The Holy Word for Morning Revival
International Training for Elders and Responsible Ones—Spring 2014
ASPECTS OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND CHURCH LIFE SEEN IN THE NEW JERUSALEM
The New Jerusalem is a city representing the kingdom of God :
According to the scriptural meaning,
a city is a center for the exercise of authority;
therefore, the city symbolizes the kingdom.
As the house,
the church is God’s home, the place of His dwelling;
as the city,
the church is God’s kingdom, the place of His ruling.
The house is
mainly with Christ as life,
and the city is
mainly with Christ as the Head.
When we realize
that Christ is not only our life
but also our Head,
the church
will be not only the house
but also the city.
The Bible first presents the kingdom
and thereafter presents the church;
the presence of the kingdom produces the church :
The life of God
is the kingdom of God;
the divine life
is the kingdom,
and this life
produces the church.
The gospel of the kingdom
brings forth the church
because the kingdom is the life itself,
and the church is the issue of life.
The kingdom is the reality of the church;
therefore, apart from the kingdom life,
we cannot live the church life :
The reality of the kingdom of the heavens (Matt. 5—7)
is the content of the church life;
without the reality of the kingdom,
the church life is empty.
The kingdom life
issues in the church life;
as we live corporately in the kingdom life,
we spontaneously live the church life.
Without the kingdom as the reality of the church,
the church cannot be built up :
The keys of the kingdom are given
to make the building of the church possible.
When the kingdom of the heavens
is able to assert its authority
over a company of believers,
those believers can be built up into the church.
The genuine church is the kingdom of God in this age;
today the believers live the kingdom life in the church :
The term fellow citizens in Ephesians 2:19
indicates the kingdom of God,
the sphere wherein God exercises His authority.
The word kingdom in Revelation 1:6
reveals that where the church is,
there the kingdom of God is;
the church represents the kingdom.
Although the church today is God’s kingdom,
we are in the kingdom in reality
only when we live, walk, and have our being in the spirit,
not in our natural man.
We need to live a kingdom life in the church,
growing and developing in the divine life
until we reach maturity.
The church today must be
a miniature of the holy city, the New Jerusalem,
a center where God may exercise His authority.
The Lord’s recovery
is for the preparation of the bride of Christ.
The bride must be mature in the divine life :
The readiness of the corporate bride
depends on the maturity in life of the overcomers.
We need to continue to grow
until we are matured in the divine life
to become a full-grown man,
arriving at the measure of the stature
of the fullness of Christ.
A mature believer
knows and cares for the Body of Christ,
being Body-conscious and Body-centered.
The bride is a corporate person;
for this, building is necessary.
The central and divine thought of the Scriptures
is that God is seeking a building
as the mingling of Himself with humanity.
The goal of the Lord’s recovery
is to recover Christ as life and everything to us
so that we may be built up.
To be built up with fellow believers
is the Lord’s supreme and highest requirement
of His faithful seekers.
Being built up with the fellow partakers of the divine life
is the highest virtue of one
who pursues Christ in God’s eternal economy.
Revelation 19:7-8
unveils the righteousness of the bride :
As our objective righteousness,
Christ is the One
in whom we are justified by God.
As our subjective righteousness,
Christ is the One
dwelling in us
to live for us a life
that can be justified by God
and that is always acceptable to God.
The righteousness in Philippians 3:9
signifies a daily living
that is right with God and man;
this righteousness is of God
and actually is God Himself.
The living that is right with both God and man
must be God as our expression in our daily living.
Christ lived out of the saints as their subjective righteousness
becomes their wedding garment.
As the bride,
the church needs beauty;
the beauty in Ephesians 5:27
is for the presentation of the bride :
Ephesians 5:27 reveals the beauty of the bride,
saying that Christ will “present the church to Himself glorious,
not having spot or wrinkle or any such things,
but that she would be holy and without blemish.”
The beauty of the bride
comes from the Christ
who is wrought into the church
and who is then expressed through the church;
our only beauty
is the shining out of Christ
from within us.
