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Scripture Reading: 1 Cor. 9:22-23; John 21:15; Eph. 4:11-12; Acts 20:20, 27, 31; Heb. 10:24-25; 3-5, 24, 1 Cor. 14:26, 31
In the previous two chapters we saw that God’s intention is that every believer should be a priest of the gospel carrying out the complete work of the priesthood of the gospel for the accomplishing of God’s New Testament economy. Being the priests of God is a major subject throughout the entire Bible. First, in creation God created man in His image and according to His likeness that man might express Him. Second, God gave the created man the authority over all things that man might represent Him. Third, God created man with a spirit as the organ to receive and contact Him, and fourth, God put the created man in front of the tree of life that through it man might receive God as his life. If man had remained in the situation arranged by God, everything would have been perfect, and there would have been no offering of sacrifices, nor would there have been a need for it. However, because man fell into sin, there was a need for God’s redemption. After that time man could approach God and serve God only through the offering of sacrifices.
Hence, Abel, the second generation of mankind, began to offer sacrifices to God, and through the offering of sacrifices he fellowshipped with God (Gen. 4:4). After the flood destroyed the world, Noah came out of the ark and built an altar on the new earth to offer sacrifices to God (8:20). Later, Abraham was called by God to leave Ur of the Chaldeans, and upon his arrival in the land of Canaan promised by God to him, he also built an altar to offer sacrifices to God (12:1-8). Then according to God’s command, he offered his only begotten son, Isaac, as a burnt offering to God, and God provided a ram as the substitute for Isaac. That ram is a type of the Christ who was to come (22:13).
Abel, Noah, and Abraham offered sacrifices to God as individuals according to their need before God, not according to an established arrangement. We may say that they all were priests, and Abel was the first priest in the Bible. However, at their time God had not instituted the priesthood, so we can say that they were merely individual, unofficial priests. When Abraham’s descendants, the children of Israel, were delivered out of Egypt and arrived at Mount Sinai, they were instructed by God through Moses to build the tabernacle according to the heavenly pattern. From that time onward God came to the children of Israel through the tabernacle for them to contact, enjoy, and receive Him; they also could approach God and serve God through the tabernacle. For this reason God established the institution of the priesthood. From then on there were priests among God’s people, not individual, unofficial priests but corporate, God-ordained priests.
The one thing that was the most necessary for a priest in serving God was to offer sacrifices. Under God’s ordination those who served as priests could approach God, and they also took care of the needs of His people. They constantly carried God’s people into His presence to seek His heart’s intent. Through the Urim and Thummim they received revelation from God and brought the divine revelation to God’s people. They became a group of people who were very intimate with God, who brought God to His people and brought His people into His presence. They were an indispensable link between God and His chosen and redeemed people.
Although such an institution of the priesthood in the Old Testament was ordained and confirmed by God, it remained merely a type, not the reality that God intended to obtain and attain. Therefore, God arranged for Christ to become flesh that He might fulfill all the types and turn them into reality. The New Testament shows us that God’s doings are marvelous. In the Old Testament age of the types, the last of the priests was Zachariah. In his old age he had no child; furthermore, his wife was barren and advanced in years. He petitioned God to give him a son to succeed him as priest. At that time God was going to have a turn of dispensations from a dispensation of types and vanity to a dispensation of reality and practicality. Therefore, God answered his prayer and gave him a son, who was called John (Luke 1:5-14).
