“Jesus Christ - the visible manifestation of Himself by the 
              Church.”

For the past few weeks, we have looked at Jesus Christ as the only reason for the existence of the Church.

First, it was in “Jesus only”, revealed in His glory, at His transfiguration before His disciples on the mountain.

Then, we also saw “Jesus only” as the holy garment of the Church, its ‘garment of righteousness’.

In both of these facets, we saw Jesus Christ, revealed as Son of God and Son of Man, as the One Who stands in the midst of His Church, in the glory of His Person.

Tonight, let us continue by looking at Jesus Christ as the only visible manifestation of Himself by the Church.

His Life is the Life, from Whom the Church draws its character, its sustenance, and as the One and Only true Light Who is the Light of the world (John 1:4): “In Him was the Life; and the Life was the Light of men.”

With this tremendous mystery of divine Glory in its midst, the Church has become the qualitative witness of the Reality of His Person in its midst.

The spiritual value of Christ, Christ in His Person as the Son of God and Son of Man, is what God is safeguarding in and through the Church.

Guarding this witness of the Light of His divine Glory is no small, insignificant task for the Holy Spirit of God.

He is guarding it through His ministry in the Church.

This is its truly exalted Treasure - it is the only Treasure worth guarding.

For the Lord Jesus is the sum of all divine thoughts and plans. 

He is the supreme expression of this one thought of God.

God could say with all authority and assurance: “This is My Beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased; listen to Him.”

He represented Him so perfectly, so fully, so adequately, and so truly, that it was possible for the Lord Jesus to say, “He that has seen me has seen the Father.” (John14:9)

Here is God in the Person of His Son. 

Having been entrusted by Him to be the means of carrying out this witness, the Church is compelled to see the seriousness and the import of its witness.

And, it seeks, therefore, in earnestness and in humbleness of one heart, His divine mind for carrying out this trust. 

In finally ‘seeing’ this, the individual members of the Church will each be seeking to be the true representation of Christ in His Person.
 
But how many ‘see’ Him this way today?

How many really ‘saw’ Him while He walked among the people?

Even the disciples did not really ‘see’ Him until after His resurrection and, more fully, after His ascension.

And this was in spite of Peter’s declaration of “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” (Matt.16:16)

He was not fully perceived in His Person then, just as He was not seen fully after His transfiguration.

It was only following the obvious ascension activities of the exalted Christ that they, in some altogether new way, came to see Him aright.

The Holy Spirit had broken open to them who this Person, Jesus, was after all.

And this is when they began to ‘see’ Him aright - who He was; the mystery of His Person was breaking down to them.

It was a breaking down based strictly on transforming faith in His ascended divine Life, by the faith of seeing that mysterious power at work through them, of seeing Him bringing about the full measure of Himself.

They were standing in the power of having had their eyes opened to a new revelation of Him.

It was a revelation of who He is and what He is, and a revelation that impacted them so much that they became the actual working expression of His Life.

Yes - that is the secret of all things - of how the Church is to be the visible representation of Him - in the working expression of His Life.

I know this has been said many times before and in many ways, but I like to say it again.

In Acts 2:36, you will notice the emphatic declaration by Peter: “Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ - this Jesus whom you have crucified.”

Peter is speaking here in response to the crowd’s inquiries concerning the coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.

They could reason that if that One, who recently has been crucified and buried, is really the living Lord today, doing what He is doing right now in His spiritual activity, then that crucifixion and burial was no ordinary thing.

That could not have been just a man being killed, martyred, for his beliefs.

If this is really so, they could not class Him amongst those who died because of their fanatical views or for insurrection attempts. 

If Jesus is really the Lord, now living and working, then this   is something bigger, much bigger than what could be imagined.

He must be the Christ; He must be the Savior; He must be the Son of God.

All that is involved if He is Lord now; and if they accepted and acknowledged Him as Lord, well, that included His Saviorhood.

Acts 2:21: “...Everyone who calls on the Name of the Lord 
           shall be saved.” was the good news they had        
           been given.  

But the Saviorhood was to be understood as something subsidiary to the Lordship.

After all, the Saviorhood of Christ is but a recovering thing in relation to His Lordship.

The Lordship was the eternal intention of God concerning Him.

The Saviorhood is in order to get back to the Lordship, to lead on to the recovery of the Lordship.

He can never be actually Lord until He has saved the inheritance of which He is the eternally designated Lord; but when He is Lord, it means that He is Savior in that He has already redeemed.

The Lordship is more than the Saviorhood.

And so, when we come on to God’s supreme ground - “has made Him a Prince and a Savior” (Acts 5:31) - then the way is open for God to take us right on, beyond conversion, beyond the infant stage of just being born from above, on to ‘growing up into Him in all things’, on to the fullness of Christ, on into the working expression of His Life.

