Scripture Reading: 2 Cor. 4:16; Rom. 6:4-5; Phil. 2:12-15; 3:10
Prayer: Lord, we look unto You. Be with us and speak to us. Lord, have mercy upon us that we all may be open to You. Thank You for Your speaking. Lord, be with us to the uttermost. Speak a word to our hearts, to each one of us. Cover us with Your prevailing blood. Thank You again for Your presence. Amen.
In the previous chapter we shared concerning being renewed day by day. In that fellowship we pointed out that God has an eternal goal to produce a new creation out of the old creation. God desires to have a new creation. We saw that God spends a long time to take His people through a long process for the producing of a new creation. God spends four dispensations to do His work. These dispensations are the dispensation of the fathers, the dispensation of law, the dispensation of grace, and the dispensation of the kingdom. God uses these four dispensations to create a new creation out of His old creation.
The old creation does not have the divine life and nature, but the new creation does (John 1:13; 3:15; 2 Pet. 1:4). Anything created by God that does not have God in it as its life, nature, appearance, and expression is old, but anything that has God within it as its life, nature, appearance, and expression is a new creation. Before we were regenerated, we were the old creation. After we were regenerated, we became a new creation. To be regenerated is to be made a new creation. Second Corinthians 5:17 says, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.” In the sense of being in Christ, we are the new creation, but in actuality in our daily life, we are not that new because we do not have Christ as the only One who occupies us, who fills us up, and who is our life, nature, appearance, and expression. Even though we have been regenerated to be made a new creation, we are still the old creation most of the time according to our daily walk in actuality. Regardless of how long we have been in the Lord, we still keep our old habits. Sometimes we live in the spirit to live Christ, but most of the time we still live in our old habit, our old nature. We have to admit that this is the old creation. We are regenerated, but still today there is a mixture in our daily living. Our living is partly the new creation and even more the old creation.
In our morning watch with the Lord, we may really enjoy, praise, and worship Him. At that time in our morning watch, we are the new creation. After our time with the Lord in the morning, we may come to the dining table and confront something that is not so pleasant to us. Then we may say something that is not proper and that our conscience condemns. We may call that a failure, a defeat, a mistake, an offense, or a sin. What happened at the dining table, however, was not merely a sin, an offense, a mistake, a failure, or a defeat. That was our old creation.
At the Lord’s table we praise and worship the Lord, and it seems that we all are the new creation. While we are the new creation, though, we are even more the old creation because we are so much in our old habit. We were born into the old creation, and we have been living according to our old habit for years. When I talk about our habit, I do not mean only things that are bad. One person may be very slow according to his natural constitution, but another person may be very quick. It is easy for quick persons to make mistakes, whereas slow persons are slow in doing things and in producing things. Regardless of whether we are quick or slow, however, we are the old creation. What we are in our natural constitution according to our birth is the old creation. Some people are talkative according to their natural constitution, and others are quiet. Although some talkative ones may function in the meetings, we should not think that all the functioning is of the new creation. Some functioning may be according to a person’s quick temperament in his natural constitution. Some will never speak because they have a quiet disposition. Both the talkative ones and the quiet ones are the old creation.
What shall the Lord do with us? He surely does not want the old creation. We have God doctrinally, but we may lack God as our life and nature in our daily life. We may be slow in our disposition, but many times God’s nature is to do things immediately, especially in the meetings. We may be quiet in our nature, but God wants us to be a new creation to utter something in the meetings against our natural habit. God desires that we all be His new creation, having Him as our nature. He also wants us to express Him. God is our portion, but can we say that He is our new habit? We all have to be brought out of our old habit into taking God as our new habit.
The New Testament says that God chose us before the foundation of the world and marked us out (Eph. 1:4-5). He desires to make His chosen ones the new creation. His way to do this is first to put Himself into us, to regenerate us. We are reborn, regenerated, to become God’s children. This is wonderful, but the New Testament reveals that regeneration alone is not adequate. After regenerating us, God has to renew us, sanctify us, transform us, conform us to His image, and glorify us. Transformation needs sanctification and also renewing. Transformation is a metabolic change. When we are transformed, a new element is added to us metabolically to replace the old element. The new element is God Himself. God is “new” (as a noun). There is no oldness with God.
After we have been regenerated, we have God, but we do not have much of God. This is why Colossians 2:19 says that we need to grow with the growth of God, or increase with the increase of God. This means that we grow by the increase of God within us. If we have little increase of God, we grow little. If we have much increase of God, we grow much. When we have God in us to the fullest, we will have the full growth. God has to be increased within us. When God is increasing within us, His new element is being added into us. When the divine element comes into us, it renews us regardless of whether we are slow or quick in our natural disposition. As we are contacting God, God infuses Himself as the divine element into our being. This new element is added into our existing element. When this new element is added into us, something is worked out within us.
