The Normal Christian Church Life (#3) - Chapter One

Chapter One: "Apostles"

In this chapter Watchman Nee goes to great lengths to help the reader understand the calling and role of the apostle, both in the New Testament and in post-biblical church life. Although the teaching he gives on apostleship is directed to those who have this commission on their lives, and although many of those reading this may not have this calling, I feel it's important to have a general understanding of the vastly important gift that the "apostle" is to the church, particularly in light of the direction the Lord seems to be taking His people. This blog posting will be a simple overview of Nee's in-depth covering of this topic...

First Nee distinguishes between THE Apostle Jesus, and the twelve apostles who were chosen by Jesus to be with Him in His earthly ministry, and the apostles chosen and sent by the Holy Spirit that have served the Church throughout church history: "The first Apostle is unique; there is only One. The twelve apostles are also in a class by themselves; there are only twelve. But there is another order of apostles, chosen by the Holy Spirit, and as long as the building up of the Church goes on and the Holy Spirit's presence on earth continues, the choosing and sending forth of this order of apostles will continue too."

He then gives the meaning of apostleship pointing out that it means to be sent by God. It isn't a volunteering to go but a divine sending that constitutes apostleship: "'A slave is not greater than his master, nor the apostle (Greek) greater than the one who sends him' (John 13:16). Here we have the definition of the term 'apostle.' It implies being sent out - that is all, and that is everything. However good human intention may be, it can never take the place of divine commission."

Nee goes on to say, "The special position occupied by apostles is obvious to any reader of the New Testament. They were specially commissioned of God to found churches through the preaching of the Gospel, to bring revelation from God to His people, to give decisions in matters pertaining to doctrine and government, and to edify the saints and distribute the gifts." Nee points out that the role of apostle is qualitatively different from the other ministry gifts listed by Paul in Ephesians 4 (apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors/teachers).

What is the evidence of apostleship? From II Corinthians 12:11,12 "we infer that the evidence of apostleship lies in a twofold power - spiritual and miraculous. Endurance is the greatest proof of spiritual power, and it is one of the signs of an apostle...it was also evidenced by the miraculous power he (Paul) possessed...power to change situations in the physical world is a necessary manifestation of our knowledge of God in the spiritual realm...To profess to be sent ones of the omnipotent God and yet stand helpless before situations that challenge His power, is a sad contradiction..."

Nee closes the chapter with his conviction based on Scripture that women as well as men can be called and commissioned as apostles.

In summary, this chapter shows how imperative it is that there be men and women who have had a divine encounter with the living Christ and a divine commissioning for planting churches (house churches) with the qualifications of endurance and miracles in order for the birthing and the explosive and continual growth of the church in all lands.

Frank Viola says the following about apostles: "Apostles were extra-local, traveling, itinerant church planters. They were highly gifted individuals who were sent by the Lord and by a particular church to plant and equip new churches. Apostles enabled the church by giving it birth, raising it up from the ground. They also helped it walk on its own two feet. Apostles grew up in an organic expression of church life as non-leaders before they were sent out to plant churches of the same kind. In other words, they first experienced what they would later establish elsewhere. And they always left the churches they planted on their own without installing a clergy or religious ritual."

"May God give us more people who have had a head-on collision with Jesus, who have caught a glimpse of His radiance, and who, as a result, can meld a group of people together with a living knowledge of their God in the face of Jesus Christ. May He raise up countless servants who can faithfully steward the divine mystery and turn it loose on this world." (F. Viola)

Amen and amen!

The Normal Christian Church Life (#2) - Introduction

In the introduction to "The Normal Christian Church Life", Watchman Nee makes the case for how God cares, not only about our inner life with Him (the wine) but also about the expression of our corporate life in Him (the wineskin). He argues that God has not left it up to human ideas and preferences to determine how we are to live and walk together as His people and that the Scriptures show us what God desires related to this. The following are quotes from his book:

"We trust the readers of this book will bear in mind that its messages...were intended exclusively for the inner circle of my most intimate associates in the work, but by request we share our findings with the wider circle of all our brethren. The book is something private made public...so we trust our readers will pardon anything that seems unsuited to the wider public.