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7 replies on “The City and the Bride”
Prophecy note, 6 July 2014
God’s purpose
was to bring His heavenly dominion to the earth,
and apart from the church,
His goal could not be attained.
He needed a people
who would subject themselves
to the dominion of heaven,
so that under that dominion
they might be built up into the church.
The church life
must be
like the holy city, the New Jerusalem,
a center where God may exercise His authority.
We must remember
that this ultimate consummation of God’s building
is a full picture of today’s church life.
If we are such a miniature of the holy city,
we will shine forth with God as the light.
The readiness of the bride
depends on the maturity in life of the overcomers.
Furthermore, the overcomers
are not separate individuals
but a corporate bride.
Therefore, building is needed.
The overcomers are not only mature in life
but are built together as one bride.
The bride in Genesis 2
was a physical bride,
but eventually,
in the consummation of the building up of the New Jerusalem,
the bride will be
not only physical and human
but also spiritual and divine.
She will be a wonderful and marvelous bride.
This bride is a corporate person,
yet all the components of this person are one.
The Triune God,
after being processed,
has blended Himself
with the tripartite, transformed men,
causing them to all become one.
This corporate person
is the bride,
and this bride
is a mutual dwelling place of God and man.
God dwells in man
and man dwells in God.
Day 6
A condition for being found in Christ
is that we have Christ
as our subjective righteousness,
as our surpassing righteousness.
This righteousness is actually God Himself
lived out of us
to be our righteousness
through our faith in Christ.
Such righteousness
is the expression of God,
who lives in us.
Therefore, the surpassing righteousness
is God Himself
living out of us.
This is not our own righteousness;
it is God as our righteousness.
The righteousness which signifies a living
that is truly right with God and man
must be a righteousness
which is out of God.
In Philippians 3:9
the expression “righteousness of God”
does not simply mean
that righteousness belongs to God;
it also means
that this righteousness is God Himself.
The living which is right with both God and man
must be God
as our expression in our daily living,
God Himself
lived out through us.
We all have this robe, the first robe,
which is Christ as our righteousness, our justification,
that enables us to stand
before the righteous God.
However, we also need the second garment,
which is the wedding garment in Matthew 22:11 and 12.
This garment is not for our salvation;
rather, it is for our reward,
qualifying us to attend the wedding feast of the Son of God.
The first garment qualifies us
to meet God for our salvation.
The second garment qualifies us
to meet Christ for our reward.
The second garment
is the work of the Holy Spirit within us.
It is actually the very Christ
by whom we live
and whom we live out.
It is the Christ
expressed through us in our daily living.
This is the righteousnesses of the saints in Revelation 19:8.
In Ephesians 5
we come to the presentation of the church to Christ.
At the time of this presentation,
the church will be the bride,
not the new man.
As the new man,
the church needs the functions.
But as the bride,
the church needs beauty.
The growth in chapter 4
is for the function of the new man,
whereas the beauty in chapter 5
is for the presentation of the bride.
The spots and wrinkles
do not affect the function of the church.
However, they very much detract
from the beauty of the church.
What a man looks for in a bride
is not firstly ability;
it is beauty.
The church as Christ’s bride
must also be beautiful.
When Christ presents the church to Himself,
the church will be a beautiful bride.
As the universal man,
Christ needs the church to be the bride
that matches Him.
In order to be the bride of Christ,
the church must become beautiful
and have all the spots and wrinkles removed.
Surely at the time of her presentation to Christ,
the bride will not have any wrinkles or spots.
In His bride
Christ will behold nothing but beauty.
This beauty
will be the reflection of what He is.
The beauty of the bride
comes from the Christ
who is wrought into the church
and expressed through the church.
Our beauty is not our behavior;
our only beauty
is the reflection of Christ,
the shining out of Christ
from within us.
What Christ appreciates in us
is the expression of Himself.
Nothing less than this
will meet His standard
or win His appreciation.
Day 5
The central and divine thought of the Scriptures
is that God is seeking a divine building
as the mingling of Himself with humanity.
He is seeking a living composition of living persons
redeemed by and mingled with Himself.