God desires to add Himself into our being, but He does not increase in us when we do not contact Him. We may go through a period of time in which we do not contact God or pray to Him. Instead, we are doing everything by ourselves and in ourselves. During this time, God is not added into our being, and we are not increasing with the increase of God. This is why we encourage all the saints to have morning watch. Our morning watch with the Lord is not just for us to exercise our mind to read the letter of the Bible, but it is for us to exercise our spirit. This is why we have to say “O Lord Jesus.” Our calling on the Lord is our spiritual breathing. We have to contact God by praying to Him and calling on Him. Then He adds Himself into us. When we contact Him, He is adding more and more of the divine element into our being. As the new element of God is being added into our being, this new element metabolically renews us. I may be a quick person naturally, but because God’s element comes into my being, this element renews my natural habit. I may be slow in my natural disposition, but God renews me with His element to discharge my old element.
We may be good saints in the church who have been kept and preserved by the Lord, but have we been renewed with the divine element? Is there some renewing going on with us, or are we remaining the same day by day and year after year? It would be tragic if we would pass through many sufferings and still remain the same. In order to consummate His renewing work in us and with us, God becomes our life and nature within. In addition to this, God as the sovereign Lord controls the entire universe in order to renew us. God uses the environment in order to work His life and nature into us. Without the environment, we could never be renewed. We would remain the same.
According to our view and consideration, we always base our judgment of things upon whether something is good or bad. We deal with things too much according to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and not according to the tree of life. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is the tree of good and bad. The tree of life does not have anything to do with good or bad. Only life, which is God Himself, constitutes the tree of life. Our view and consideration are most of the time based upon whether something is good or bad and right or wrong, but God does not consider things in this realm.
We may say that God punishes us by chastising and correcting us because we are so wrong. In a sense this is correct. There are verses from the Bible that support this understanding, but if we know the Bible in its principle, we can see that God desires to renew us. God cares for whether we are still in the old creation or whether we are being renewed. We may be the most right persons and still be the most old persons. We may be strong in our habit and strong in what we are. God’s intention is not merely to chastise or correct us but to use the outward environment to trouble us, to remind us, and to wake us up to realize that we have God as our nature, yet we do not live Him according to His nature. We possess Him for our enjoyment, but we do not live Him as our nature.
Do we discipline our children according to God’s nature? We may discipline them according to our disposition, our being, and our habit. God, therefore, uses the environment to put us into “prison.” Then we are reminded to pray, and the eventual outcome of our prayer is not merely that we get corrected but that we get renewed. Then when we are going to discipline our children, we will consider whether we are disciplining them in ourselves or with God and through God. Formerly, we disciplined our children with ourselves, by ourselves, and in ourselves. We did not have God in us as our life and nature while we were disciplining our children. Now God is in our disciplining of our children, and our disciplining them becomes a human-divine disciplining. The father is doing the disciplining, yet his disciplining is the divine disciplining because it is full of God. God is in it. God uses the outward environment in which we suffer to renew us.
Confucius also said that we need to be renewed day by day, but his concept of renewing was merely to have a change. In other words, a person who loses his temper needs to renew himself by limiting his temper. The Bible does not teach us in this way. It teaches us to be renewed according to nothing of ourselves. We are renewed by the addition of God into our being, by having more of the divine element added into our being. I have been living the Christian life for over sixty years, and I can testify concerning what the real Christian life is. The real Christian life is to have God added into us morning and evening and day by day.
We may discipline our children without God, only according to our likes or dislikes. When we hear this fellowship, we may think that God does not want us to discipline our children. This is also wrong. We are not saying that God does not want us to discipline our children. What we need to see is that God wants us to discipline our children with Him. This is a difficult lesson for all of us to learn.
Very few of today’s Christian teachings would point out that the Christian life is not a matter of what we do or do not do. The problem today is that people do everything without God. What God cares for is that His chosen ones would learn to cooperate with Him by allowing Him to be added into them day by day. God is daily being added to us for the purpose of metabolically transforming us. The new element of God is coming into us to replace the old element. This new element is God Himself, and the old element is us. We need to be replaced with God as the new element.
Our being replaced with the divine element does not mean that we should be abandoned. It is correct to say that our old man should be replaced, but we should not say that our old man should be abandoned. Galatians 2:20 says, “I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me; and the life which I now live.” When we read the first part of this verse, we may think that Christ lives in us and that we have been abandoned. Paul says that he no longer lives, but he goes on to talk about the life which he now lives. I have been crucified, and it is no longer I but Christ, but I still live. The old “I” is replaced by a divine person to create a new “I.” Our God is daily waiting for a chance to add Himself into all of us. If we would give Him the opportunity and the opening, He will add Himself into our being as the new element, not merely to correct us but to replace us, to renew us.
This renewing process is gradual. It takes a long time. From regeneration to glorification is a long process. In this long process God has to sanctify us, to separate us from the world. He has to transform us by renewing us metabolically. This renewing transforms us from one form to bring us into another form. Our old form is a form without God, but the new form is with God in us as our life, as our nature, as our appearance, and as our expression. This renewing brings in the conformation to the Lord’s image. Then in doing everything we are like God, and we do things according to God at the right time. What we need is to be renewed day by day.