This was to be realized in the truth that followed this announcement: “And we are witnesses of these things; and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey Him.” (verse 32)

Obeying Him implied Lordship.

So they put the full testimony there, where all the rest was included, and thus there was a wide open way for all God’s intention.

Wherever you look in the Sciptures, you find that it is His Lordship which is the secret of fullness.

It seems to me that is how everyone comes into His Church - through this revealing force of Life, divine Life available in His Person, and the expression of it.  

We can put it in any number of ways.

But it boils down to the one simple declaration: “He is Lord of all.” (Acts 10:36)

His Lordship is to see Him, the One Life, His Life, His Body in one Life, they - we - all together - one Body in His Person.

Once this is truly seen, the expression in the body is the expression of one life.

To see His Person is to see that one life that shows itself in a coordinated activity in the complement of the Church, the Church being the organism that is properly ordered in its expression of this one Life it has become.

In other words, there is something more than just being born from above.

There is something more than receiving the life of the Lord, as significant as that alone is.

This is the new life that each has been given for a very definite purpose in the Church. 

And that purpose is to bring the Church into the properly governed, and properly ordered, and properly regulated, and properly coordinated organism - which is Christ’s Body.

When we stop to think about it, we see that it goes beyond the mere existence of the Church.

It goes beyond its one mystical life.

I am speaking of the Church as a functioning organism.

Under the sovereign government of Christ as its Head, it becomes the practical part of the Church.

The governing, undercutting, re-establishing work of the Cross leads to that.

It leads to the government of Christ.

This makes way to that inward triumph of His Lordship.

It leads to seeing Jesus aright, and becoming the expression of Him.

In short, it is the summing up of all things in Him.

And that leads to the Church established, brought about by His power according to God’s thought into a properly ordered organism, practical in its function upon the earth.

When the Cross is that accomplished fact in each individual,  the Holy Spirit brings it right into the corporate Church.

There is where there is a wondrous revelation of who Jesus is.

All self-interest is gone, all rivalry has diappeared, because He is the focus of interest in all His fulness.

There is, then, this calling of the Church to live practically.

It finds that it is not particularly romantic in its life at all.

It is not necessarily a really, great public attraction at all - in fact, it is just the opposite since its demands are greater than the ordinary life.

It finds that each member has his own job, each one learns his individual spiritual lessons, each one suffers his own peculiar sufferings, each one carries his own special responsibilities, and each one goes through his days doing the things that need to be done each day without great pageantry, doing those things that belong to the ordinary person’s life.

But, as having been called to the Church, each lives on a higher level than ordinary persons.

And that cannot be done unless each is constituted by the Holy Spirit as part of the existing, mystical Church representing Christ’s fullness.

The Church, to live in this divine fullness which is reached  by a progressive and ever-increasing revelation of Christ, comes only by going into His depths during the ordinary things of life.

It is there where the revelation of the truth of Christ becomes the inwrought experience and knowledge of those who really mean business with God for His purpose. 

The Church is blessed with those who ‘see’ this, who ‘see’ its purpose of Christ, who ‘see’ the spiritual value that only Christ is, and who cooperate with the Sovereign Lord to safeguard this glory of Christ in the Church.

They are those who give themselves willingly in service to this one, magnificent thought of the Sovereign Lord.

To them, the question always is, not ‘What would Jesus do?’ in this situation or that one.

But the question always is, ‘Lord, how do you want to express yourself in this situation right now?’

They give willingly to Him - give themselves as the decreasing vessel for the increasing Christ.

This is what the Church must look toward - always, always - the increase of Christ expressed in its midst, He - the living Message which makes the Scriptures speak to the heart.

This is how His testimony is safeguarded in the Church.

It seeks the glory of Christ for His sake alone.

Our agenda, as ordinary men, is to try to change the world until it can properly take care of itself.

And that is alright, in so far as a perfectly human project goes.

But the Church is to remember that that is not God’s agenda.

God’s agenda is to change us so that He can bring all things together in Christ Who desires to continue His work through the Church brought about by His transformations. 

The Church does not build a kingdom; it simply witnesses to the fact of God’s kingdom upon the earth.

And when it does this, it will appear full of glory in the
kingdom that He has built.  

It then is the anticipation and sign of the perfect fellowship of love that moves forward to the end time to come, bent on guarding the working expression of His Life, that visible manifestion of Himself by the Church.

In closing, let me read the following Scripture passages:

Col.2:19: “...holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God.”

2.Cor.3:2-6: “You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men;
being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts.
And such confidence we have through Christ toward God.
Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God,
who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”

2.Cor.4:5-6: “For we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your bond-servants for Jesus’ sake.
For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”