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Additional Quotes about the Local Church by Watchman Nee and Witness Lee
In this hymn, Witness Lee shares on the relationship between the Word and the Spirit:
- Christ is the Word and Spirit too,
And as the Spirit in the Word;
And all the words He speaks to us
Are life and spirit thus conferred.
- The Holy Word we have without,
The Holy Spirit is within;
The greatest gifts divine are these,
That we may God enjoy therein.
- The Word the Spirit doth express,
The Spirit its reality;
They’re but two aspects of one thing
And should not separated be.
- Whene’er the Spirit lights the Word
The Word becometh life to us;
When Word from Spirit is divorced,
’Tis empty mental stimulus.
- When we the Word in spirit touch,
As life the Spirit it becomes;
The Spirit, when expressed from us,
As words of life to others comes.
- Our spirit we must exercise
To take the Word most inwardly,
And then to give the Spirit forth;
The two as one with us should be.
- Lord, may Thy Word in me become
The Spirit as my life supply,
And may Thy Spirit in Thy Word
My true expression be thereby.
(Witness Lee, Hymns, 745)
In another hymn, Witness Lee writes on the knowledge of the Word needing to become life:
- God’s own Word must not be taken
Just as knowledge but as life,
Not alone God’s thought conveying,
But Himself to us as life;
Not alone God’s mind revealing,
But His Christ as life within,
Not alone the teaching giving,
But experience of Him.
- It is only knowledge to us
If we in the letter read,
But when reading in the spirit
It is truly life indeed.
All the knowledge in the letter
Only brings us into death,
But the Word in spirit taken
Gives to us the quickening breath.
- If we miss the Lord in Scripture,
It is just as knowledge vain;
But when Christ we touch within it,
Then His life we may obtain.
When we read, the Lord not touching,
’Tis but mental stimulus;
But when Christ we touch by reading,
It becometh life in us.
- All the knowledge of the Scriptures
Into life must be transformed,
All the mental understanding
In the spirit must be formed;
All the Scriptural understanding
Must become the life received,
All the knowledge of the letters
In the spirit be conceived.
- Just to touch the Word for knowledge
Is to take the very way
By which Eve was lured by Satan
And by knowledge led astray;
But as life to take the Scripture
Is the tree of life to eat;
Thus the Word we must be taking
In the spirit as our meat.
(Witness Lee, Hymns, 746-747)
Watchman Nee describes reading as one of the purposes for which a local church meets:
There are several purposes for which the church meets, as recorded in Scripture. First, for prayer (Acts 2:42; 4:24, 31; 12:5); second, for reading (Col. 4:16; 1 Thes. 5:27; Acts 2:42; 15:21, 30-31); third, for the breaking of bread—which are not meetings presided over by a single individual who bears all responsibility, since reference is made to “the cup of blessing which we bless…the bread which we break” (1 Cor. 10:16-17; Acts 2:42; 20:7); and fourth, for the exercise of spiritual gifts (1 Cor. 14). The last type of meeting is a church meeting, for the phrase “in the church” is used repeatedly in the passage which describes it (vv. 28, 34-35). Of this meeting it is said that all may prophesy.
(Watchman Nee, Collected Works, Set 2, Vol. 30, 175)
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