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Scripture Reading: Titus 3:5b; Rom. 12:2b; Eph. 4:23; Rom. 6:4; 7:6b; 2 Cor. 4:16; 5:17; Gal. 6:15; Rev. 21:2; 2 Cor. 3:18; Rom. 8:29-30; Phil. 3:21; Rom. 8:23; Eph. 1:14; 4:30; Heb. 2:10; 1 Pet. 5:10a
The New Testament contains some great revelations, mainly through the apostle Paul. These include the economy of God, Christ, the Spirit, the transformation of the believers, and the Body of Christ. God’s dispensing is involved in each of these great revelations. Without knowing these five revelations, it is impossible to know the dispensing of the Triune God.
The first of the five great revelations in the New Testament is God’s economy (1 Tim. 1:4; Eph. 1:10; 3:9). The Greek word oikonomia, translated “economy,” means “household administration” or “household economy.” In the entire Bible this word is used in reference to God’s economy only by the apostle Paul. Even the Lord Jesus in the four Gospels did not use this word. The word oikonomia is great in significance because it refers to God’s eternal purpose according to His heart’s desire.
Some have said that the apostles’ teaching, mentioned in Acts 2:42, includes only the teachings that the Lord Jesus gave to the twelve apostles while He was on this earth. However, in John 16 the Lord told His disciples clearly that He had many things to say to them, but they could not bear them at that time (v. 12). Then He told them to wait until the coming of the Comforter, the Spirit of reality, who would receive the things of the Lord Jesus and declare them to the disciples (vv. 13-15). According to my study of the Bible, the Lord’s word here was fulfilled mainly with the apostle Paul. He was nearly the unique one who received the Lord’s further revelation concerning the economy of God. In Paul’s fourteen Epistles the first great revelation concerns not God alone but God in His economy. God’s economy, God’s eternal plan, is revealed especially in the four books of Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians. In the ministry in recent years, we have paid particular attention to the matter of God’s economy.
The second great revelation in the New Testament is Christ in His all-inclusiveness. The knowledge concerning Christ and the apprehension concerning Christ were released to a surpassing degree in the writings of Paul. The apostle Paul used the dimensions of the universe — the breadth, length, height, and depth — in order to show the dimensions of Christ (Eph. 3:18). The breadth, length, height, and depth are all Christ. No one except Christ knows how broad is the breadth, how long is the length, how high is the height, or how deep is the depth of the universe. Christ Himself is the breadth, the length, the height, and the depth of the entire universe. He is all-inclusive and all-extensive. Such a Christ first came down from the heavens to the earth; then He descended into Hades, the lower parts of the earth. After that, He ascended to the earth, and then He ascended far above all the heavens that He might fill all things (4:8-10).
The third great revelation in the New Testament is the Spirit. The Spirit is the reaching of the Triune God to us. Not only so; He is the consummation of the processed Triune God. The Triune God, after being processed through incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, has become the Spirit. Eventually, the Bible ends with the divine title the Spirit. Revelation 22:17 says, “The Spirit and the bride say, Come!” The Spirit as the consummation of the Triune God and the bride as the consummation of the chosen, redeemed, regenerated, transformed, and glorified mankind become a universal couple. This couple is the New Jerusalem.
The revelation concerning the Spirit was shown mainly to the apostle Paul. John in his Gospel had some revelation concerning the Spirit, but his writing is only a record of what he saw; it is not his teaching. However, Paul’s writing in his Epistles is his teaching.
The fourth great revelation in the New Testament is the transformation of the believers. Regeneration, subjective sanctification, renewing, conformation, and glorification are also included in this revelation. As a young man, I searched for a proper definition of regeneration, until one day when I read a sentence in one of T. Austin-Sparks’s books saying that regeneration is to receive another life in addition to our natural life. When I read this sentence, I was very excited. This is a wonderful definition of regeneration. In addition to understanding regeneration, we also need to understand what sanctification, renewing, transformation, conformation, and glorification are. The Bible says that in glorification we will be exactly the same as Christ in every respect (1 John 3:2). This is a great revelation concerning the transformation of the believers.
