The Constituents of the Vital Groups (2)
The constituents of the vital groups are the disciples of Christ (Matt. 5:1). In Matthew 28:19 the Lord Jesus said to His disciples, “Go therefore and disciple all the nations.” The nations here are the Gentiles. To disciple the Gentiles is to constitute the Gentiles into the disciples of Christ. The Lord Jesus, in particular, discipled four people of two families: Peter and Andrew and James and John. He discipled them for about three and a half years. They followed the Lord and stayed with Him day and night, traveling with Him, eating with Him, and doing everything with Him.
The disciples who followed the Lord for three and a half years saw what He did, how He behaved, and how He spoke. That discipled them. They saw Christ’s human living and His death on the cross for six hours, and they saw Him in resurrection. Christ used these three processes—His human living; His all-inclusive, all-terminating, life-releasing, and new-man-creating death; and His life-dispensing resurrection—to disciple His followers.
On the day of His resurrection Christ breathed Himself into His disciples, and they also became living. They were made alive with the divine life. The Spirit of life and of reality who was breathed into them would guide them into all the reality of what they had observed of the Lord when they were with Him for three and a half years. I was in the recovery observing how Brother Watchman Nee acted for eighteen years. All that I observed in him became things discipling me.
The followers of Christ were discipled through Christ’s human living on the earth, as the model of a God-man—living God by denying Himself in humanity (John 5:19, 30), revolutionizing their concept concerning man (Phil. 3:10; 1:21a). The concept of the disciples was revolutionized by what they saw of the Lord Jesus living God by denying Himself in His humanity… They were discipled through Christ’s crucifixion to annul their human life for them to live the divine life (Gal. 2:20)… They were also discipled through Christ’s resurrection to know Him as God’s firstborn Son (Rom. 1:4; Acts 13:33; Rom. 8:29)… They were also discipled to know Christ as the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45).
If we open to the Spirit within us as we prayerfully consider this fellowship, we will be discipled. Only the discipled ones are the constituents of the vital groups. They have been discipled to be vital. A disciple is one who lives the divine life in his human life. The vitality of the ministry is due to a person’s living the divine life out of his human life. Then what he utters is divine out of a crucified human life. We need to deny our human life for the releasing of something divine. This is the main factor of our being vital. (The Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1994-1997, vol. 5, “The Vital Groups”, ch. 2, pp. 74-77)
The church in Zamboanga 