After His creation,
God began and is still carrying out
the work of the divine building.
Even today
God is doing the work of the divine building,
which is to mingle Himself with man.
We preach the gospel
not merely to win souls or save souls from hell
but to minister God Himself through the Spirit to man
so that God can be mingled with man.
In this way
we gain the materials
for the divine building.
Likewise, we minister Christ to the saints
so that they can be mingled
and built up together with Christ.
This is the basic and central thought behind what we do.
We all need to see
that the goal of the Lord’s recovery
is to recover Christ as life and everything to us
so that we may be transformed and built up.
When we are built up together,
God will have a building.
The building is something
which is critical to the accomplishment of God’s eternal economy.
To be built up with the fellow believers
is the Lord’s supreme and highest requirement
to His faithful seekers
according to one of the divine attributes of the Divine Trinity.
Our oneness,
to which we testify in the Lord’s table meeting,
is according to the divine oneness,
which is an attribute of the Divine Trinity.
Being built up with the fellow partakers of the divine life
is the highest virtue of the one
who pursues after Christ in God’s eternal economy.
Building is the highest requirement,
and being built up is the highest virtue.
The bride in Revelation 19:7 and 8
refers to redeemed and transformed tripartite mankind.
This bride will wear white linen,
which is the righteousnesses of the saints.
We Christians have all received Christ
as our objective righteousness
to cover us like a robe.
This is for our justification before God.
After being justified in Christ,
we need to live by Christ and to live out Christ,
that He may be our subjective righteousness
as another splendid robe
to cover our daily walk.
Due to the lack of the subjective experience of Christ,
the degraded recovered church
is naked in the eyes of the Lord.
The vain knowledge of doctrines
vanishes under the flaming eyes of the Lord,
leaving those
who hold them
nakedly exposed.
Only the experienced Christ
can be our covering
under His judging eyes.
The Lord counseled the church in Laodicea
to buy “white garments”
that they “may be clothed
and that the shame” of their “nakedness
may not be manifested” [Rev. 3:18].
In figure, garments signify conduct.
“White garments” here
refer to conduct approvable to the Lord,
which is the Lord Himself
lived out of the church,
and which is required
by the degraded recovered church
to cover her nakedness.
The Christ who is lived out of us
will be our second garment
for us to be approved by the Lord.
This is not for salvation
but for being chosen.
We all need this second garment.
When we have living faith
and participate in the divine nature,
this divine nature
will eventually come out of us
to be our living.
Day 4
Eventually, the overcomers in the church
will be the bride of Christ at His wedding.
The ultimate consummation of our living in the church
will be
that we become the bride, the counterpart of Christ,
at His coming back.
As the bride of Christ at His wedding,
we shall receive
the reward of entering into the manifestation
of the kingdom of the heavens,
that is, to enter into the Lord’s joy
and to reign with Him
as His co-kings
for a thousand years.
God’s economy in the New Testament
is to obtain for Christ a bride, the church,
through His redemption and divine life.
By the continual working of the Holy Spirit
through all the centuries,
this goal will be attained
at the end of this age.
Then the bride with the overcoming believers
will be ready.
The readiness of the bride
depends on the maturity in life of the overcomers.
Furthermore, the overcomers
are not separate individuals
but a corporate bride.
Therefore, building is needed.
The overcomers are not only mature in life
but are built together as one bride.
The fullness of Christ
is the Body of Christ.
Christ’s Body is not something empty or formless;
rather, it is an organism
with a measure of the stature of its fullness
in its breadth, length, height, and depth.
Thank the Lord
that God has regenerated us
that we may begin to have His divine element.
Following this,
we still need to be built up,
established,
and shaped
in God’s organic salvation.
After this,
we need to continue to grow
until we are matured in the divine life
to become a full-grown man.
Then we can arrive at
the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ
and be conformed to the image of Christ, the firstborn Son of God.
Paul places great emphasis on the Body.
We must be in the Body,
we must be for the Body,
and we must be thoroughly Body-conscious and Body-centered.