The fifth great revelation in the New Testament is the Body of Christ (Eph 1:22-23). The Body is not mentioned in the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament. The first mentioning of the Body in the New Testament is in Romans 12:5. According to Romans 12, we must present our physical bodies (v. 1) for the mystical Body of Christ (v. 5). When we present our bodies and are renewed in our mind, we see, discern, and prove by testing that the will of God is to obtain a Body for Christ to be His fullness and expression (v. 2).
God’s economy and His dispensing are intimately involved with these five great revelations. If we desire to know the dispensing of the Triune God, we must know God in His economy, Christ in His all-inclusiveness, the Spirit as the consummation of the Triune God, the spiritual and divine transformation of the believers, and the Body of Christ.
In this chapter we will consider the main verses in the New Testament that deal with the matter of renewing.
Romans 6:4 says, “We have been buried therefore with Him through baptism into His death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so also we might walk in newness of life.” Then Romans 7:6 says, “Now we have been discharged from the law, having died to that in which we were held, so that we serve in newness of spirit and not in oldness of letter.” The spirit here is our regenerated spirit, in which the Lord as the Spirit dwells (2 Tim. 4:22). The newness of life is for our daily walk, and the newness of spirit is for our service. We may know the term the newness of life, but we may know very little of the reality. In our gospel service we need to preach the gospel in the newness of spirit, not in the oldness of a certain way or a certain formula.
In the New Testament the believers are a new creation. Second Corinthians 5:17 says, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away; behold, they have become new.” In the Bible the word creation refers to something created out of nothing. In Genesis 1 God did not need any material in order to create. God said, “Let there be light; and there was light” (v. 3). He is the One who calls the things not being as being (Rom. 4:17). The formation of Adam, however, was different; it was not called a creation. Genesis 2:7 says that “God formed man...” God used the dust of the ground as the material to form the first man, Adam.
God created His new creation without any physical material. The new creation was created by God with Christ as the embodiment of the divine life. Hence, the material for the new creation is the divine life. Anyone who is in Christ is a new creation because God’s life has entered into him. Before our regeneration we did not have the divine life, but through regeneration God imparted Himself into us and became our life. Thus, we became the embodiment of Christ. He has been born into us as our life. In this way we have become a new creation.
Galatians 6:15 says, “Neither is circumcision anything nor uncircumcision, but a new creation is what matters.” The term circumcision refers to being religious, and uncircumcision refers to being unreligious. Neither of these means anything as far as the new creation is concerned. Only the new creation is what matters. God has no intention of gaining a group of circumcised people or a group of uncircumcised people. He desires to gain a group of regenerated people as His new creation created by Him with His divine life embodied in Christ.
We were a part of the old creation, but through regeneration we have become a new creation. Although we are a new creation, we are still old in our mind, emotion, and will. We still love and hate in the old creation. Therefore, we need to be renewed. Our entire being, including our physical body, needs to be renewed. The redemption of our body (1 Cor. 1:30; Rom. 8:23) is the renewing of every part of our body. This will be the consummation of the renewing of our entire being.
We are tripartite men composed of spirit, soul, and body (1 Thes. 5:23). At the time of our regeneration, God entered into our spirit, and immediately our spirit was renewed. Now our soul also needs to be renewed in every part. Titus 3:5 says, “Not out of works in righteousness which we did but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit.” Through regeneration our spirit was renewed, but our soul was not renewed by regeneration. Thus, after regeneration the Spirit continues to renew us by saturating our soul.
