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Scripture Reading: Matt. 3:1-4; Mark 1:1-4; Heb. 10:1-4; Mark 1:5, 7-8; Rom. 15:16; Rev. 1:5b-6; 5:9-10; 1 Pet. 2:5, 9; 1 Tim. 1:16; Rom. 12:1; Col. 1:28-29
In this chapter we want to see three crucial matters concerning the priesthood of the gospel in the New Testament. First, we need to see what it means to carry out the priesthood in the reality of the New Testament. Second, we need to see how the apostle Paul functioned as the unique pattern of the priests of the gospel in the New Testament. Third, we want to see the defects of the big gospel preaching meeting.
The Old Testament priesthood is a shadow of the New Testament priesthood, and the New Testament priesthood is the reality of the Old Testament priesthood. Just as a photograph of a person is a picture of that person, so the Old Testament priesthood is a picture of the New Testament priesthood.
According to the picture of the Old Testament priesthood, the priests’ work was mainly to offer the sacrifices. Day by day, morning and evening, the priests were always offering sacrifices of bulls and goats. We have seen that our priestly duty in the New Testament is to offer saved sinners to God as spiritual sacrifices for His acceptance (Rom. 15:16; 1 Pet. 2:5). The sacrifices in the Old Testament were offered outside of the tabernacle in the outer court, but the priests’ work did not stop with the offering of these sacrifices. The priests had another category of work in the Holy Place. They had to enter into the Holy Place to arrange the bread of the Presence, to tend the lampstand so that it could shine continually, and to burn the incense. These duties were the work within the tabernacle, not in the open air of the outer court.
In the New Testament priesthood we take care of these duties in the Holy Place in their reality. The bread of the Presence in typology typifies Christ as the food of God’s people. He is our life supply. In the Gospel of John, Jesus the Son of God told us in chapter 6 that He is the bread of life (v. 35). As the bread of life, He said, “He who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me” (v. 57b). Christ is our food, and He is eatable. We can eat Him and live by Him. To arrange the bread of the Presence is to show forth Christ as the life supply to God’s people.
We can see the arranging of the bread of the Presence in every book of the New Testament. We can use the book of Romans to illustrate this. In Romans 5—8 Paul was showing forth Christ. In chapter 5 Paul shows that Christ is the sphere and the element in which we can have the divine life and escape death. We were born in Adam, who was the sphere and element of death, but through regeneration we have been transferred out of Adam into Christ. In Romans 5 we are told that we are now in Christ, and in this Christ, who is our sphere and element, we have life. In chapter 6 Paul shows that Christ is the One who was crucified and resurrected and that He included us in His crucifixion and resurrection. He is the very Christ in death and in resurrection to be our share, our portion, that we may partake of Him, enjoy Him, and experience Him. This is surely Christ as the bread of the Presence. In chapter 8 Paul shows us Christ as the life-giving Spirit indwelling us and interceding for us. He shows us a wonderful Christ who is in the heavens and at the same time within us. Even in Romans, Paul was arranging the bread of the Presence.
Peter also arranged the bread of the Presence in his Epistles. First Peter 2:2 says, “As newborn babes, long for the guileless milk of the word in order that by it you may grow unto salvation.” This verse shows Christ as the milk of the word that we can drink in order to be nourished and grow in life. In verses 5 and 9 Peter shows us that we are a holy priesthood and a royal priesthood. He also shows that Christ is the living stone and that by coming to Him, He makes us living stones. When we contact Him, He imparts His life into us to make us living as He is living. He is the living stone, and we are the living stones. Is not Peter’s fellowship here the showing of Christ to us? By these illustrations from the writings of Paul and Peter, we can see that nearly every chapter of the New Testament is the arranging of the bread of the Presence.
The lampstand in the tabernacle and the temple typifies Christ, the embodiment of the Triune God, as the light of the world. John 1:4 says, “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.” Our enjoyment of Christ as life at the table of the bread of the Presence issues in our enjoying Him as the light of the lampstand. The life and the light are one. Furthermore, in Revelation 1 the seven local churches are the seven golden lampstands, and the Lord Jesus as the High Priest is trimming all the local churches to make them shine better. Nearly every chapter of the New Testament is the trimming of the lampstand. When I am ministering the word, I am trimming the lampstand. When the saints are giving testimonies, I have the consciousness many times that they are trimming me. By listening to the saints’ experiences of Christ, I am enlightened. These testimonies are like a sharp two-edged sword to divide my soul from my spirit (Heb. 4:12). Because I experience this trimming in the meetings, I shine better.
