Search
Scripture Reading: John 1:1, 4, 1:14; 10:10; 2:19; 15:4; 14:2, 20, 23; 17:21-23
As we have seen, God has two sections of His work according to His plan — the work of creation and the work of building. God’s creation is for His building. Creation was according to His intention to build something by mingling Himself with His creatures. The first two chapters of the sixty-six books of the Scriptures deal with God’s creation, and the third chapter to the end of the Scriptures deal with God’s building. God’s creation was completed in the first two chapters, but from the third chapter until today and into the future is the time for God’s building.
At the completion of God’s work of creation there was the garden of Eden, the scenery of creation, and at the completion of God’s work of building there will be a city, the New Jerusalem, which is a sign, a symbol, of God’s building. In the garden there were many created things, but there was nothing built. However, in the garden there were the materials for the building: gold, bdellium (pearl), and onyx, which is a precious stone. At the end of the Scriptures, these three items — gold, pearl, and precious stones — are built together in the city. The entire city of New Jerusalem is of gold, the gates are pearl, and the foundations of the wall are precious stones. All the above show us that in the whole universe, according to God’s plan, there are only two sections of the divine work: creation and building. Today we are in the period of God’s building and under the process of God’s building.
The principle of God’s building is that God builds Himself into us and builds us into Him; that is, God mingles Himself with us, divinity with humanity, as one building. To create is to bring something into existence out of nothing. Building, on the other hand, means that two things that are already here are put together. God is here, and man is here, but now there is the need of some work to bring God together with man as one and to bring so many persons together as one in God and with God. This is the work of building.
Now we know the principle of God’s building, and we know what God’s work is in these days, the period, the age, of building. What God always has been doing, and what He still is doing, is working Himself into us, working us into God, and bringing all of us together as one in God and through God. We may illustrate this with concrete. God is the cement, the Spirit is the water, and we are the stones. When the cement is put into the water and the stones are put into the cement, the stones are bound together by the cement and water. The result is a building of concrete.
God first carried out His building work by coming as the divine person to be incarnated into humanity to build a man with God, that is, to build a God-man. In the four thousand years from the time of Adam to the time of Christ, there were many millions of people, but not one of them was a building of God with man. Before the incarnation, God was God, and man was man. God and man, man and God, were never mingled as one until the day that God Himself was incarnated to be born in a manger as a man. This man was a unique man, God mingled with man, a man with God, a God-man. What God did to work Himself into man and work man into Himself was the beginning of the divine building.
The Gospel of John deals with the matter of life. However, we must also see that this Gospel deals with the building. The apostle John wrote this Gospel, his Epistles, and the last book of the Scriptures, Revelation. At the end of Revelation there is a city with the tree of life. The city is the building, and the tree is the life. Therefore, in the New Jerusalem there are life and building. Life is for the building, and the building is of life.
In the Gospel of John also, there is life for the building. The Lord Jesus came that we may have life, and He came as life to us (10:10). John 1:1 and 4 say, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...In Him was life.” Moreover, verse 14 says that He was incarnated to be a man, and this very man is a tabernacle. That a tabernacle is a building shows that this very God with life in Him is for the building.
At the end of the first chapter of John, the Lord told Nathanael that he would see the angels of God ascending and descending upon Him as the Son of Man (v. 51). As we have seen, this refers to Jacob’s dream, which was a dream of building. In this dream there were the heavenly ladder and the open heaven. Jacob poured oil upon the stone that he had used as his pillow, and he called it a building, Bethel, the house of God. The house of God is man as the stones and the Holy Spirit as the oil poured upon him. When the Holy Spirit is poured upon us, we become Bethel, the house of God.
The Lord came in the flesh as a tabernacle, and He told us that He is the heavenly ladder, which is for Bethel, the house of God and the temple of God. This shows us that the Lord coming to be life to us is for the purpose of God’s building, the house of God. This is dealt with in the first chapter of John.
In the second chapter of John there are two stories, the story of how the Lord made wine out of water, and the story of how He cleansed the temple, the house of God. In verse 19 Jesus said to the Jews, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews did not understand that the Lord spoke this about Himself as the temple. He Himself was the temple that the Jews tried to destroy, but He raised up the temple in three days; that is, by His resurrection He built up again what the Jews destroyed. Moreover, in and by His resurrection the Lord raised up and built up not only His physical body but also all the saints as the members of His mystical Body to be the temple of God, the church.
