Without the wineskin, how can you keep the wine? Do not consider that you yourself as an individual are the vessel. Then he began attending the movies, and later went even deeper into the world. It would be much better for me to stay at home to pray and read the Bible." So I said, "All right brother, go and try it for a while and see what will result." Do you know what happened? For the first two weeks he did pray and read his Bible, but after that the Bible reading stopped, though he still prayed a little. What about yourself?" He said, "Well, I’m not so good either, but I’m a little better than they are." He continued, "Why should I come to the church meetings-it’s just a waste of my time. Look at all those brothers and sisters-I don’t like them." I replied, "All right brother, you don’t like the elders, neither do you like the brothers and sisters. Look at the leading sisters-I don’t like them. Look at all those elders-I don’t like them. Many years ago a young brother came to me saying, "Brother Lee, I simply do not like the church life. If you do not agree, stay away from the church for a month and see what the result will be. Without the church you may enjoy Christ here a little and there a little, but you can never enjoy Christ in a full way, neither can you enjoy Him constantly. But I do question whether you can fully enjoy Christ without the church. Some say that whether we have the church or not, whether we are in the church or not, we can still enjoy Christ. I believe we will need eternity to exhaust it. But I do not think that we can ever talk too much about the church.
Sometimes people condemn us by saying that we speak altogether too much about the church. The new wineskin is simply the church life to contain Christ as the new wine. So Christ is the Body composed of so many members who are filled with Him. The Christ in you is one with the Christ in me, and the Christ in us is one with the Christ in all other Christians. Paul, in I Corinthians chapter 1, says that Christ is not divided. Christ is in you, Christ is in me, Christ is in him, and Christ is in every one of us-we all have Christ within. How, practically speaking, is Christ the Body? Because the Body is composed of so many members who are filled with Christ. We always consider Christ as the Head we have considered little, if at all, that Christ is also the Body. Let us read I Corinthians 12:12, "For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body so also is Christ." We read in this verse not only that the members composed together are the one Body, but that this Body is Christ.
Now we must see more concerning Christ as the new wineskin.
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