The Christian life is also the life in which the Christians live Christ and magnify Him corporately in their locality as a local church to be a local expression of Christ as a part of the universal Body of Christ. The Christian life must be a church life. The Christian life should not be just an individual Christian life. It should be a corporate Christian life, the church life. Wherever you are on this earth, you should participate in the local church there.
Many of us in the Lord's recovery are very church-conscious. But actually very few Christians today are church-conscious. They do not have any consciousness concerning the church. If there were no local church on this earth, I would not know how to live, how to exist. We all are a part of a local church, and every local church is a part of the universal church, which is the Body of Christ.
The Christian life is not just to live an ethical life with the human virtues, as the salt of the earth and the light of the world, for the glory of God (Matt. 5:13-16), but to live a life that is Christ Himself with His divine attributes expressed in His human virtues to be a part of His organic Body for the universal consummation of the eternal economy of God (Eph. 3:8-11). Christianity teaches that we must have human virtues. Because we are a Christian, we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. The world is rotten and corrupt, so there is the need of salt to kill the germs. The world is also dark and needs the light to enlighten it. This is all for the glory of God. This is a good teaching, but we must realize that the individual Christian life occupies just a small part of the Christian life. The greater part of the Christian life should be the church life.
In the church life, we live a life that is Christ Himself with His divine attributes expressed in His human virtues. His attributes are divine, but His virtues are human. The human virtues are to manifest the divine attributes, and the divine attributes are to be expressed in the human virtues. This is for us to be a part of His organic Body. We live a life that is Christ Himself not just for the individual Christian life, but for the Body life. We live as parts of His organic Body for the universal consummation of the eternal economy of God.
Witness Lee, The Christian Life
