The Body of Christ

For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. 1 CORINTHIANS 12:12

Nee’s teaching on the church begins not with organisation, government or meetings, but with a fact he regarded as the great neglected revelation of the New Testament: the church is a Body, and a body is a living thing.

Not an illustration but a reality

He pressed hard on the last four words of the verse above. Paul builds his comparison — as the body is one and has many members — and then, where we expect him to conclude so also is the church, he writes so also is Christ. The Body is not a picture of the church. It is what the church is, and its life is Christ’s own.

And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all. EPHESIANS 1:22–23

From this Nee drew a conclusion that governed all his thinking about church matters: you cannot organise a body. You may organise a machine, a company, an army. A body is not assembled; it grows, and it grows from a life already present within it. Every attempt to produce church life by structure alone is, on this view, an attempt to manufacture what only God can generate.

From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love. EPHESIANS 4:16

The end of independence

The practical force of the Body doctrine, in Nee’s hands, was the demolition of the independent Christian.

And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. 1 CORINTHIANS 12:21

He observed that no member of a body functions for itself, and no member functions alone. A hand severed from the body retains its shape for a while and loses its usefulness immediately. Nee applied this to the private, self-sufficient Christianity that was already common in his day and is far commoner in ours — the believer who reads, prays, listens to preaching and answers to no one. Such a person, he argued, cannot grow properly, because growth is a Body function. He cannot see properly, because sight in spiritual things is given to the Body and mediated through it. And he cannot serve properly, because gifts are given not to individuals for their own use but to individuals for the Body’s sake.

But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal. 1 CORINTHIANS 12:7

Learning to receive

There is an aspect of this that Nee emphasised more than most teachers, and it is worth dwelling on: the necessity of receiving from other members. Pride, he said, shows itself in ministry less by an unwillingness to give than by an unwillingness to receive. We are glad to help; we resent needing help. But if the Body is real, then God has deliberately distributed what I need into people I did not choose, may not like, and cannot control. To refuse them is to refuse Him. He connected this to the practice of fellowship in decision-making. A believer who has an impression about the Lord’s will does well, he taught, to bring it to the fellowship of mature brethren rather than acting alone — not because the brethren are infallible, but because the Body has a sense that no single member possesses.

One Body, and only one

Finally, Nee insisted that the Body’s unity is not an aspiration but a fact.

There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling. EPHESIANS 4:4

We are not asked to create unity. We are asked to keep it: endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Ephesians 4:3). Division, on this view, is not the breaking of the Body — which cannot be broken — but the denial in practice of something that remains true in fact.

Whatever a reader concludes about Nee’s more particular views on church order, which we come to next, this much is beyond argument and profoundly practical: you cannot be a Christian by yourself. The New Testament does not envisage it, and God has arranged the supply of grace so that a believer who withdraws from the Body starves in the middle of plenty.

Gifts, ministries, and the measure of Christ

If the Body is real, what are the gifts for? Nee found the answer in a passage he treated as the charter of Christian ministry.

And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. EPHESIANS 4:11–12

He laid stress on the purpose clause. The gifted men are given for the perfecting of the saints — the word suggests the setting of a bone, the mending of nets, the fitting of something for its function. Their business is not to do the work of the ministry on everyone else’s behalf. It is to equip the saints so that the saints do it. This underlay his hostility to a professional clergy, discussed further in the next chapter. Where one man performs and the rest observe, the arrangement is not merely inefficient; it prevents the Body from functioning and stunts every member in it. He also emphasised the goal towards which all this equipping runs:

Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. EPHESIANS 4:13

Till we all come. The destination is corporate. Nee took this to mean that no individual believer, however advanced, arrives on his own. The measure of the fullness of Christ is not attainable by a person; it is attainable by a Body. Which means that my growth is bound up with yours, and that the maturity of the whole is genuinely delayed by the immaturity of the parts. There is a sobering implication he did not shrink from. If the Body is real, my private sin is not private. It does not injure me alone.

And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it. 1 CORINTHIANS 12:26

And there is an encouraging implication too, which he pressed just as hard. My smallest faithful service is not small, because it is not mine alone either. The obscure member who prays, gives and endures unnoticed is supplying something to the whole that the whole cannot obtain elsewhere.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Name three believers you regularly receive from — not teach, not serve, but receive from. If you cannot name three, that is the finding.

2. Bring your next significant decision to two or three mature believers before you act, and genuinely listen. 3. Identify a member of your congregation you consider unnecessary. Ask God to show you what He has put in them for you. 4. Where you have contributed to division, take one concrete step of repair this month. 5. Ask what your gift is for. If the answer is chiefly your own fulfilment, reconsider.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You are the Head, and I am a member — one among many, and not the most important.

Forgive my independence. I have prized being useful and resisted being needy. I have chosen which believers I would receive from, as though the supply were mine to arrange.

Join me truly to Your Body. Teach me to receive as freely as I give, to keep the unity You have already made, and to seek the profit of the whole rather than the enlargement of myself. Amen.