BEING BURDENED TO CONVERT SINNERS INTO MEMBERS OF CHRIST FOR THE CARRYING OUT OF GOD’S ECONOMY (2)
To preach the gospel is to tell out the virtues of our Savior, who has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light. In order to preach the gospel in this way, we need much learning. The most basic thing is that we all have to be blended together. We are pieces of material who must be built up together into one house. Otherwise, we are not a priesthood. We might be priests but not a “-hood.” This is why the first thing I told you to do is to get yourselves blended. How can scattered pieces of materials be a house? If we are not built up together to be a house, we are finished. God cannot use scattered or piled up pieces of material. God can use only a built-up house as a vessel in which He can dwell. Then this house is a “-hood,” a priesthood, and all the pieces of material are the priests built together. Even in the Old Testament the priests were not scattered. The priesthood was a system. No one in that priestly system could act individually. Each priest had to act as a part of that system corporately.
We should not be burdened merely for the winning of souls. We must be burdened to gain more members for the increase of the Body of Christ and for the accomplishment of God’s economy. In Haggai 1:8 Jehovah charged His people by saying, “Go up to the mountain and bring wood and build the house.” The material is for the building up of God’s temple, His house. This is a picture of the need to gain God’s chosen ones as material for the building of His living house, His church, the Body of Christ
The ones whom we save are God’s chosen ones. Once they are saved, we need to work on them so that they may have a metabolic change in their being. We need to labor in the Lord so that sinners can be regenerated and then transformed and built up. We need to bring the ones whom we save into the church life, which is for the building up of the Body of Christ.
We need to preach the gospel for the increase of the Body of Christ, not to merely win souls. In John 3:30 John the Baptist declared, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” At that time John the Baptist’s disciples were jealous to see all the people going to Christ. When they reported this to John, he responded by saying that Christ must increase while he must decrease. He was saying, “No one should come to me. Instead, all should go to Him to be His increase.” The increase in this verse is the bride in verse 29, and the bride is the living composition of all the regenerated people. Regeneration makes us the corporate bride for Christ’s increase.
Romans 12 reveals that the regenerated sinners should not be fashioned according to this age but should be transformed by the renewing of their minds to make them living members of the Body of Christ. Romans 12 shows us the practice of the Body life, and in the Body life we must be transformed. The transformed ones become the proper materials for the Body life. We are burdened to save sinners so that they can be regenerated and then transformed to be proper materials built up into the Body of Christ. (CWWL, 1991-1992, vol. 3, “Fellowship Concerning the Urgent Need of the Vital Groups”, ch. 16, pp. 505-506)
The church in Zamboanga 