GOD’S NEW CREATION BECOMING GOD’S ORACLE FOR HIS DISPENSING AND SPREADING (2)
We are the members of Christ, constituting an organism for His increase through His multiplication (Rom. 12:5; John 15:5). Because we are Christ’s members, we are a part of Him. We are members of Christ, not individualistically but corporately. I have been in the United States for over thirty-three years, and I have always tried to practice ministering Christ, not individualistically but with my co-workers. This is for Christ’s increase. Christ must be multiplied so that He can have an increase. In John 3 the bride is the increase of the bridegroom (vv. 29-30), just as Eve was the increase of Adam.
We are His brothers participating with Him in the divine sonship with the divine right to express God mainly through speaking for the dispensing of God through His oracle (Rom. 8:29; Heb. 1:2). The Lord Jesus was with the disciples for three and a half years, but He never called them His brothers until after His resurrection. When He resurrected, He told Mary, “Go to My brothers and say to them, I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God” (John 20:17). Through regeneration in resurrection we all became His brothers (1 Pet. 1:3). His resurrection was a great delivery of Himself as the firstborn Son of God and of us as His many brothers, the many sons of God. We are His brothers, sharing in His divine sonship.
We bear fruit through contacting people by shepherding them. We should be those who are always shepherding and teaching by speaking forth Christ to others. All the apostles are top speakers of the word of God. While they are speaking the word of God, they also shepherd the saints, the churches, and their co-workers Paul especially was a pattern of one who taught and shepherded people. In 1 Timothy 3:2 Paul says that the elders should be “apt to teach.” Then in 1 Timothy 5:17 he says that the elders who labor in word and teaching are worthy of double honor. All of us should follow this pattern of speaking for God and shepherding others.…. Our shepherding should be according to God’s love toward the fallen human race. The fallen human race is joined with Satan to be his world in his system, but God has a heart of love toward these people.(The Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1994-1997, vol. 5, “The Vital Groups”, ch. 4, pp. 90-91)
The church in Zamboanga 