If we are Body-conscious and Body-centered,
we shall be used by the Lord.
If we examine the history of the Lord’s recovery,
we shall see
that those who care for the Body
have been used by the Lord.
But those who neglect the Body
have experienced failure.
Whoever depends on the Body
and whoever is in the Body and for the Body,
not putting their trust in the gifts,
will be useful.
This is a law
which operates in the spiritual realm.
The bride in Genesis 2
was a physical bride,
but eventually,
in the consummation of the building up of the New Jerusalem,
the bride will be
not only physical and human
but also spiritual and divine.
She will be a wonderful and marvelous bride.
The bride will make herself ready
in a physical, spiritual, divine, and human situation.
This bride is a corporate person,
yet all the components of this person are one.
The Triune God,
after being processed,
has blended Himself with the tripartite, transformed men,
causing them to all become one.
This corporate person
is the bride,
and this bride
is a mutual dwelling place of God and man.
God dwells in man
and man dwells in God.
Day 3
The Christian life has two aspects:
the aspect of the individual Christian life
and the aspect of the corporate Christian life.
The divine dispensing
is first for our individual Christian life
and then for the corporate Christian life.
The individual Christian life is a personal matter,
but the corporate Christian life is a church matter.
According to the New Testament,
the church is intimately related to the kingdom.
The words “the kingdom of the heavens” in Matthew 16:19
are interchangeably used for the word “church” in verse 18.
This is a strong proof
that the genuine church
is the kingdom of the heavens in this age.
This is confirmed by Romans 14:17,
which refers to the proper church life.
Therefore, the church today is the kingdom.
Ephesians 2:19
affords us
the basis for saying
that the church today is God’s kingdom.
The citizens mentioned here
are related to a kingdom, a nation,
not to a family.
A family is composed of members,
not of citizens.
On the one hand,
we are members of God’s household;
on the other hand,
we are citizens of God’s nation, of God’s kingdom.
Although the church today is God’s kingdom,
we are in the kingdom in reality
only when we live and walk in spirit.
Whenever we behave according to the old man
or live in the flesh or the self,
we, in a practical way,
are out of God’s kingdom.
This means
that when we are in the flesh,
we are in the old realm of the fallen human nature,
which has been fully usurped by Satan
to form his kingdom.
Therefore, a genuine Christian,
if he lives in the flesh
instead of in the spirit,
may live in a practical way
not in the kingdom of God
but in the kingdom of Satan.
Only when we live, walk, behave,
and have our being altogether in our spirit, not in our natural man,
are we in the kingdom of God
and, in reality, are the kingdom of God.
As those
who are under the divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity,
we need to live in the reality of the kingdom of the heavens today.
We need to live a kingdom life in the church,
developing ourselves in the divine life
until we reach maturity.
The church today
must be the realm of God’s kingdom.
The apostle Paul
speaks of this vital principle in his writings.
Romans 12 reveals the Body of Christ,
but Romans 14 speaks of the kingdom.
The proper church life
is a realm, a sphere,
where God may exercise His authority.
Strictly speaking,
the proper church life
is the kingdom of God.
The church life
must be
like the holy city, the New Jerusalem,
a center where God may exercise His authority.
We must remember
that this ultimate consummation of God’s building
is a full picture of today’s church life.
If we are such a miniature of the holy city,
we will shine forth with God as the light.
Day 2
Because the kingdom is the reality of the church,
according to the New Testament revelation,
we cannot live the church life
apart from the proper kingdom life.
This is
why we have emphasized the fact
that the gospel preached at the beginning of the New Testament
concerns not salvation but the kingdom.
To enter the kingdom of God
is to be regenerated.
We may talk about regeneration
without realizing
that regeneration is for the entry into the kingdom.
We are regenerated into the kingdom.
When God regenerated us,
He regenerated us into His kingdom.
We need to be deeply impressed with the fact
that the reality of the kingdom of the heavens
is the content of the church life.
This means
that without the reality of the kingdom,
the church is empty.
It is crucial for us to see
that we experience the dispensing of the Divine Trinity corporately
by living in the kingdom.