The New Testament also shows us the reality of the priestly burning of the incense. In many of his Epistles Paul tells the saints that he prayed for them, and he asks them to pray for him. This is the reality of burning the incense to God.
Displaying the bread of the Presence, trimming the lamp, and burning the incense are all done in the tabernacle, the dwelling place of God. In the New Testament, Christ is the dwelling place of God (John 1:14; Col. 2:9), the church is the dwelling place of God (Eph. 2:21-22; 1 Cor. 3:16), and our spirit is the dwelling place of God (Eph. 2:22; 2 Tim. 4:22). Our God as the Spirit dwells in our spirit. We display Christ as the bread of the Presence to feed people, we trim the lampstand, and we burn the incense in Christ, in the church, and in our spirit. Paul wrote all of his Epistles in his spirit. He was performing his priestly service in the tabernacle.
To carry out the New Testament priesthood is to preach the gospel. We have seen that the New Testament ministry to carry out God’s economy is the preaching of the all-inclusive gospel of God. Included in this gospel are the three small, practical points of arranging Christ as the bread of the Presence, trimming the saints in the churches to make Christ shine through them with the sevenfold Spirit of God, and burning the incense in prayer to God. To preach the gospel is to carry out God’s New Testament economy, which is His all-inclusive gospel, and to carry out God’s New Testament economy is to fulfill the New Testament priesthood, the priestly service.
The unique pattern of the priests of the gospel in the New Testament is the apostle Paul (1 Tim. 1:16). We need to see how Paul did his work as a priest of the gospel. According to the New Testament record, he did it in three steps of offering. First, Paul saved sinners to offer them up to God as acceptable sacrifices (Rom. 15:16). Second, he brought the believers up to lead them to present themselves to God as living sacrifices (12:1). Third, he admonished and taught every saint in all wisdom to present each one full-grown in Christ (Col. 1:28-29). He did this by laboring and struggling according to God’s operation which operated in him in power. Paul’s announcing of Christ in Colossians 1:28 is to tell out Christ. To present every man full-grown in Christ is to offer every man full-grown in Christ.
According to Romans 15:16, Paul offered the saved sinners to God as acceptable sacrifices. All the unbelieving sinners are in Adam. When we preach the gospel to them and they receive the Lord, they are transferred out of Adam into Christ. When someone believes into Christ, he becomes a part of Christ. The unbelievers who are transferred into Christ are the increase of Christ. When I am preaching the gospel to offer saved persons to God, I am offering Christ — not the individual Christ but the corporate Christ. In the Old Testament the priests offered bulls and goats as sacrifices. God was pleased with that because they were types of the coming Christ. Our work today in the New Testament age is to preach the gospel to save sinners, to make them parts of Christ. When we offer these ones to God, God considers them as parts of Christ. Thus, we are offering the increase of Christ to God. Because we are members of Christ, we can say that we are Christ. Paul says in Philippians 1:21, “To me, to live is Christ.” When we were offered to God, we were offered to God as Christ.
The bulls and goats that the Old Testament priests offered to God were types. They were not the reality. The reality of these offerings is Christ. God was happy with the offerings in the Old Testament because they pointed to the coming Christ, but today we are priests who do not offer the types. We offer the reality, and the reality is not just the individual Christ Himself without any enlargement or increase. We are offering the increase of Christ, the parts of Christ. I am very happy because through my ministry over many years I have offered a number of thousands of people to the Lord as acceptable sacrifices. When I see the Lord, I can give Him an account that I have offered a number of thousands of parts of Himself to Him. We need to consider how many parts of Christ we have offered to the Lord. We all have to answer this question. One day we will see the Lord, and we will have to give Him an account concerning our living and labor on this earth. How many parts of Christ we have offered to Him indicates how much we have labored.