The first story in John 2 reveals the principle of the Lord’s coming to be life to us; it is to bring life out of death, as signified by making wine out of water. Then the second story reveals the purpose of the Lord’s coming to be life to us; it is for the building of the house of God. The way for the Lord to build up the house of God is to bring God into us and bring us into God to make us the abodes of God and to make God an abode for us, that is, to make God to dwell in us and us to dwell in Him so that God and we, we and God, become a mutual abode.
In the first chapter of John we have the Lord as the Word of God, God Himself, in whom is life. This very Lord was incarnated as a man; He called Himself the Son of Man. As the Son of Man, He is the heavenly ladder for Bethel, the house of God. Then the second chapter shows us that the Lord comes to be life to us, to bring life out of death, signified by the wine and the water, for the purpose of building up His mystical Body as the house of God. He accomplishes this by bringing God into man and man into God.
In the entire Scriptures, it is mostly John’s books — his Gospel and his Epistles — that say that we are in God and He is in us, that is, that we abide in God and He abides in us. John 15:4, for example, says, “Abide in Me and I in you.” This mutual abiding is accomplished by the work of Christ. Christ was incarnated to bring God into man, and He went back to God with man. When Christ came, he came with God to man. He came with a gift, a present, which is God Himself. Then He went to God with a present for God, which is man. He came with God by incarnation, and He went with man by death and resurrection. His coming brought God into man, and His going brought man into God. By this coming and going He builds up the house of God by building God into man and man into God. By His coming and going He makes man the abode for God and makes God the abode for man. In this way, God and man, man and God, become a mutual abode. Then in the consummation of John’s writings there is a building, the New Jerusalem, which is built up with God mingled with man.
In John 1 through 13 we do not have the phrases you in Me and I in you or I in the Father and the Father in Me. However, verse 20 of chapter 14 says, “In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.” This refers to the building, which is accomplished first by His coming in incarnation to bring God into man and then by His going through death and resurrection to bring man into God. Without His death and resurrection we humans would be far away from God. Between us and God there would be a great distance, a great separation, comprised of the world, Satan, the flesh, lust, and other matters. But by His death and resurrection, Christ eliminated the distance and prepared the way to bring us near to God and into God. He is the way through whom we go to God. He takes away the distance; that is, He takes away sin, the world, lust, the flesh, and even the enemy, Satan. He takes away even death. He takes away everything that is a barrier or hindrance between us and God to bring us near to God and into God.
Now after His resurrection, He can say not only that He is in God and God is in Him but that we also are in Him and He is in us. By Christ, through Christ, and in Christ we are in God. This is the building of God mingled with humanity, which Christ accomplished by His death and resurrection.
In this light we can realize what “My Father’s house” with many abodes is in 14:2. This house is not a heavenly mansion. Rather, the Father’s house is the mystical Body of Christ with many members, and each member is an abode. Verse 23 also speaks of an abode. This verse says, “Jesus answered and said to him, If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make an abode with him.” Every believer, every regenerated and saved person, is a member of the mystical Body of Christ and an abode in the Father’s house, the Body.
In order to understand the first part of chapter 14, we need to take the context of the entire book of John. We cannot cut out the first two verses and interpret the abodes as heavenly mansions. By the context of the whole book, we can know the correct meaning of these verses. The Lord is not building a heavenly “hall.” He is building the mystical Body as the house of God with the many members as the many abodes.
We are some of those many abodes. The Lord has brought God into us and us into God to make God one with us and us one with God, to build God into us and to build us into God. This is why the writings of the apostle John often speak of us abiding in God and God abiding in us, or of us being in God and God being in us. It is also in the writings of this writer that we have the holy city as the building of God with the Triune God as its center and life supply. If we take all the works of this writer, we can find the correct meaning of his writings, which is life for the building.
We can never have the real building of the church without the proper, adequate experience of life. If we abide in Christ and let Christ abide in us, we will realize the building of the church. Life is for the building, and the building is of life. We must say, “Today I am in the Lord, and He is in me. Moreover, I am abiding in the Lord, and He is abiding in me.” While we say this, however, we should remember that He is the vine, and we are one of the branches. Not only do we have something to do with the vine, but we also have something to do with the branches. We are built not only with the Lord but with the Lord and all the members.