...The cross and resurrection, the Christ-life, the lordship of Jesus, the corporate life of the Body, the ground of the Kingdom of God and His eternal purpose...have been the burden of our ministry. But God's wine must have a wineskin to contain it. In the divine pattern, nothing is left for man to decide. God Himself has provided the best wineskin for His wine, which will contain and preserve it without loss, hindrance, or misrepresentation. He has shown us His wine, but His has shown us His wineskin also.

...the practical outworking of those truths (concerning the spiritual life of the believer and the eternal purpose of God) in the Lord's service is by no means unimportant. Without that, everything is in the realm of theory, and spiritual development is impossible. So we would seek, by the grace of God, not only to pass on His good wine, but also the wineskin He has provided for its preservation...

God demands both inward and outward purity. To have the outer without the inner is spiritual death, but to have the inner without the outer is only spiritualized life. And spiritualization is not spirituality. The leading of the Spirit is precious, but if there is no example in the Word, then it is easy to substitute our fallible thoughts and unfounded feelings for the Spirit's leading...God cannot lead a man one way in Acts and another way today. In externalities the leading may vary, but in principle it is always the same; for God's will is eternal, therefore changeless.

If we would understand the will of God concerning His Church, then we must not look to see how He led His people last year, or ten years ago, or a hundred years ago, but we must return to the beginning, to the 'genesis' of the Church, to see what He said and did then...Acts is the 'genesis' of the Church's history...It is the divine standard and our pattern for all time...

Christianity is built not only upon precepts, but also upon examples. God has revealed His will, not only by giving orders, but by having certain things done in His Church...He knows we learn more easily by example than by precept. Examples have greater value than precepts, because precepts are abstract, while examples are precepts carried into effect.

In closing...this book is intended for those who, having learned something of the cross, know the corruption of human nature, and seek to walk, not after the flesh but after the Spirit...May none of my readers use this book as a basis for external adjustments in their work, without letting the cross deal drastically with their natural life."

The Normal Christian Church Life (#1) - Preface

Before going to the Preface of Watchman Nee's book, "The Normal Christian Church Life", I want to write a personal note about the topic of this book.

For most of my walk with the Lord, I have not given attention to church forms and models, thinking that it didn't matter. I was even taught that the book of Acts should not be used as a model for church life.

In the past few years, I've been slowly waking up to how important the way we "do church" is to God and am increasingly aware of how the beauty and power of Jesus is obscured by the way we "do church". So I've been on a journey related to this topic, and in my journey I have made the delightful discovery of this book by one of my favorite authors. Because I didn't have a grid before for this issue, I was not even aware that Watchman Nee had written about it (even though I thought I had read almost every book of his).

I'm sharing this as one who has been steeped in the present model of church life all of my life and as one who is very much in the beginnings of exploring this topic, so my intention is not to debunk what I've known all my life but rather to share a bit of my journey into a different mindset concerning the way we have traditionally practiced Christianity together as God's people. Of course, in the process of exploring the New Testament model of church life, questions about how we have done church for centuries will come up because of how far we have strayed from God's design. My desire is that what I share from Nee's book will help awaken desire to seek the Lord along these lines and to pray for Him to have His way in His Church as we draw near to His appearing.

The Holy Spirit in the Apostle Paul yearned over the Corinthian believers, jealous that nothing seduce them from pure devotion to one Husband (II Cor. 11:1-3). I pray that the same Spirit that burned in Paul will remove all that gets in the way of God's people seeing Jesus clearly in our day.

In this posting I will only cover the short preface. Next week I'll cover the longer Introduction. If you want to read along, this book is available in its entirety online and you can access it by searching in Google Books.

Preface

"This book as it now stands is a greatly abridged and slightly revised edition of the Chinese...Because of the vastness of the subject and the importance of its issues, I have not found it easy either to write or translate the book...