In talking about his labor in the gospel, Paul says in Colossians 1:29, “For which also I labor, struggling according to His operation which operates in me in power.” To offer parts of Christ to God requires our labor, but it is not labor by our own strength or our own ability. We need to struggle according to His operation which operates in us in power. We are the New Testament priests of the gospel of God, so we have to labor on the sinners by imparting God, dispensing God, into them to bring them into Christ, making them parts of Christ whom we offer to God as acceptable sacrifices. All of us as the New Testament priests are obligated to do this. One day we will all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, and we will have to give the Lord an account.
When we talk about knocking on people’s doors for the preaching of the gospel, what we mean is to visit people. We visit people to impart Christ into them. Visiting people to impart Christ into them must be a part of our Christian daily life. In our daily life we must impart God and dispense Christ into others to make them, the sinners, parts of Christ that we may present these parts as sacrifices offered to God for His good pleasure. This will produce the members of Christ to constitute His Body and eventually issue in this Body being expressed on earth in many localities.
After the saving of sinners, Paul continued to nourish the new ones, to bring them up in the same way that we would raise up our children. When we bring up our children, we first teach them what to do, and after a period of time, we charge them to do it themselves. At the time of their salvation, Paul presented the saved sinners as sacrifices. Then Paul brought them up and led them to present themselves as living sacrifices.
When I preach the gospel to a sinner and he gets saved, he is now in Christ. I present this one to God in Christ, with Christ, and as a part of Christ, as a spiritual sacrifice. Now that he is saved, he is a babe in Christ. I should not leave him alone, but I have to feed him as a nursing mother. After revealing in Romans 1 and 2 that the believers were sinners, Paul did this feeding work in chapters 3 through 11. Then in Romans 12 Paul, the feeder, exhorted the saints to present themselves to God as living sacrifices. Paul did not exhort the saints to offer themselves to God in Romans 1. It was after his fellowship through eleven chapters that he could ask the saints in Romans 12 to offer themselves to God as living sacrifices and be His serving members. We have to offer ourselves directly to God, but we do this by being helped, by being perfected, by the preaching apostle. This is the pattern we have to follow.
When people receive the Lord as their life, they are babes. After a period of time of feeding on Christ, they grow and grow in life until, spiritually speaking, they enter into their teens. In a family the parents cannot give the little children much responsibility, but later the parents can charge them to do things according to their stage of growth. When a child becomes thirteen years old, he comes out of elementary school and enters into junior high school. Paul’s charge in Romans 12:1 is something just out of “elementary school.” The elementary teaching is in Romans 1—11. Romans 12:1 may be considered as a charge to those who are now “thirteen years old.” After the long teaching in Romans 1—11, the children have entered into “junior high.” Paul offered them as sacrifices to God at their conversion. Now that they are in their “teens,” he exhorts them to present themselves to God, to present their bodies as a living sacrifice to God.
After this offering in Romans 12, the practice of the Body life begins. After the saints’ presentation of themselves to God, they can be the active members of the Body of Christ. Thus, in the following verses of chapter 12 we see that the ones who present themselves as living sacrifices become functioning members of the organic Body of Christ. These living members function according to their gifts, such as prophecy or teaching (vv. 6-7).
Before Romans 12, there was no practice of the Body life. Beginning in chapter 12 the saints are beginning to be perfected to practice the Body life. After being perfected, the saints will do the same work as the gifted ones — the apostles, prophets, evangelists, and shepherds and teachers (Eph. 4:11-12). Even though the saints are not these particular gifts, they will do the same work that these gifts do. This work is the work of the New Testament ministry, which is to build up the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ is built directly by the perfected saints, not by the perfecting gifts. This Body is built up and expressed in many localities on this earth as the local churches.
Because the believers are still not fully matured, there is the third step of Paul’s gospel work in the New Testament priesthood. This third step can be seen in Colossians 1:27-29: “To whom God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory, whom we announce, admonishing every man and teaching every man in all wisdom that we may present every man full-grown in Christ; for which also I labor, struggling according to His operation which operates in me in power.” What kind of Christ did Paul announce? The Christ whom he announced is not that simple. He announced the indwelling Christ as the hope of glory. Paul announced a wonderful person. Christ as the hope of glory cannot work in us fully without a worker like Paul.
