Week of 28 March 2021
Gaining God to Be Transformed by God for the Purpose of God
God’s intention with Job was for him to become a person who lived in the heavenly vision and the reality of God’s economy. Hence, God carried out the consuming and stripping of the contented Job in order to tear Job down that God might have a way to rebuild him with God Himself and to usher him into a deeper seeking after God so that he might gain God. The one who does not care for God may gain many things; however, the one who cares for God will be restricted by God and even stripped by God of many things. This reveals that God’s purpose in dealing with His holy people is that they would be emptied of everything and receive only God as their gain. The desire of God’s heart is that we would gain Him in full as life, as the life supply, and as everything to our being. We need God to build Himself into our intrinsic constitution so that our entire being will be reconstituted with Christ.
God’s economy is God becoming a man in the flesh through incarnation that man might become God in the Spirit through transformation for the building of God into man and man into God to gain a corporate God-man. The most marvellous, excellent, mysterious, and all-inclusive transformations of the eternal and Triune God in His becoming a man are God’s move in man for the accomplishment of His eternal economy. These transformations are the processes through which the Triune God passed in His becoming a God-man, bringing divinity into humanity and mingling divinity with humanity as a prototype for the mass reproduction of many God-men. God speaks of these transformations in Hosea 11:4 by saying, “I drew them with cords of a man, / With bands of love.” The phrase with cords of a man, with bands of love indicates that God’s love is divine, but it reaches us in the cords of a man, that is, through Christ’s humanity. The cords through which God draws us include Christ’s incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. It is by all these steps of Christ in His humanity that God’s love in His salvation reaches us.
The transformation of the tripartite man is God’s move to deify man but not in God head. In God’s appearance to him, Job saw God in order to gain God, to be transformed by God, for the purpose of God. Seeing God issues in the transformation of our being into God’s image. Hence, the more we look at Him in our spirit, the more we receive all His divine element into our being and discharge our old element. We can remain in the process of transformation by turning our heart to the Lord so that we can behold and reflect on Him. To turn our heart to the Lord is to love the Lord and open to the Lord. We can tell the Lord, “O Lord, I love You. I want to please You.” Many Christians are not joyful because the Spirit within them is not joyful. If someone says that a meeting is boring, we must realize that it is he himself who is bored within. However, when we turn our heart to the Lord, and the liberating Spirit has the way to spread into all the parts of our heart, we are released, transcendent, and free.
Transformation transfers us from the form of the old man to the form of the new man. The Lord accomplishes this transformation work by the death of Christ. The Christian life is a life that is all the time under the killing by the Spirit. This killing is carried out by the indwelling Spirit with the environment as the killing weapon. Under God’s divine and sovereign arrangement, everything works for our good, for our transformation, through the killing of Christ’s death. This is the experience of the discipline of the Holy Spirit. The work of the Spirit within us is to constitute a new being for us. The work of the Spirit without is to tear down every aspect of our natural being through our environment. Therefore, we should cooperate with the inner operating Spirit and accept the environment that God has arranged for us.
Ministry is the issue of revelation plus suffering. The Body has one, unique corporate ministry, and this ministry is the service of the Body of Christ. All the members have their own ministry for the carrying out of the unique ministry. The ministry is constituted with, and produced and formed by, the experiences of the riches of Christ gained through sufferings, consuming pressures, and the killing work of the cross.
The New Testament ministry has three aspects: The ministry of the Spirit is for us to arrive at the high peak of the divine revelation by our ministering Christ as the Spirit, who gives life. The ministry of righteousness is for us to enter into the God-man living by our ministering Christ not only as our objective righteousness but also as our subjective and lived-out righteousness. The ministry of reconciliation is for us to shepherd people according to God by our ministering Christ as the word of reconciliation so that we can be in oneness with Christ in His heavenly ministry of shepherding. By our fully entering into such a wonderful ministry in its three aspects, the Lord will have a way to bring the churches into a new revival.
Tribulation is the sweet visitation and incarnation of grace with all the riches of Christ. Through tribulations the killing effect of the cross of Christ on our natural being is applied to us by the Holy Spirit, making the way for the God of resurrection to add Himself into us. God poured out Himself as love in our hearts with the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us, as the motivating power within us, that we may more than conquer in all our tribulations; therefore, when we endure any kind of tribulation, we are not put to shame but live Christ for His magnification.