Sometimes God may allow the church to pass through a “storm.” God may allow this “storm” to occur because He wants us to be renewed. The tragic thing is that while we are suffering in the “storm,” we would remain the same with no renewing. I hope that we will consider this matter. We have to pray, “Lord, I don’t want to remain the same. I do not want to remain the same this year as I was last year. I want to be renewed day by day.” God’s intention is for us to be renewed day by day. In order to be renewed, we need the new addition of God into us daily. Daily we need to contact God, open ourselves up to Him, and let Him come into us to be a new addition into us day by day.
We should not think that God is inactive. When God is added into us, He does not just remain there, doing nothing. Philippians 2:13 says, “It is God who operates in you both the willing and the working for His good pleasure.” God is not within us in a silent and inactive way. God is operating within us. The Greek word for operates in Philippians 2:13 is equivalent to the English word energizes. God is operating in us, energizing in us.
The divine element is very active. It is energizing, it works, and it is organic. Anything that is organic has an energizing capacity within it. Within the divine life that we are enjoying today, there is a renewing capacity. This capacity is not merely the measure of the divine life. When I use the word capacity, I mean the ability of the divine life in its nature. In God’s divine nature there is the ability that is energizing all day. Once the divine life with the divine nature gets into us, it energizes within us. We all have the divine element energizing in us, and in this divine element there is the renewing capacity.
We may use soap as an illustration because it has the capacity to wash away dirt. There is the ability to wash away dirt in the nature of the soap. Likewise, in the divine life that we have received and that we are enjoying, there is a renewing capacity according to its nature. Thank the Lord for the renewing capacity of the divine life. We need to enjoy the renewing capacity of the divine life in resurrection day by day.
This is why we have to learn to die to ourselves. How do we die to ourselves? Every morning we should contact the Lord. First, we have to confess our sins. Second, we have to reject ourselves. In rejecting ourselves, we pass through the death of Christ, and the death of Christ kills us. In 2 Corinthians 4 Paul talks about “the putting to death of Jesus” (v. 10). This means that Jesus, in a positive sense, is always killing us. In many medicines today there is a healing element and a killing element that kills the bad germs and bacteria within us. In Jesus there is the killing element. He is our medication to heal us, enliven us, and kill all the negative things within us. In this dose there is the killing power. Morning after morning we need to come to the Lord and take Him as our antibiotic. Jesus is our daily antibiotic. When we take Him as our medication, we enjoy the killing of Jesus, or the putting to death of Jesus. This killing is the process of renewing. Furthermore, this killing brings in resurrection. Jesus does not only comprise killing but also resurrecting. In the resurrection of Christ the divine life has the renewing capacity. When we reject ourselves in the morning to receive God into us, we have the sense during the day that a killing process is going on within us. Also, there is a capacity in the divine life that is renewing us in all our actions.
Philippians 2:13 tells us that God is operating in us, and then verse 14 tells us to do all things without murmurings and reasonings. If we receive the addition of God in the morning, this addition has the killing power. It will kill our murmurings and reasonings. In the previous chapter I told you that when I was young, I heard someone say that the church in Philippi was the best church, but Philippians 2:14 shows us that even the church in Philippi had murmurings and reasonings. Murmurings are of our emotions, mostly by the sisters; reasonings are of our mind, mostly by the brothers. In the church the sisters are used to murmuring because they are emotional, and the brothers are used to reasoning because they are logical. It is mostly the brothers who consider according to their reasonings who is wrong and who is right. Psalm 133 tells us how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity, but if the church life is full of murmurings and reasonings, how can we live together in peace? Murmurings and reasonings are according to the old creation.
In my early days of ministry I advised people to take care of their behavior, but this only worked with them temporarily. In a training in 1953 and 1954 I stressed thirty aspects of character. All the trainees received this fellowship and practiced it. After a short time, however, many of these aspects of character disappeared from them. Many of the trainees, including the co-workers, went back to their old character. Our character is the old creation that needs to be renewed to become the new creation.
God’s intention is altogether to make us new. This is not an overnight matter. It takes a long time in our life, and it requires us to contact God, to receive God, and to get God added into us all the day. It requires us to pray, confessing our sins and rejecting ourselves to take the cross of Christ. To take the cross of Christ is a killing, and this killing is death. This death brings in resurrection, and in this resurrection the divine life in us will carry out its renewing capacity. Then we will be changed metabolically. This process of renewing takes a period of years. Brother Nee once said that this renewing requires twenty years.
The renewing process should be continuous. Moment by moment we have to receive God so that He can be added into us, and we have to reject ourselves to receive the death of Christ so that we can cooperate with the Lord within us. Then we will enjoy not only the renewing capacity but also the renewing result, which is a metabolic change in our behavior, in our character, in our disposition, and even in our habit. The most difficult thing to renew is our habit. When we experience God in Christ daily, we will see that God’s intention is to renew us bit by bit, especially to renew our habit. This is the real experience of being renewed day by day. For this purpose God raises up all kinds of environments to consume our outer man so that our inner man can be renewed day by day.
God desires us to be the new creation. When all of the Lord’s children pass through the process of renewing to become the New Jerusalem, they will be in a state of being fully renewed. The holy city is called the New Jerusalem because it has no old element of God’s old creation. As we pass through afflictions, there needs to be a continual renewing taking place in us day by day so that God can accomplish His heart’s desire.