The word admonishing implies that there are troubles, problems, hardships, and mistakes that we can make. Therefore, we need to be admonished. Admonishing also implies warning and rebuking. Paul admonished and taught every man in all wisdom. In all wisdom means that Paul admonished and taught one person in one way and another person in another way. He admonished and taught every man face to face. Paul did this so that he could present, or offer, every man full-grown in Christ. Paul did not want to miss anyone, desiring to present every man full-grown.
In Acts 20 Paul said that he taught the saints publicly and from house to house (v. 20). He also said that he admonished each one of the saints for three years night and day with tears (v. 31). Paul went to the homes of the saints to teach them and admonish them one by one. I lived in Anaheim for many years, but I went to very few homes of the saints to visit them. I feel very sorry about this. We have been off in our service due to the traditional concept. Paul said that he taught publicly and that he also taught from house to house. From house to house in Greek means “according to houses.” Paul taught, admonished, and warned the saints face to face. By this teaching from house to house to admonish each one of the saints, Paul ministered Christ to the saints to cause them to grow in life.
In the Old Testament a full-grown priest had to be thirty years old. A person who was twenty-five years old could only be an apprentice, a learner, in the priesthood. The Lord Jesus began His ministry when He was about thirty years old (Luke 3:23), the full age for God’s service (Num. 4:3, 35, 39, 43, 47). We need to labor on others by admonishing them and teaching them in all wisdom until they are full-grown in Christ. We admonish each one and teach each one in many, many ways, that is, in all wisdom. The full-grown, matured saints become the active members of the organic Body of Christ, the parts of Christ. In other words, they all become the corporate Christ. To offer the saints full-grown in Christ is to offer the corporate Christ. In such a condition they have become parts of Christ in full, the constituents of the corporate Christ.
Because we are not full-grown in Christ, we still need to be admonished and taught in all wisdom. We may say that we are parts of the corporate Christ, but are we His parts practically, in our daily life? Do you believe that the parts of the corporate Christ would participate in anything sinful or worldly? Some of us may have grown to the stage of Romans 12:1, the stage of presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice. Romans 12:1, however, is not at the stage of full growth. We have to be helped by the priests who handle us to grow up into the full growth in Colossians 1:28. The apostles who handle us, who serve us with Christ, desire to present us in Christ to God as parts of the corporate Christ.
Paul said that he labored for this by struggling. The Greek word for struggling means “fighting, battling, or wrestling.” It is not an easy thing to present every man full-grown in Christ. Paul did not labor according to his own ability or strength but according to Christ’s operation which operated in him in power. Christ’s indwelling is so that He can operate and move in us in power. The power here is a dynamic power. Christ is working in us, but do we realize and sense that daily, day and night, Christ the living One is indwelling us and operating within us?
Some of the ones who are closest to me remind me to take care of myself in my old age. The ones close to me are concerned for me because they love me, but another One also loves me. This inner One is also operating within me all the time. Every time I go along with His operation, I am energized. The more I speak for the Lord, the stronger I am. We need to labor by struggling according to the One who operates in us, not according to our natural strength. We need to cooperate with the operation of the indwelling Christ. For the carrying out of His New Testament economy, God has done His part. He surely has consummated the works on His side to do everything for us. Now He is operating in us to make us the energizing priests. We have to take care of our part, to fulfill our duty. We may feel that we are weak, that we are nothing, and that we can do nothing, but as long as we are willing to cooperate, He will be our energizing power. As long as we are willing to do business, He will be our capital. The problem to Him is that we would not be willing to cooperate with Him.
The Lord told us in the New Testament that all of His chosen people, who are today’s believers, are His priests (1 Pet. 2:5, 9; Rev. 1:6; 5:10). No priest can be lazy, because every priest has to offer something day by day. Every priest has to be very, very diligent, even aggressive, in offering sacrifices to God. God does not want the satisfying fragrance of the offerings on the altar to stop. He likes this satisfying fragrance to ascend to Him all the time for His acceptance. In Romans 15:16 Paul says that he was a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, an energizing priest of the gospel of God, to offer the Gentiles to God. The main offering of the New Testament priests should be the saved sinners as parts of the enlarged and corporate Christ, offered to God as the New Testament sacrifices of the gospel. In the Old Testament the main offerings were bulls and goats, which were types of Christ. Today we are offering Christ, but not the individual Christ. We are offering the corporate Christ.