To do the book justice, the reader is asked to finish reading it before passing judgment. The book is not intended for anyone and everyone. It is for those who bear responsibility in the Lord's service. But more than this, it is for such as honestly and truly mean business with God...The book may test one's sincerity and honesty to no small degree... The whole matter will grow upon the reader and become clearer with relaxed contemplation...

By prayerful openness of heart, the Spirit of Truth should be given a chance, and then what is of Him will cause all our natural reactions to die away. What is set forth in these pages is no mere theory or teaching, but something we have actually tested out."

The Holy Spirit and Jesus

T. Austin-Sparks says,

"The ministry of the Holy Spirit has ever been to reveal Jesus Christ, and revealing Him, to conform everything to Him. No human genius can do this. We cannot obtain anything in our New Testament as a result of human study, research, or reason. It is all the Holy Spirit revelation of Jesus Christ. Ours is to seek continually to see Him by the Spirit, and we shall know that He - not a paper-pattern - is the Pattern, the Order, the Form. It is all a Person who is the sum of all purpose and ways. Everything (in the early church) then was a free and spontaneous movement of the Holy Spirit, and He did it in full view of the Pattern - God's Son."

Because the revelation of the beauty and power of Jesus is imperative to a whole and holy people of God, it shouldn't surprise us that the enemy works to obscure this revelation by whatever means he can; this includes the forms and patterns that we as His people have used.

In light of this, I want to spend the next few weeks looking at Watchman Nee's book, "The Normal Christian Church Life". If you are interested in the book, it is available at amazon.com or you can find it in its entirety online if you go to Google books.

God bless you this week and may His Spirit increasingly magnify Jesus to you as you seek to know Him!

Jesus Our All in All (#10)

This will be the final quoted selection from Frank Viola's book, "Jesus Manifesto". I highly recommend this book to anyone hungry to encounter Jesus...

A House of Figs (Part 2) - The Significance of Bethany

"When Christ entered this world, He was rejected in all quarters.

Consider His birth...
When He was about two years old...
When He began His ministry around the age of thirty...
When He sought entrance into Samaria...
He was also rejected by His own hometown, Nazareth...

In short, the Lord had no home on this earth (Luke 9:58)...There was only one exception. Throughout His entire earthly life, there was only one place on the planet where Jesus Christ was received with welcome...a tiny, obscure village called Bethany and the home of Mary, Martha, Lazarus, and Simon the leper - Jesus' friends.

From Genesis to Revelation, the forces of evil have disputed God's right to have a home on this earth. But from the beginning, God has wanted a 'house' - a place where He could rest and 'presence' Himself. This is what Bethany symbolizes - a home for Christ.

Following are some of the outstanding features of Bethany, all of which depict what the Lord is looking for in every city across this planet:

1. Bethany is the place where Jesus was utterly welcome (Luke 10:38)...(this) means giving Him the place of primacy...Jesus desires to be more than a guest. And His Father expects Him to be Master of the house...(this) also means receiving His entire ministry...and receiving all who belong to Him.

2. Bethany is the place where women and men are His disciples (Luke 10:39)...Mary is seated in the living space with the 12 disciples...Every first century rabbi had male disciples only...Jesus was the only teacher in antiquity to include women in His circle of followers...Many Christians are busy serving God...But how many know the secret of loving Christ, sitting at His feet, listening to Him share His heart, and allowing His life to be the source of their service?...Bethany is the place where both women and men sit at His feet and hear His word.

3. Bethany is the place where Christ is loved and befriended (John 11:3,11)...Jesus desires friends over servants...It is possible to serve without loving...In the cold temple of Jerusalem, God was served. But in the warmth of a Bethany home, He was loved and befriended.

4. Bethany is the place of death and resurrection (John 11:43,44)...Lazarus has died...there is crisis and suffering in Bethany. The cross sits at the very center of a body of believers that authentically gathers as the church...Note that Jesus waited four days after Lazarus' death before He raised him up. Death is hopeless. But four days after death is beyond hopeless....every crisis you face is a God-given opportunity to rediscover Christ in a bold new way...So be prepared to meet a God who seems to have the disturbing habit of leaving the scene when you most need Him...if you endure, outwaiting your impatience for His timing, Christ will roll the stone away and raise you from the dead. While you may stumble and fumble at the goal line, Jesus will eventually carry you across.

