Message Title: Ministering Life for the Body
every genuine ministry must have the element of life, with the goal of building up the Body. every genuine minstry must be in life, with life, by life, and result in the building up of the Body of Christ.
how much life do we have? this is manifested how much oneness we have in the church. Life is what we need. but we also need to how to handle this life, how to impart this life into one another.
1 John 5:14 And this is the boldness which we have toward Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.
1 John 5:15 And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him.
1 John 5:16 If anyone sees his brother sinning a sin not unto death, he shall ask and he will give life to him, to those sinning not unto death. There is a sin unto death; I do not say that he should make request concerning that.
1 John 5:17 All unrighteousness is sin, and there is sin not unto death.
verses 14-17 indicates that not only we have the eternlai life and enjoy it, but also that we can minister this life to other members of the Body. the eternal life within us can overcome death both in ourselves and in other members of the church. To minister life is to impart life. when we have the surplus of life, we can minister from this supply to others. when we receive the Son of God, we receive life. the Lord Jesus came as the first minister of life. when we believe into the Lord, receive this life, we need to cooperate with this life, to allow this life to increase and abund within us, then we will have the surplus of this life to minister to others. how do we get this life to mutilply to have the surplus? if we look at the physical life, how does a child become an adult? it is by the feeding of bread and milk, but also the child's life has something discharged from his being, which is called metabolism.
verse 14 speaks of prayer in the fellowship of eternal life. the prayer that is according to God's will indicates that the praying one is abiding in the fellowship of the divine life and is also abiding in the Lord Himself, and thus he is truly one with the Lord. after receiving the divine life, we abid in the Lord and are one with Him in our praying to God in His name, and we become the chanels of the life to flow.
the ministry of life is to minister as life the Christ whom we have experienced. the ministry comes out by the working of the cross; it is by the way of the cross that we have the riches of Christ as life to minister to others. How much life and how much reality of the riches of Christ we can minister depends upon how much revelation we have received and how much we have suffered for what has been revealed to us. Do not belittle any complication or difficulty in our life. These are all the oppotunities the Lord has measured to us for us to have the surplus of life so we can become chanels of life.
Romans 4:17 (As it is written, “I have appointed you a father of many nations”) in the sight of God whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls the things not being as being.
John 11:25 Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes into Me, even if he should die, shall live;
if we would minister life, we need to know, experience, and gain God as the God of resurrection. if God is not the God of resurrection to us, we have no way to minister life to others. this God of resurrection is working through the cross to terminate us, to bring us to an end, so that we will no longer trust in ourselves but in the God of resurrection. the killing of the cross results in the manifestation of resurrection life. the putting to death of Jesus destroys the natural man, the outer man, and the flesh, with the result that the inner man is given the opportunity to develop and be renewed to live out the resurrection life. All the work that the Lord is doing on us is to destroy our outer, natural man so that we can live out the life of Christ from within us.
Romans 6:4 We have been buried therefore with Him through baptism into His death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so also we might walk in newness of life.
Romans 6:5 For if we have grown together with Him in the likeness of His death, indeed we will also be in the likeness of His resurrection,
Remaining in the death of Christ and being conformed to His death is a profound principle of the Christian life. When we remain in the death of Christ, we experience the power of Christ's resurrection. The more we die with Chrsit in this way, the more His resurrection power will be manifested in us and the more we will be able to minister life to the Body of Christ. the reality of this resurrection is the Spirit Himself. when we turn to this Spirit in the midst of our struggling, our sufferings and our difficulties, the Spirit as the reality of resurrection will supply us and enable us to pass through the situation, and we will be a bit more conformed to the death of Christ.
1 Corinthians 12:26 And whether one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or one member is glorified, all the members rejoice with it.
1 Corinthians 12:27 Now you are the Body of Christ, and members individually.
according to the teaching of the Bible, there is something called the consciousness of the Body of Christ. the consciousness of the Body of Chrsit comes from the enjoyment of Christ. Christ is the Head of the Body, so when we enjoy Christ, we enter into the feeling of Christ as the Head, who causes us to be conscious of the Body. the consciousness of the Body of Christ is the sense of Christ as life within us. The Body of Christ is universal, the life within us is universal, and the sense of the Body is universal. As members of the Body of Christ, we need to have the consciousness of the Body and a feeling of the Body. If we have the consciousness of the Body of Christ and care for the Body, we will take the Body as the rule in our thoughts and actions.