This kind of offering should continue all the time. As the New Testament priests, we have to make the preaching of the gospel a part of our daily life, our daily walk. A priest’s daily life and daily work are to offer sacrifices to God. In the Old Testament the priests offered bulls and goats all day long, morning and evening. This is a type of what we should do. As the New Testament priests, we should offer sinners, regenerated, sanctified, transformed, and even conformed to the image of Christ. We should offer these persons as parts of the corporate Christ to God. We should not forget that as believers we are priests and that a priest is always offering something to God. Paul was offering the sinners he saved as sacrifices to God all the time.
We may have experienced Romans 12:1, but we have not reached the state of being full-grown in Colossians 1:28. To be presented to God full-grown in Christ is the last step to finish the sacrifice of the New Testament priesthood. This sacrifice needs three steps: salvation in Romans 15:16, growth in life in Romans 12:1, and the maturity in life in Colossians 1:28. All these steps are the work of the New Testament priesthood of the gospel. According to the divine revelation, to save sinners, to teach the Bible, to edify the saints, and to set up churches are all the work of the gospel. The preaching of the gospel of God is the New Testament ministry to carry out God’s New Testament economy. We must bear this responsibility for God’s good pleasure.
I have been with many of the saints for years, and I know that they love the Lord. They come to the meetings regularly, year after year. They give a lot for the Lord. In this book I have a real burden to tell all the saints that what I am teaching and preaching here is absolutely new. What most Christians practice, including us, is according to an accumulation of centuries of tradition. What we have practiced is partially according to the Bible and partially not according to the Bible. We all have been drugged by the traditional and unscriptural way of practicing the church life and of Christian service. We need to be sober and reconsider what the Bible says. We should take only the holy Word as our base.
Our gospel preaching today must be the priesthood of the gospel in the New Testament. The gospel of God is according to the teaching of the apostles in the New Testament and includes all of God’s New Testament economy. When the priests in the Old Testament offered bulls and goats, they did not realize that these sacrifices typified Christ in His incarnation, in His human living, in His all-inclusive death, in His resurrection as life, in His coming to us as the life-giving Spirit to indwell us, in His ascension, and in His descension to be one with His saved ones and to make them one Body. Although the Old Testament priests did not realize this, we should realize it because we are in this present New Testament age.
If we do not know these things, we are deficient. Because the Lord has shown me all these things, I am burdened. I do not care for any other work. I am burdened to present to all the saints these new seeings, these new visions, these new lights. The truth concerning the priests of the gospel of God is altogether new to me. I have been teaching the Bible for over sixty years, but this point cannot be found in any of my writings in the past. Thank the Lord that I have seen this matter and that I can present it to all the saints.
The big gospel preaching meeting has defects. I do admit that the big preaching meeting did fulfill and still fulfills the purpose of saving sinners. It fulfills the purpose of soul-winning, but it does not fulfill the purpose of God’s economy. Many souls may be saved in a big gospel preaching meeting, but where are they after their salvation? They make little progress in God’s economy, and they know very little concerning God’s economy. Because of this they cannot fulfill God’s purpose in His New Testament economy.
Many real Christians were gained through big gospel preaching meetings. The big gospel preaching meeting fulfills the purpose of saving sinners, but it fosters the building up of the evangelists as a hierarchy of clergy. If we only practice having big gospel preaching meetings for ten years, most of the saints will not know how to preach the gospel. Only the evangelists among us will know how. The more big gospel preaching meetings we have, the more these gifted evangelists get fostered to be the clergy. The big gospel preaching meetings do not develop the believers’ function of preaching the gospel, but they annul it, making the majority of the believers laity. We may hate any kind of hierarchy and the clergy-laity system, but innocently and unconsciously we are fostering and building them up when we practice having only big gospel preaching meetings.