5. Bethany is the place of liberty from bondage (John 11:44). 'Take off the grave clothes and let him go.' Jesus dispenses His resurrection life...(but) Jesus did not unbind Lazarus. He told the crowd to do it. We discover two things here: First, Bethany is the place where God's people are set free from all bondages (religion, legalism, sin, the world, serving God in the flesh...) Second, we are the Lord's colleagues in setting others free.

6. Bethany is the place where the supreme worth of Christ is recognized (John 12:3). (Here we see) a family feasting in the presence of Jesus Christ. They are supping with Him and He with them. That's Bethany. It's a riveting picture of authentic church life...Mary has with her a sealed flask of precious perfume...She breaks open the seal and pours the perfume upon the Lord's head as though He were a king...Jesus interprets this act as preparation for His burial...the value of Mary's flask of perfume was about $46,000 USD...Mary's act demonstrates extravagant worship. Profuse loyalty. Larger-than-life beauty. Lavish love and devotion. In Bethany, Jesus is valued for His exceeding worth...The disciples were scandalized that Jesus had defended luxury over justice. Few things are as close to God's heart as helping the poor and the oppressed. But preeminently important is Jesus Christ Himself...

7. Bethany is the place where Christ is ministered to (Mark 11:11). (Between Bethany and Jerusalem, Jesus) hungered and saw a fig tree with leaves...and discovered that it lacked figs. When a fig tree puts forth leaves, it's shouting that it has figs. But not this tree...It was announcing that it possessed fruit, but it really had none at all...Strikingly, Bethany means 'house of figs.' According to many scholars, the fig tree represents Judaism - the religious establishment of Jesus' people. Israel was supposed to feed our Lord, but she did not...But thank God, there was a place that could feed Him. There was a people - a faithful remnant - who could give Him rest and satisfaction. That people and place was Bethany - the house full of figs.

8. Bethany is the place of ascension (Luke 24:50-52). He ascended from Bethany. When Christ ascended, He was enthroned as absolute head over all things. And all things were placed under His feet...Christians aren't saved from all troubles or delivered from all problems. But we have been given an ascendant life with which to rise above them...We are 'seated in heavenly places in Christ'...it means that we can walk with Jesus without feeling as if we have one foot on a banana peel and the other foot in a grave. It means we can leave the footprint of our Lord wherever we go.

The earth awaits such...May it come. And may our Lord have what His soul longs for - a Bethany in every town - a place where He can lay His head and breathe His breath."

AMEN!!

Jesus Our All in All (#9)

From part of chapter 9 of "Jesus Manifesto" by Frank Viola and Len Sweet:

"A House of Figs"

"God has chosen to vest all of power, authority, and life in the living Christ. However, God in Christ is only known fully in and through His church (Eph. 3:10).

The authentic Christian life, therefore, is not an individual pursuit. It's a corporate journey...Those who insist on flying life solo will be brought to earth with a crash. Thus Christ and His church are intimately joined and connected...You will never know the depths of Christ on your own. It matters not how intelligent, gifted, or spiritual you may be. It takes a functioning body to know Him fully...and to display His fullness. It's only by being vitally and organically connected with other members of the body in a living way that we experience the fullness of God (Eph. 3:16-19).

The church is Jesus Christ in corporate expression...Practically, this means that we know Jesus Christ through one another...We see Him, hear Him, touch Him, taste and smell Him through our sisters and brothers within whom He dwells. Genuine church life is born when groups of people are intoxicated with a glorious unveiling of their Lord. Jesus Christ is the only foundation upon which an authentic church can be built...

The calling of every person involved in church planting, then, is to build the ekklesia upon a ground-breaking revelation of the Son of God...May God give us more people who have had a head-on collision with Jesus, who have caught a glimpse of His radiance, and who, as a result, can meld a group of people together with a living knowledge of their God in the face of Jesus Christ. May He raise up countless servants who can faithfully steward the divine mystery and turn it loose on this world."