A vine has many branches, yet all the branches are one vine; they are not separated. When they are cut off the vine, they are many separated branches, but when they abide in the vine, they are all one in the vine. If we say that we are abiding in the Lord, we must check whether or not we are one with the other members. If we are not one with the other members, it is doubtful that we are abiding in the Lord. To be sure, in order to abide in the Lord, we must be one with all the other members. When the branches all abide in the Lord, all the branches are one in the vine. This is the reality of the building.
In all the New Testament, John 17 is the unique chapter that deals with the oneness of the church, the Body of Christ. In this chapter the Lord prays several times that we may be one. According to verses 21 through 23, it is possible for us to be one only in the Triune God. When we are in the Triune God, we are one, but when we are out of the Triune God, we are separated. To be sure, when you are in God and I am in God, you and I are one, but when we are out of God, we are separated. We can never be one in ourselves. We can be one only in God, in the Lord, and in the Spirit. This is the way to have the building.
I can testify of these things through many experiences. Three brothers — a Cantonese brother, a Mandarin brother, and a modern American brother — cannot always be one; they are three different persons. Many times, however, they are one, not in being Cantonese, Mandarin, or American but in God. At other times a brother may be stubborn in his peculiar mentality; then the other brothers are frightened of him. They simply cannot get through with him. We may all have had such experiences with the saints. Sometimes I have met some dear brothers who were stubborn, seemingly without sense and logic. At such times I wished for the stubborn brother to be broken so that we could be one in Christ. If someone is too much in himself, we cannot be one with him. Even if we pray together, we may fight. One brother may pray, and afterward another brother may pray something contrary to the first one. If everyone is in himself, and no one is in Christ, living and abiding in the Lord, there is no oneness. Rather, there is separation and individuality.
When we deny ourselves, we are in the Spirit, and when another brother denies himself, he is in the same Spirit. Then wonderfully and spontaneously we are one in the Lord. The Mandarin, the Cantonese, and the American all recognize that they have been put on the cross, and they all realize that they are in the resurrection of the Lord. We are in the resurrection, the resurrected Lord is in us, and we have Him as our life. We realize this fact and stand on it, denying ourselves. Then how wonderful it is! We are one in the resurrection life and in the resurrected Lord. We are built together, not by teachings or doctrine but by the death and resurrection of the Lord. In the death and resurrection of the Lord, we are built up together as one in the Lord Himself. There is no other way for us to realize the real building of the church.
This is why whenever we meet with the saints as the church, we must not insist on anything. This means that we must put ourselves aside and put ourselves away. We must forget about ourselves. If we all do this, the issue will be that we are all in the resurrection of the Lord, we are all in the Spirit, and we are all one in the Lord. Then the Lord will come out, not according to you, me, or anyone else but according to Himself, the crucified and resurrected Lord. We have been put on the cross, and now it is the Lord who lives within us. This is the only way for the Lord to build up the church. There is no other way. It is not by discussion or by teaching. The more teachings we have, the more divisions we have, and the more discussions we have, the more opinions and the more divisions we have. The oneness of the divine building is possible only by our experience of the death and resurrection of the Lord. It is the cross and the resurrected Christ that bring us into God and bring God into us. It is by this death and resurrection that the Lord builds God and us in one another. This is the building of God.
As we shall see, the writers of the Acts and the Epistles also show us something concerning the building. Many times what they say is that the building is in spirit. It is in spirit and through the Spirit that we are built together as one in the Lord.
The divine building is the one Body, the one church, the one Bethel, the one corporate testimony of the Lord Himself. Eventually, there is the New Jerusalem as the completion. The New Jerusalem is not a physical place but a living composition of all of the living, redeemed ones in God, through the Spirit, having Christ as their life.
May the Lord reveal more and more to us concerning this building. I leave you with these two words: life and building. Life is for the building, and the building is of life. Life is the Lord Himself, and the building is the issue of the experience of the Lord as life. The more we experience the Lord as life, the more we realize the divine building among us.
Here I can give you only a brief hint concerning these matters. If you spend more time in considering these things, you will be very clear that after God’s creation, His intention is to work Himself into man and to work man into Himself to make man His abode and to make Himself man’s abode. The way for God to accomplish this is by the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ. By incarnation He came to impart Himself to man, and by His death and resurrection He went back to God to bring man into Himself. Now we can say that God is in us and we are in God, and we are abiding in God and God is abiding in us. We are one with God, and God is one with us. Now we and God, God and we, are a mutual abode for one another. As long as we realize that we have been crucified on the cross, and we realize the resurrection of the Lord, then we are in the spirit, and we are one with one another in the Lord as one corporate Body. This is the building of God.
