THE UNIQUE WORK IN GOD’S ECONOMY
Message Three
Holding Christ as the Head
Scripture Reading: Col. 1:18; 2:19; Acts 2:36; 5:31; Eph. 1:22-23; 4:15-16; Rev. 1:5
I. The Lord Jesus has been made the Lord by God, He has been exalted as the Leader over all the rulers, and He has been made the Ruler of the kings of the earth—Acts 2:33, 36; 5:31; Rev. 1:5:
A. As God, the Lord was the Lord all the time, but as man, He was made the Lord in His ascension after He brought His humanity into God in His resurrection—Luke 1:43; John 11:21; 20:28; Acts 2:33, 36; 3:15; 10:36.
B. In Christ’s ascension God made Him the unique Head of the Body, the church, and inaugurated Him into the headship of the universe; the Head of the whole universe is Jesus—Col. 1:18; Acts 2:36; Eph. 1:22-23.
C. In order for God to establish Christ as the Head over all things, He must first make Christ the Head of the church; Christ is the Head of the Body, the church, corporately, and of the believers individually—Col. 1:18; 1 Cor. 11:3; Eph. 1:22-23.
D. As the Ruler of the kings of the earth, the God-exalted Jesus is the Ruler over all the ones who are in power; He is the chief Ruler in the divine government for the fulfillment of God’s eternal plan—Rev. 1:5.
II. To hold the Head is to acknowledge that only Christ is the Head and to come absolutely under His authority—Col. 1:18; 2 Cor. 2:12-15; 4:5-6:
A. Only the Lord is our Head, and only He has the authority to direct the moves of the members of His Body; Christ is both the life and the authority of the Body; in fact, true authority is life—Col. 1:18:
1. As the Head, the Lord is the One who decides our pathway; we do not have any ground for our own choice; the Body’s only duty toward the Head is obedience and submission without any opinion, idea, or proposal.
2. An acceptance of Christ as the Head involves a repudiation of all other heads; Christ alone is the Head of the Body, and no one else can be the head—Acts 2:36.
B. If Christ is my Head, then I will not dare to please myself or others; I must seek to please Him alone—2 Cor. 5:9; 1 Thes. 2:4.
C. Once a man realizes that he is a member in the Body, there will be a feeling of submission in him because submission is a law in the Body; in submission there is power—cf. Judg. 16:17.
III. Our relationship to the Head determines our relationship to the other members; the basis of our fellowship with one another is our mutual holding of the Head—Eph. 4:15-16:
A. If we hold the Head, we cannot have a special relationship, feeling, or fellowship with any individual or group of individuals; there is no room for our own preferences in the Body—cf. 1 Cor. 1:12-13.
B. We have no direct communication with one another; the mutual relationship of the members passes through the Head first—Eph. 4:15-16:
1. For instance, when my left hand hurts, my right hand comes to its aid immediately; the right hand does this because both the left hand and the right hand are under the direction of the head.
2. Forming parties means that a few Christians have a direct relationship with one another and are detached from the authority of the Head; they communicate with each other directly, but their communication has not passed through the Head; they have a special relationship with one another, but their relationship has not passed through the Head; they have a special friendship among themselves that does not issue from their love for the Lord—1 Cor. 1:10-13; 11:19.
C. If our fellowship is based on man, we are not holding the Head, and our fellowship is Absalom’s fellowship, which drew the Israelites away from David—2 Sam. 15:2-6.
D. In order to hold the Head, we must allow the cross to deeply deal with our flesh and our natural life, on the one hand, and we must learn to walk by the Spirit, on the other hand—Gal. 5:16, 24-25; cf. Rev. 14:4.
IV. If we hold the Head, we cannot have different interpretations of Scripture; differences arise when someone is not holding the Head, because He cannot possibly say one thing to one member and something else to another—Rom. 15:6; 1 Cor. 1:10; Eph. 2:15:
A. We have to consider “one mouth” in Romans 15:6 and “speak the same thing” in 1 Corinthians 1:10 together with “one new man” in Ephesians 2:15—Rom. 15:6; 1 Cor. 1:10; Eph. 2:15.
B. The Head of the Body as the one new man is the person of the Body, and this person has one mouth to speak the same thing; when we hold Christ as the Head, we are all taking Him as our unique person, so we all have one mouth and are in one accord to speak the same thing—the unique teaching of God’s eternal economy regarding Christ and the church—1 Tim. 1:3-4; Eph. 5:32.
V. Whenever we enjoy Christ continually, we automatically hold Him as the Head; thus, the best way to hold Christ as the Head is to enjoy Him—Col. 1:18; 2:16-17, 19:
A. There is no better way to hold Christ than to eat Him; just as we hold food by taking it into us and eating it, so we hold Christ by eating Him; to hold the Head is simply to enjoy Christ as the reality of all positive things—Col. 2:16-17, 19; John 6:57.
B. Since the Christ we enjoy as our everything is the Head of the Body, the more we enjoy Him, the more we become Body-conscious—Col. 2:17-19:
1. This indicates that the enjoyment of Christ is not an individualistic matter, but a Body matter—cf. Eph. 3:8; 4:15-16.
2. The more we enjoy Christ, the more we love the other members of the Body—Col. 1:4, 8.
C. Because Christ’s headship is in resurrection, the enjoyment of Christ spontaneously brings us into resurrection and saves us from our natural being—v. 18.
D. As we enjoy Christ and hold Him as the Head, we absorb the riches of the extensive, all-inclusive Christ; these riches become in us the increase of God by which the Body grows for its building up—Col. 2:19, 6-8; Eph. 4:16.
