AN OVERVIEW OF THE CENTRAL BURDEN AND PRESENT TRUTH OF THE LORD'S RECOVERY BEFORE HIS APPEARING
Message Three
God Building Himself in Christ into Our Being
Scripture Reading: 2 Sam. 7:12-14a; 1 Cor. 3:9; Eph. 3:14-21; Matt. 13:3-9, 19-23; Rev. 21:3, 22
I. Second Samuel 7:12-14a is the unveiling of a prophecy through typology showing us that we need God to build up Christ into our intrinsic constitution so that our entire being will be reconstituted with Christ—Matt. 16:18; Eph. 3:17:
A. The organic building up of the church as the Body of Christ through the process of spiritual metabolism is actually what Jehovah prophesied to David in the way of typology in 2 Samuel 7:12-14a; it is only through this process that human beings can be transformed into sons of God and that something human—the human seed—can become something divine—the sons of God.
B. In order for God's building to take place, we need to receive, digest, and assimilate the organic, pneumatic Christ, who is the life-giving Spirit, as our spiritual food, drink, and breath— John 6:51, 57; 7:37-39; 20:22:
1. When we enjoy the "now" Christ by eating, drinking, and breathing Him, a metabolic process takes place within us, and Christ is constituted into our being—Gal. 2:20; 2 Cor. 2:15; Phil. 1:20-21.
2. God's economy is to work Himself into us that we may experience a metabolic process of spiritual digestion and assimilation that produces a gradual and intrinsic change in life—2 Cor. 3:18.
3. This metabolic process is transformation, and transformation is the building—cf. Rev. 21:18; 4:3.
II. The believers, who have been regenerated in Christ with God's life, are God's cultivated land, a farm in God's new creation to grow Christ that precious materials may be produced for God's building—1 Cor. 3:9:
A. According to the Bible, growth equals building; this takes place by the growth of the divine seed of life within us—1 John 3:9; Col. 2:19; Eph. 4:15-16.
B. Ephesians 3:17 reveals that the Triune God has come into us to do a building work with Himself as the element and also with something from us as the material.
C. This is illustrated by the parable of the sower in Matthew 13:
1. The Lord sows Himself as the seed of life into men's hearts, the soil, that He might grow and live in them and be expressed from within them—v. 3.
2. The seed is sown into the soil to grow with the nutrients of the soil; as a result, the produce is a composition of elements from both the seed and the soil—v. 23.
3. We have within us certain nutrients created by God as a preparation for His coming into us to grow in us; God has created the human spirit with the human nutrients along with the human heart as the soil for the divine seed—cf. 1 Pet. 3:4.
4. The rate at which we grow in life depends not on the divine seed but on how many nutrients we afford this seed; the more nutrients we supply, the faster the seed will grow and the more it will flourish—Psa. 78:8; Matt. 5:3, 8:
a. If we remain in our soul, in our natural man, there will not be any nutrients for the growth of the divine seed, but if we are strengthened into our inner man and if we pay attention to our spirit and exercise our spirit, the nutrients will be supplied, and Christ will make His home in our hearts—Eph. 3:16-17; Rom. 8:6; 1 Tim. 4:7; cf. Jude 19.
b. If we are going to have the Lord as the seed of life grow within us to be our full enjoyment, we have to open to the Lord absolutely and cooperate with Him to deal thoroughly with our heart—Matt. 13:3-9, 19-23.
5. On the one hand, God strengthens us with Himself as the element, and on the other hand, we afford the nutrients; through these two God in Christ carries out His intrinsic building— the building of His home—in our entire being.
III. The apostle's prayer in Ephesians 3 reveals that for the fulfillment of God's eternal economy, we need the Father, according to the riches of His glory, to strengthen us with power through His Spirit into the inner man, that Christ may build Himself into our hearts, occupying our entire being, that we might be filled unto all the fullness of God—vv. 14-19:
A. To say that we need to be strengthened with power into the inner man indicates that we are not in the inner man, that we live mostly in the outer man—v. 16; 1:19-22; 3:20.
B. Christ has the desire to occupy every room of our heart:
1. The phrase make His home is only one word in the Greek, katoikeo, which basically means to settle down in a dwelling, to make a dwelling place, and the prefix of this word, kata, means "down"—v. 17a.
2. As Christ makes His home deep down in our hearts, we are being rooted in love for God's farm and grounded in love for God's building—v. 17b.