The evangelists should perfect the saints to preach the gospel as they do. We need the perfecting of the saints by the gifts. Ephesians 4 tells us that the Lord gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some shepherds and teachers for the perfecting of the saints. This means that these gifted persons equip the saints to do the same work that they do. There have been some big evangelists preaching the gospel for many years, but they did not perfect others to preach the gospel. There are millions of Christians in Christianity who do not and who have not been enabled and equipped to preach the gospel. All the believers need to practice the priesthood of the gospel in the New Testament.
On the one hand, the big gospel preaching meeting saves sinners, but on the other hand, it annuls the function of the believers in preaching the gospel. This is the subtlety of the enemy. We have been saved by the Lord, and we have the divine life. This divine life has organic functions, and the preaching of the gospel is one of these functions, but we have to ask where this function of preaching the gospel is among us today. This function in many of us has been annulled by the improper practice of preaching the gospel. This improper practice has cheated us.
In the past the church would announce that there would be a gospel meeting, and the brothers would encourage us to invite people, to bring people, and to prepare a love feast. According to the Old Testament typology, this is not the work of the priests but the work of the Levites. To arrange the chairs, to clean the hall, to sit with the new ones, and to help them find certain things in the Bible are all Levitical services. This is not the priestly preaching of the gospel. Instead of preaching the gospel directly, the saints brought their contacts to the big gospel preaching meeting to hear someone else preach the gospel. Who was preaching the gospel among us? Only a few brothers. That practice fostered the building up of the clergy, and at the same time it killed the organic preaching function of each member. This is why we do not have many real priests of the New Testament gospel among us today. This is the defect of having only big gospel preaching meetings. This is not a deficiency. To be deficient means to be short of something. To practice having only big gospel preaching meetings is defective. To be defective is to be wrong in something.
Most of the members in the major denominations do not preach the gospel and cannot preach the gospel. All of us need to be perfected to preach the gospel, not just a few. I am not against having big meetings for the preaching of the gospel. Sometimes the Lord will use this kind of meeting. The first preaching of the gospel in the New Testament on the day of Pentecost was to a big congregation, but that congregation was not brought together by advertisement, propaganda, or brochures. That congregation was sovereignly prepared by God. Peter took this opportunity to speak the gospel to these people. According to the record of the book of Acts, however, that is not the regular and ordinary preaching of the gospel. The regular and ordinary preaching is in the homes of the believers (5:42) and is by each of the believers. The common practice of the preaching of the gospel today is not like this. Most conduct big preaching meetings on a regular basis. As a result, the saints do not preach the gospel themselves daily and weekly. Such a practice of regularly having only big gospel preaching meetings annuls the preaching function within all the saints.
According to the Bible, all the believers should preach the gospel because every believer is a priest. The New Testament priests are the priests of the gospel of God. Because we are the priests of the gospel, we have the capacity and the obligation to speak the gospel. According to Paul’s thought, he owed people the gospel (Rom. 1:14-15). We owe our relatives, our classmates, our neighbors, and our friends the gospel. We owe the gospel to the people in the town where we live. Every dear saint should be stirred up to preach the gospel. We have the capacity to speak the gospel. The more that we speak, the more we will be able to speak.
I learned the English language when I was very young in China, but the environment did not permit me to practice speaking English. I basically learned the English language by reading and writing, not by speaking. I came to the United States when I was about sixty years old, and then I began to speak English. That was very awkward for me, but after twenty-five years of practicing, I can speak much better. I learned that the more I spoke English, the more I was able to speak.
Many dear saints among us have been in the church life for over ten years, but they have never been stirred up to preach the gospel. After ten years of not practicing to preach the gospel, they have become dumb in speaking the gospel. They can only invite people to come to a big gospel meeting. They can prepare a love feast, arrange the chairs, sit by their guests in the meeting, and help them to find the right passage of the Bible and the right hymn in the hymnal. They can take down the names and addresses of the new ones for contacting them in the future, but they do not feel that they can talk to them directly concerning the gospel. Instead of preaching the gospel, they feel that they can only bring their contacts to certain brothers who can explain the gospel in a proper way.
