How can you carry on the work of Christ?

In our baptism we put off the old man and the old manner of life, and we put on the new man, which was created according to God in righteousness and holiness of the truth. Righteousness is being right with God and man according to God’s righteous way, while holiness is being separated unto God from anything common and being saturated with God’s holy nature. We need to live a life of righteousness and holiness. This is the way that Jesus lived on this earth to set up a pattern of One who lived a life of always doing things in God, with God, and for God, ministering Himself as grace to others. We learn from Him, according to His example, not by our natural life, but by Him as our life. We need to live a life that gives grace to others for the needful building up. This is a life that ministers Christ to others as their enjoyment and supply for the building up of the Body of Christ. We should not let any corrupt word proceed out of our mouth but only the words that give grace to others. In all of our speaking, we should distribute the riches of Christ.

To build up the Body of Christ, we must also learn not to grieve the Holy Spirit so that He can keep sealing us for the day of the redemption of our body. We should always make the Spirit happy. Everything in our behavior should be pleasant to Him. The sealing Spirit is continuously sealing us with the essence and element of the Triune God. When a piece of paper is sealed with a seal, the paper receives the ink essence and also the likeness and the shape of the seal. The sealing Spirit brings the essence of the Triune God into us and causes us to bear the likeness of the Triune God.

A life that builds up the Body of Christ is also a forgiving life. To practice the Body life we need to forgive one another, forgetting one another’s offending, as God in Christ forgets our offenses. To forgive means to forget. Because we are still in our old man much of the time, we make mistakes and offend others. This is why we need to forgive others by the life of God in the Spirit of God.

There is much, much hope, promise, and potential that all the churches in the Lord’s recovery could be built up in this way. May the Lord bring us into the reality of the one Body built up by one ministry with thousands of saints perfected to live a life that is adequate and qualified to do the work of the building up of the Body of Christ.