According to Ephesians 1:13, we were sealed with the Holy Spirit as the sealing ink. When a seal that is wet with ink is placed on a piece of paper, the wet ink saturates the paper. In the same way, the Holy Spirit as the sealing ink saturates and permeates our soul. To saturate is to fill or soak deeply, and to permeate is to spread throughout a certain thing. Saturation is vertical, and permeation is horizontal. From the day we were regenerated, God imparted Himself into us as life embodied in Christ. At the same time, He put His Spirit within us as a living seal. From that day the sealing Spirit has been saturating and permeating. First, the Spirit saturates and permeates our soul, including our mind, emotion, and will. Eventually, this saturating Spirit of life will reach our mortal body that our body may have life (Rom. 8:11). This saturation and permeation will continue within us “unto the redemption of the acquired possession” (Eph. 1:14), that is, until the redemption of our body (Rom. 8:23).
The sealing of the Spirit first enters into us in our spirit. From there it spreads by saturating vertically and permeating horizontally through every part of our soul to reach our body. Then it goes on to saturate and permeate our body until one day our body will be fully saturated and permeated, that is, fully redeemed. Our body will be redeemed not by the blood of Christ but by the indwelling Christ as our life. Hence, Paul says that Christ within us is our life today (Col. 3:4) and our hope of glory in the future (1:27). The redemption of our body is the glorification of our body (Rom. 8:30; Phil. 3:21). When our body is redeemed, we will be wholly, entirely, and completely in glory. At that time we will be thoroughly permeated and saturated with the spreading and permeating Triune God.
The foregoing aspects of regeneration, sanctification, transformation, conformation, and glorification are the totality of the process of renewing. A white cotton ball that becomes saturated with red ink is an example of the process of renewing. If I inject red ink into the center of a cotton ball for a period of time, the entire cotton ball will become red. If the injection is slow, it may take a longer period of time for the ball to become red. But eventually, the cotton ball will be completely red. That is the “glorification” of the cotton ball.
Today we are in the process of being renewed. Through many years of experience I have learned that the things that happen to me are all part of the renewing process. At first, I did not understand why certain things happened to me, but after considering these things for some time, my eyes were opened to see that they were all part of the process of renewing. Second Corinthians 4:16 says, “Though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.” An alternate rendering of this verse is, “Though our outer man is being consumed...” Day by day we are being renewed by being consumed. The reason certain things happen to us is that we need to be consumed. When we are consumed, we are renewed. Through the consuming of our environment, we are renewed. Our relatives are a part of this consuming environment. Our being married or being single is also a part of God’s environment to consume us.
If we were soft like a cotton ball, we could easily receive the injection of the Spirit. But because we may be hard like marble, the “ink” of the Spirit may be unable to penetrate us. Thus, we need the hammering and grinding of our environment in order to soften us. God may first hammer us and then grind us to powder. Once we have become powder, we can easily receive the injection of the Spirit. Actually, we all are somewhat hard. Some of us are like soft stones, whereas others are harder than steel. Whether we are hard or soft, the Lord has a way to work on us. He may use hammers, grinding stones, water, or fire to deal with us. The Lord uses different means in our environment to consume us so that we can be renewed. No matter who we are, the Lord has a way to renew us through the consuming of our environment.
In the Bible the New Jerusalem is the consummation of newness (Rev. 21:2). The New Jerusalem is a living composition of all the renewed believers. No unrenewed person is qualified to be there. Adam was made of clay, the dust of the ground (Gen. 2:7). But the New Jerusalem is not a composition of clay; it is a composition of gold, pearl, and precious stones (Rev. 21:18-21). Every part of the New Jerusalem is transformed and renewed. Today I do not have the confidence that I have been thoroughly renewed. But when we enter into the New Jerusalem, all our clay and dust will be gone. Only gold, pearl, and precious stones will remain. Everything will be renewed; thus, the city is called the New Jerusalem.
Renewing is a matter of the dispensing of the processed Triune God. The God whom we have received is the God who has passed through a process. In eternity He was only God, but through incarnation He became a man named Jesus. This Jesus is God with the human nature. We are not able to receive the God who was before incarnation, but we are able to receive the God who has become a man, who has passed through human living on this earth, who has entered into death by crucifixion, and who has entered into resurrection. He is no longer merely God alone; He is God plus humanity, human living, crucifixion, and resurrection.