In the past we thought that preaching the gospel was a church activity in which the whole church was engaged. Actually, however, most of the saints did the Levitical service, not the priestly service. To arrange the chairs for the gospel meeting, to invite people to come, and to give them a ride to the meeting are all part of the Levitical service. That is not the priestly service. A priest of the gospel gets the sinners saved and baptizes them to offer them as sacrifices to God. Our preaching of the gospel has not been prevailing because we have been cheated by the enemy. Our practice has annulled the preaching ability, the preaching capacity, the preaching function, of the saints. We are responsible for this before the Lord. One day we will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. The Lord may check with us concerning the fellowship that we have received in this book. The capacity to speak Christ is in the divine life, so we need to enjoy this divine life. This capacity is developed by the growth of life, and this development will be unto an ability. Then the capacity will have become an ability. All of us need to be developed to preach the gospel, to speak the gospel into people’s spirits.
Because the Lord has given us the divine life with such a capacity, we are obligated to speak Christ. We are obliged to preach the gospel to our relatives and to our neighbors. We are obliged to preach the gospel to all the people whom we know. The more people we know, the more we are obligated. All of us will be checked by the Lord Jesus at the judgment seat. We will not be able to make excuses at the judgment seat of Christ. The Lord will hold us accountable for what we have heard and seen in the New Testament.
It may be all right to practice preaching the gospel with big gospel meetings, but this depends on whether our practice of preaching in this way annuls or develops the saints’ ability in preaching the gospel. We have to bear the responsibility for the annulling or for the developing of the saints’ functions. If we do practice preaching the gospel by big gospel meetings, this should not replace the saints’ preaching. Instead it should set up a pattern to develop the saints’ capacity of preaching the gospel. To tell the saints that we do not need to go out to preach the gospel and that all we need to do is bring all our new contacts together for a big gospel meeting is wrong because it annuls the saints’ function in preaching the gospel. What we do and what we say will be checked at the judgment seat of Christ.
The obligation to speak Christ is the fulfillment of our spiritual service in which we are indebted to God’s salvation. God might check with us in this way: “Didn’t I give My divine life to you? Have you not been enjoying My life for years? Is not My salvation with My divine life dynamic? Then why would you not fulfill your obligation? You owe Me and My dynamic salvation.” How many people we bring to the Lord depends on how many people God has allowed us to meet. If we have more cousins, we are more obligated. The Lord will check with us concerning how many people we brought to salvation. We cannot tell the Lord that we did not know anyone. The Lord has given us relatives, neighbors, friends, colleagues, and classmates.
It would be good if all of us could take thirty minutes to write down everyone that we know, beginning from our nearest relatives. In Acts 1:8 the Lord told the disciples that they would receive power when the Holy Spirit had come upon them and that they would be His witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria, and to the uttermost part of the earth. In preaching the gospel, our “Jerusalem” is our parents, our brothers and sisters, and our relatives. I believe that if we write down the names of those we know, beginning from our “Jerusalem,” we will have at least one hundred names. Then we need to check which ones among these one hundred have been saved. We owe the gospel to the ones who have not been saved.
I am concerned about our understanding of the fellowship in this book concerning the New Testament priests of the gospel of God. We should not understand this fellowship in a common way or think that we have heard this before. We may think that we know already that we all have to preach the gospel. I hope that we would not understand the fellowship concerning the priesthood of the gospel in this way. The way that I have presented is particular and unique. It is not the common preaching of the gospel but the preaching of the priests. When we preach the gospel, we are preaching the gospel as the New Testament priests. Our preaching is our priestly service, and we have to make it our daily work and our daily life. We have to make it a part of our being.
To be priests of God without offering sacrifices to God daily is uncomely. We should not preach the gospel merely as Christians. The New Testament tells us that we should preach the gospel as priests doing our priestly service. In Romans 1:9 Paul says that he served God in his spirit in the gospel. Whatever Paul did as service to God was a part of his preaching of the gospel. Paul set up many local churches. His setting up of the churches was a part of his gospelizing as a priest. Because we did not have this enlightenment in the past, we preached the gospel ignorantly.
In presenting this fellowship to you, I appeal to your love of the Lord, to your enlightened conscience, and to your love of the truth. Please reconsider the fellowship in this chapter and the previous chapter. Consider before the Lord all the verses that I have presented regarding the priesthood of the gospel in the New Testament. I believe that as you consider before the Lord, the Lord will show you the same vision that I have seen.