3. As Christ makes His home in our hearts, we become strong to apprehend with all the saints the immeasurable Christ, whose dimensions are the dimensions of the universe—v. 18:
a. Our experience of Christ in the church must be three- dimensional, like a cube (the breadth, length, height, and depth), and must not be one-dimensional, like a line.
b. Both in the tabernacle and the temple, the Holy of Holies was a cube—Exo. 26:2-8; 1 Kings 6:20.
c. Eventually, the New Jerusalem, God's building, will be an eternal cube, the Holy of Holies, twelve thousand stadia in three dimensions—Rev. 21:16.
4. Christ making His home in our hearts causes us to know the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ, that we may be filled unto all the fullness of the Triune God for His corporate expression, His glorification—Eph. 3:19-21; cf. Gen. 24:47, 53, 61-67.
IV. If we realize that God desires to work Himself into His chosen people, then the goal of our work will be to minister the building and builded God into others so that the Triune God may build Himself into their being—Eph. 3:17a:
A. The crucial matter in our work in the Lord's recovery is to minister the building and builded God—Matt. 16:18; Eph. 2:21-22; 3:17a.
B. We should reconsider the work we are doing for the Lord and ask how much of Christ as the embodiment of the Triune God has been wrought into those whom we have brought to the Lord— Gal. 4:19; Col. 1:28.
C. We need to practice one thing—to minister the processed and consummated Triune God into others so that He may build Himself into their inner man; we need to pray that the Lord will teach us to work in this way—2 Cor. 13:14; 1 Cor. 3:9a, 10, 12.
D. When we build the church with the processed and consummated Triune God, it is not actually we who are building; rather, God is building through us, using us as a means to dispense and transmit Himself into others—Acts 9:15; 1 Cor. 14:4b; 2 Cor. 3:3-6.
E. As we work for God today, we should participate in God's building—the constitution of the divine element into the human element and of the human element into the divine element— John 14:20; 15:4a; 1 John 4:15.
F. As the divine element is constituted into our humanity, we become God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead, and as the human element is constituted into God, God becomes man; this is the building revealed in the New Testament—Eph. 2:21; 4:16.
G. In the Lord's recovery our work must be part of this mutual constitution:
1. If our work is not related to this mutual constitution, then in the eyes of God our work is like wood, grass, and stubble— 1 Cor. 3:12.
2. If our work is part of this mutual constitution, God will regard our work as gold, silver, and precious stones, which will consummate in the New Jerusalem—Rev. 21:2, 10-11, 18-21.
H. As we endeavor to carry out the God-ordained way in the four steps of begetting, nourishing, perfecting, and building, our work must be based upon the processed and consummated Triune God, who is building Himself into His chosen people and building them into Him.
I. If we minister the building and builded God to others for their growth in the divine life, we are building up the Body of Christ, which will consummate the New Jerusalem—Col. 2:19; Eph. 4:15-16; Rev. 21:10.
V. Eventually, the Triune God and redeemed humanity will be mingled, blended, and built up as one entity—the New Jerusalem—vv. 2, 10:
A. The New Jerusalem is built by God's constituting of Himself into man to make man the same as God in life, in nature, and in constitution so that God and man may become a corporate entity— vv. 18-21.
B. The New Jerusalem is a composition of divinity and humanity blended and mingled together as one entity; all the components have the same life, nature, and constitution and thus are a corporate person—vv. 3, 22:
1. "God in man and man in God / Mutual dwelling thus possess; / God the content is to man, / And the man doth God express"—Hymns, #972, stanza 9.
2. God and man, man and God, are built up together and blended and mingled together; this is the consummation of God's building.
C. The New Jerusalem is a constitution of God and man and man and God, who are constituted into one—Rev. 22:17a; 21:3, 22:
1. This is divinity expressed in humanity and humanity glorified in divinity, with the divine glory shining forth radiantly in humanity—v. 11.
2. The two—divinity and humanity—become a mutual dwelling place:
a. The One who is God yet man dwells in the one who is man yet God.
b. The one who is man yet God dwells in the One who is God yet man.
D. The mutual abode produced by the constitution of the divine element into the human element and of the human element into the divine element is the center and reality of the universe— vv. 1-2, 22; cf. Eccl. 1:2.
E. "The processed and consummated Triune God, according to the good pleasure of His desire and for the highest intention in His economy, is building Himself into His chosen people and His chosen people into Himself, that He may have a constitution in Christ as a mingling of divinity and humanity to be His organism and the Body of Christ, as His eternal expression and the mutual abode for the redeeming God and the redeemed man. The ultimate consummation of this miraculous structure of treasure will be the New Jerusalem for eternity"—Inscription on Witness Lee's tomb.