christ is that we would live Christ and express Him together—Rom. 12:5.

V.　The reality of the Body of Christ is a group of God's redeemed who have been made God, the God-men, by God and who live not by themselves but by another life, which is the processed and consummated Triune God—Gal. 2:20; Phil. 1:19-21a; 3:10:

A.　The reality of the Body of Christ is a corporate living by the perfected God-men, who are genuine men but who do not live by their own life but by the life of the processed and consummated Triune God, whose attributes are expressed through their virtues—Phil. 1:19-21a.

B.　The reality of the Body of Christ is a living by all the God-men, united, mingled, and constituted together with God by mingling humanity with divinity and mingling divinity with humanity.

C.　The reality of the Body of Christ is a corporate living of the conformity to the death of Christ through the power of resurrection—Phil. 3:10.

VI.　The Body of Christ is in the resurrection life of Christ—John 11:25; Acts 2:24; Rev. 1:18; 2:8; Phil. 3:10:

A.　The reality of the Body of Christ requires the believers to be absolutely in the resurrection life of Christ.

B.　To be in resurrection means that our natural life is crucified and that the God-created part of our being is uplifted in resurrection to be one with Christ in resurrection—Rom. 6:4-6:

1.　God's way of salvation is to terminate us by the cross of Christ and to resurrect us by His Spirit of life.

2.　We do not experience crucifixion, burial, and resurrection alone, but experience them with Christ by being in Him—Rom. 6:4-6; Gal. 2:20a; Eph. 2:6.

C.　When we live not by our natural life but by the divine life within us, we are in resurrection; the issue of this is the Body of Christ—Gal. 2:20a; Rom. 8:10, 6, 11; 12:4-5.

VII.　The Body of Christ is a new creation—Gal. 6:15; 2 Cor. 5:17; Eph. 2:15; 4:24:

A.　God in His economy desires to produce a new creation out of the old creation; therefore, as believers we must be thoroughly and absolutely renewed so that we may be the new creation of God and for God—Rom. 12:2; 2 Cor. 4:16; Eph. 4:23-24:

1.　The old creation is our old man in Adam, our natural being by birth, without God's life and nature.

2.　The new creation is the new man in Christ, our being that is regenerated by the Spirit, having God's life and nature wrought into it, having Christ as its constituent, and having become a new constitution—Eph. 4:24; John 3:6, 36; 2 Pet. 1:4; Col. 3:10-11.

3.　The new creation is accomplished by the old creation passing through death and resurrection.

B.　The Body of Christ has nothing to do with the old creation and has no use for anything from the old creation but takes only that which issues from Christ.

C.　We need to be transferred from the realm of the old creation into the realm of the new creation to be the new man to fulfill God's eternal purpose—to consummate the New Jerusalem—2 Cor. 5:17; Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10; Rev. 21:2.

VIII.　The work of the cross consummates with the Body and ushers us into the Body—Eph. 2:16:

A.　The work of the cross goes as far as the Body of Christ and consummates with the Body:

1.　The knowledge of the cross brings us to the knowledge of the Body of Christ.

2.　Anything that is not a part of Christ frustrates our inward knowledge of the Body of Christ.

B.　The cross leads us to the Body, and the cross operates in the sphere of the Body.

C.　Only when our self life has been utterly dealt with by the cross are we able to touch the reality of the life of the Body and come to know the Body—Matt. 16:24-25; Rom. 8:13; 12:4-5.