As we live corporately in the kingdom life,
we spontaneously live the church life.
The kingdom life
issues in the church life.
Without the kingdom as the reality of life,
the church cannot be produced or built up.
To produce the church and to build up the church,
we need the kingdom.
The kingdom is the reality of the church.
We cannot say, however,
that the church is the reality of the kingdom.
We can say only
that the kingdom is the reality of the church.
Where the reality of the kingdom is lacking,
there the building of the church will be lacking.
We may know
how intimately the kingdom and the church are related.
Throughout the New Testament
we find these two advancing together in the closest connection.
When the Lord said,
He immediately added,
The keys of the kingdom
are given to make the building of the church possible.
Where the authority of the kingdom is absent,
there the building of the church will be lacking.
Anyone who refuses to submit to the authority of the kingdom
can at best be a saved person;
he will never be built
into the structure of the church.
The Scriptures present this far more profound aspect—
that the church has been secured
through the sovereign rule of heaven.
Because the kingdom of heaven
is able to assert its authority
over a company of men,
that company of men can be built up into a church.
It is necessary at this point to recapitulate.
Why was the church brought into being?
For the purpose of bringing in the kingdom!
How was the church brought into being?
By means of the authority of the kingdom!
God’s purpose
was to bring His heavenly dominion to the earth,
and apart from the church,
His goal could not be attained.
He needed a people
who would subject themselves to the dominion of heaven,
so that under that dominion
they might be built up into the church.
That is what Matthew 16 reveals.
Do not imagine
that by our salvation alone
we become the church.
We who are saved
are in the church,
but our salvation alone
does not constitute us the church.
The church is a Body;
therefore, there is need of relatedness
and there is the need of building up.
Day 1
The New Jerusalem
is not only a tent as a dwelling place;
it is also a city as
the center of a kingdom.
In the early stages of history
there was a small tent.
Then came the tabernacle
and eventually the temple.
Finally there will be
a city, the strongest and most established structure of all.
It is difficult to visualize authority
as symbolized by a tent, a tabernacle, or even a temple.
But a city aptly symbolizes a center
where authority is exercised.
It is the symbol of the kingdom.
The throne of God
will be displayed in the New Jerusalem,
for this city is the center of God’s authority.
The early chapters of the book of Revelation
reveal God sitting on the throne apart from the city.
But in the concluding chapters
God is on the throne in the city.
He is on the throne now,
but at that time
He will exercise His authority
over a full kingdom.
Christ as life
is signified by the church
as the house.
The New Testament
first tells us
that Christ is our life,
but eventually it says
that Christ is our Head,
and we are His Body.
The Body needs the Head,
and the Head needs the Body.
Christ is not only our life,
but He is also our Head.
If we only experience Christ as life,
yet do not realize Him much as our Head,
we only have the church as the house.
There is not the city yet.
When we realize
that Christ is not only our life
but also our Head,
then Christ will have
the second step of enlargement.
Then the church
will not only be the house
but also the city.
The house is mainly with the life,
and the city is mainly with the Head.
The Bible first presents the kingdom
and thereafter presents the church.
Where the kingdom of heaven is in authority,
there a church will be built up.
A church comes into being
where a company of people accept
the government of heaven.
So it would appear
to be the presence of the kingdom
that produces the church.
We have seen
that any kind of life
is a kingdom,
so the kingdom
is the life itself.
The kingdom of God
is the life of God,
but the church
is not the life,
nor is the life the church.
The church is the product of life.
The divine life is the kingdom
and this life produces the church.
The New Testament concept
is that the gospel brings in the kingdom.
The gospel does not bring in the church,
but the gospel brings forth the church.
Thus, the gospel brings in the kingdom of God,
and the gospel also brings forth the church of God.
This is why the gospel is called
the gospel of the kingdom in the New Testament.
There is not a verse in the New Testament
that tells us
that the gospel is the gospel of the church.
The gospel of the kingdom
brings forth, produces, the church
because the kingdom is the life itself
and the church is the issue, the produce, of life.