(Source: https://www.churchintaipei.org/bibletruth/conferencetraining.html)
Beware of Self-Justification And Exposing Others’ Failures And Defects
We must also beware of self-justification and exposing others’ failures and defects. We often like to justify ourselves and expose others’ shortages, mistakes, and defects. Among us some are very particular in doing this, justifying themselves all the time. We never hear that certain ones condemn themselves, but rather they are always justifying themselves while exposing others’ failures and defects. To be snared in this way is to justify yourself and speak well of your success and merits. It is to speak of how you succeeded in this work or in that work and to speak well of all your good points. I wish to put this message into your mind so that you may keep it in your memory. Then you can look and see our situation. The situation in the Lord’s recovery is exactly like this
We often condemn others, exposing their failures and defects. We must admit that to speak well of ourselves and to expose others’ defects is our natural disposition. Our disposition is like this by birth. There is no need for us to speak about others’ defects, but we may simply like to do it. Many times the brothers come together and speak about others’ weak points, defects, and failures. I have learned the lesson to be fearful and trembling about speaking of others’ defects. In the world the legal term for this is defamation. Why do we need to speak in a defaming way? However, nearly all of us do this. Because by the Lord’s mercy and grace I have learned the lesson, it is very hard for you to hear me speak of anyone’s defects. Whenever I speak of others’ shortages, I am condemned, saying to myself, “Do you not have shortages?” The Pharisees and scribes brought a sinful woman to the Lord and said, “In the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. What then do You say?”. First, the Lord stooped down. This was to show them humility. He did not stand, saying, “What! Do you come to Me? Let Me tell you something!” The Lord stooped down to write on the ground. According to my study of the Bible, I believe that what the Lord wrote was, “Who is without sin?” It is as if He said, “There is no doubt that she is sinful, and she got caught. But are you without sin?” They charged the Lord to say something, so He said, “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her”. Their conscience was caught. Everyone, beginning from the older ones, the experienced ones, was smitten. Who is without sin? When you speak of others’ shortages, do you not have shortages? Yet according to our disposition by birth, to speak about others’ defects is our “hobby.” Do you like to expose your own shortages? You do not; you like to cover them.
(A Word of Love to the Co-workers, Elders, Lovers, and Seekers of the Lord, chap. 3)
Redemption And Salvation Being Different
We have already seen that Christ is both God and man. Now we want to go on further to see that this wonderful Christ is both the Redeemer and the Savior. Many Christians are not clear about the difference between redemption and salvation. Hence, they often mix up the aspect of Christ’s being the Redeemer and the aspect of Christ’s being the Savior, and they refer to Him simply as the Savior. Even though this is not wrong, the Bible is not that simple. According to the revelation of the Bible, Christ is both the Redeemer and the Savior. Moreover, the difference between these two aspects is truly big. I hope that in this chapter I can clarify this matter so that we can see clearly that our Lord is, on the one hand, the Redeemer and, on the other hand, the Savior.
Redemption Being Necessary
God made man in His image and according to His likeness. He created man in this way for the glorious purpose that the created man may express Him and glorify Him. To attain this goal, God must work Himself into man as his life and everything. This is God’s procedure. Man must have God’s life in order to express God Himself in His image. Regrettably, however, before God had the opportunity to carry out His procedure, Satan went before Him to seduce the first ancestors of the human race, Adam and Eve, to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Consequently, the life of Satan entered into man to become sin within man and thus damage him. In Romans 7 Paul tells us that there is something in man’s flesh called sin. He says, “For I do not do the good which I will; but the evil which I do not will, this I practice. But if what I do not will, this I do, it is no longer I that work it out but sin that dwells in me” (vv. 19-20). The word dwells implies living and acting. Sin not only dwells but also lives and acts in our flesh to deceive, kill, and capture us so that we become sinners dominated by sin and commit sins and do evil things involuntarily.
God created man with a glorious purpose, but because man was defiled and damaged, he became a fallen sinner. According to the righteous law of God, such a man has a problem concerning his position before God. Man’s position is that of a sinner with a record of sins before God. Man cannot make amends for this by doing good works through cultivating his morality. Furthermore, God’s righteous law says that he who sins must die because the wages of sin is death (6:23). This is the sinner’s position and record, and this will be his fate.
According to our position as a sinner and our record of sins and according to the righteous requirement of God’s law, we need a Redeemer. We have sinned and have a record of sins; thus, we fall short of God’s glory and deserve to die and perish. Hence, we need a Redeemer to clear the record of our sins, to satisfy the requirement of God’s law, and to redeem us.
Resurrecting And Becoming The Life Giving Spirit to Be Our Savior
After three days in the grave, the Lord Jesus resurrected very early on the first day of the week. He overcame the power of death and came out of the grave. Through such a resurrection He became the life-giving Spirit to enter into us to be our Savior. He was the Redeemer until the time of His death. He made redemption for our sins through His death and accomplished the redemptive work for our redemption. However, after the fall man did not just have a problem in position, a problem in legal procedure, or a problem of having a record of sins before God; man also had a problem within him in that now Satan’s life had entered into him.
Even though a person has been redeemed and saved by believing in the Lord, he has not yet been fully saved. He still needs to be saved daily from his sinful nature. The Lord Jesus’ precious blood is for clearing our record of sins and redeeming us. To be sure, because of His death and the blood shed by Him we have been redeemed, and we will never perish. However, sin still dwells in our flesh. Within us we have a great deal of unclean and unrighteous thoughts, and in our outward actions we constantly have trespasses and defilement. Thus, we still need to be washed by the Lord’s precious blood and, at the same time, we also need to be saved by the Lord as the Spirit of life.
First John 1:2 and 3 say that the eternal life has been reported to us and that we may enjoy fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. However, this fellowship can be interrupted because of our sinning. If we say that after we have believed in the Lord, sin is no longer in us and the root of sin has been eradicated, this is a great error. We should know that after we have believed in the Lord, our sinful nature is still in our flesh and has not been eradicated. It will not be until the time of our rapture, at the redemption of our body, that we can say that our whole being has been fully saved. However, today this sinful nature is still within us; if we say that we do not have sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
(The Wonderful Being of Christ, ch. 2)