Amen and amen...this is our prayer, Lord, in these critical days of preparation before Your return.

Jesus Our All in All (#8)

Excerpts from chapter 8 of "Jesus Manifesto" by Frank Viola and Leonard Sweet:

The Forgotten Tree

"Jesus did not live by His own natural strength. Instead, He lived by the energy of His Father who indwelled Him...Therein lies the root of Jesus' amazing life.

We know that Jesus lived by His Father's life. But what about us fallen mortals?...The gospel teaches that just as Jesus couldn't do anything of Himself, we can't do anything of ourselves...We can try as hard as we wish to be like Christ, but the human effort will never touch the hem of that garment...The glory of the gospel is that we who are fallen, tarnished and marred have been invited to live our lives in the exact same way that Jesus lived His life: by an indwelling Lord...

What the Father was to Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ is to you. He's your indwelling Lord...But there is more. Because all the fullness of the Godhead was pleased to dwell in Christ, the Father and the Spirit also are pleased to dwell in you...allowing Him to live His life through you is one of the most freeing things that you can do.

(In the garden of Eden) God wanted humans to eat from the tree of life...(which) meant receiving the uncreated life of God into oneself...Today the tree of life is the Lord Jesus Christ.

Living by God's life is very different from living by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A person who is living by the tree of life doesn't say, 'Let me try to do good and avoid evil.' Instead, he allows the life of God to flow within and through him. He yields to the instincts, promptings, and energy of that God-life.

Religion gives people the notion that they have God under control. Religion says that we can understand God absolutely and completely...The Christian religion teaches that the Bible answers virtually every question that's brought to the sacred text. The problem with this...is that the true God cannot fit into anyone's box. God will always end up breaking out of our human expectations and understandings...

Yet many Christians have turned the Bible into a form of the knowledge of good and evil. They approach the Bible as raw material by which they gain control over their lives, so life can be more understandable and under control, less unnerving and unpredictable.

...The Pharisees' attempt to promote high moral values was based on the knowledge of good and evil. For this reason, the Lord Jesus - who had a reputation of being a 'friend of sinners' - constantly collided with the leaven-dispensing Pharisees.

Jesus pushed the boundaries of religion to their limits. He was also a fierce critic of the priestly temple system of His day...If you examine Jesus' exchanges with the Pharisees, you'll discover a common thread. The Pharisees would ask a question on one level, and Jesus would answer it on a completely different level...it would appear that Jesus was answering a different question.

Why is this? It's because the Pharisees' questions were coming from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And Jesus' response was coming from the tree of life - the life of God.

Regrettably, there is a great deal of pharisaism in the Christian family today...

The Bible teaches the highest possible moral values. But the Bible is fundamentally not about morality. Following the Lord Jesus Christ involves living out the highest moral values. But following Jesus is fundamentally not about morality. Conversion to Christ involves a moral transformation of life. But conversion is not fundamentally about morality either...It is Christ, not religion, that saves us.

...it is all too possible to confuse an academic knowledge or theology about Jesus with a personal knowledge of the living Christ Himself. There two stand as far apart as do the hundred thousand million galaxies.

...the fullness of Christ can never be accessed through the frontal lobe alone. That's why Jesus did not leave His disciples with CliffNotes for a systematic theology. He left them with breath and body. He didn't leave them with a coherent and clear belief system by which to love God and others. He gave them wounds to touch and hands to heal. He didn't leave them with intellectual belief or a 'Christian worldview.' He left them with a relational faith and an indwelling presence.

...unless the cutting edge of your life and ministry is Jesus Christ, you're building castles in the sand and skating on invisible ice. That's why...the church must be awakened to the Christ who lives within her and being to understand the limitless resources of His indwelling life."

Deliver us, dear Spirit of Jesus, from living by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and fill us with desire for the Tree of Life, Jesus Himself. Jesus, You are Life within us, Your people. Teach us to live by Your resurrected life! Thank You that You hear our cry. Amen.