The processed Triune God who has passed through incarnation, human living, death, and resurrection is for our experience. As we experience Him, we are renewed. He renews us by touching us in all the details of our human living. He is concerned about what kind of shoes or necktie we wear. He is also concerned about the way we comb our hair and even about what kind of buttons we have on our clothing. If you wear a certain kind of button on your clothing, you may not have the peace to eat or sleep. You may say, “Lord Jesus, I do not believe that You are concerned about such details of my human living.” But the more you say this, the more the Lord Jesus will touch you until you lose your freedom and your peace to do many things. The younger a person is, the freer he can be. But the more the young people grow in the Lord, the more the Lord will touch them. Eventually, their freedom will be greatly reduced.
One time I purchased a necktie. There was nothing wrong with the necktie, but every time I put it on, I did not have peace and I could not pray freely. When I took off the necktie, I had peace and I could pray in an unhindered way. This is the experience of renewing.
Christ as the embodiment of God is very real; He is the reality (John 14:6). The Spirit also is real and is called the Spirit of reality (v. 17; 16:13). He is invisible, but He is real. When we touch Him, we touch something real. Anything real has substance, and any substance has an element. Within the element is the essence. When we eat food, we take in some substance. In that substance there is an element, and within that element there is an essence. Upon entering our body, the essence renews and transforms our body into another form. This renewing is transformation.
In the early part of my ministry in this country, I borrowed terms such as metabolic and organic from biology and chemistry in order to describe the work of transformation in our Christian life. I told the saints that transformation is not only organic but also organically metabolic. I have never studied chemistry, but I understand that chemistry is a study of elements and compounds. In order to have a chemical compound, there must be more than one element. When different elements are put together, a kind of transformation takes place.
A mortician may beautify a dead person’s face by adding color outwardly. However, that is not transformation. Transformation is metabolic. In contrast, my face may be changed from a pale complexion to a pink one through eating rich and nourishing food for a period of time. This kind of change is transformation. That transformation of my face is by renewing. Such renewing is a metabolic change; hence, it is something of life.
Transformation does not take place by teaching. If we merely hear a word of teaching, nothing will take place within us. However, when we open to the word that we have heard and pray, something takes place. We may pray, “Lord, I take what You have spoken to me. I love it and I take it. I want to taste it and enjoy it. Lord, I even want to dwell upon it.” As such a prayer is offered, the divine element with the divine essence is dispensed into our being. This divine element and essence are invisible yet very real. This dispensing renews us and changes us. Renewing is not a matter merely of teaching. We may understand the teaching concerning the Body of Christ and yet not have the element or essence of the Body. In order to have the element and essence, again and again, time after time, we must open ourselves to what we have heard and pray. If we open to the Lord and pray in this way every morning, it may seem that our prayer is the same day after day. However, this can be compared to our eating the same nourishing breakfast morning after morning. We do not need to change our “diet” from day to day. Just as the children of Israel ate manna every day for forty years in the wilderness, with no change in their diet, we should daily eat Christ in this way, with no change in our spiritual diet. Such a practice will produce a change in our constitution, and that change is the renewing.
The real significance of being renewed is not in merely reading messages. You may read concerning the secret of renewing in this chapter, but the actual renewing does not take place until you apply what you have read to your experience by going to the Lord, touching Him, and lingering in His presence for a period of time. In this way you will receive His element, which will renew and transform you metabolically. This will not only make you organic, but it will also bring about a metabolic change within you, a change from one form to another form. Your Christian life will grow, and you will be under the sealing, which will result in the glorification of your body. On God’s side, this is His dispensing, and on our side, it is our receiving. As we receive God’s dispensing, the transformation by renewing takes place.