John possessed the four characteristics given to man by God in the creation of man: having God’s image to express Him, having God’s authority to represent Him, having a human spirit to receive God, and having God’s life to live Him out. Furthermore, he had the good qualities of Abel, Noah, and Abraham from the age of individual priests, and he also inherited the arrangement from the age of the priesthood established by God. Not only so, he was a Nazarite, one who voluntarily consecrated himself to be a priest to God. He did not drink wine or liquor but was filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb (v. 15). He was a person who lived absolutely for God and who was qualified to serve God. It was through him that God ended the institution of the Old Testament priests and initiated the reality of the New Testament priests. God bestowed on him an unprecedented, divine, and great commission to go forth to preach the gospel of the kingdom of God to bring people to repent and be baptized that they might enter into the kingdom of God. This was not a type but a reality. Furthermore, he told people that he was not Christ; he was not the reality, but he was a voice crying in the wilderness to preach the baptism of repentance and usher in the Christ who was to come. This is the way the dispensation of Christ as the reality arrived. The kingdom of God was no longer a type but a reality, and likewise the Christ of God is not a type but a reality. When people heard John’s preaching and repented, John immersed them into water. This means that he put people into death that they might be regenerated by Christ in the position of death and be raised from death to become God’s New Testament believers, those who truly have God’s life for them to live out God. John the Baptist offered these repentant and saved ones to God. Thus, the service of the priests of the gospel of God began with him.
After John the Baptist the Lord Jesus came. He continued the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom of God that John the Baptist carried out (Matt. 4:17). The Lord Jesus was the Christ of God as the embodiment of God to bring God to people. In His preaching of the gospel, He told people not only to repent but also to believe into Him and receive Him as the reality of God. After He had accomplished His gospel ministry, He was crucified and thereby accomplished an all-inclusive death, solving all the problems between God and man. Furthermore, through His redemptive death He released the divine life. Then He was resurrected from death and imparted the divine life released by Him to everyone who believes in Him so that all who believe in Him would be resurrected with Him to be the many sons of God. At the same time He also became the life-giving Spirit to enter into His redeemed ones that they may be the many sons of God and the members of His Body. After accomplishing all these things, He ascended to the heavens on high and, as the all-inclusive Spirit, poured out what He had received of the Father so that all the members of His Body may receive, as He received, the power to go forth and preach the gospel as His witnesses.
Our gospel preaching today is mainly the preaching of such a Christ, who as the embodiment of God became the reality of God, solved all our problems through His crucifixion and resurrection, and released the divine life so that all who believe in Him may become the sons of God to express Him and the members of His Body to be presented to God. To serve God in this way is to be a priest of the gospel of God. Therefore, the work that is carried out by the New Testament priests of the gospel is still primarily to offer sacrifices. However, the sacrifices offered by the New Testament priests and the sacrifices offered by the Old Testament priests are altogether different. In the Old Testament what the priests offered as sacrifices were bulls and goats, but in the New Testament what the priests offer as sacrifices are sinners who have been saved into Christ and joined to Him. The bulls and goats as sacrifices in the Old Testament were types of Christ who was yet to come, whereas the redeemed sinners are in Christ who has now come. As such, they have become a part of Christ and are offered to God as living, spiritual sacrifices by the New Testament priests of the gospel.
These living sacrifices offered to God were chosen and predestinated by God before the foundation of the world and are called out from all the nations and peoples in the New Testament age. Hence, in the New Testament age there is the need of a group of people to execute God’s calling by going to the sinners to blow the trumpet of the New Testament gospel. They are people who can express God and represent Him and who have the life of God and live Him out. They contact God constantly and are intimately close to Him. They know God’s heart, and they live and work according to His heart’s desire. They are a group of people who can bring God to people and who can also bring people into the presence of God. By God’s life and power and through their spiritual experience, they work on all those who have been chosen and called by God that they may make them, one by one, spiritual sacrifices in Christ. They not only make God’s chosen and called ones offerings to God once they are saved, but they also nourish them and lead them to grow in life that they may present themselves as living sacrifices to God. Furthermore, they teach and admonish every man in all wisdom until they can present to God every man full-grown in Christ. Thus, after these living sacrifices have been saved, have grown in life, and have been perfected, they arrive at the stage where they can serve as priests of the gospel of God, as the other believers do, to carry out the same kind of work on those who are to be saved after them. This work of the gospel is not merely for sinners to be regenerated as the children of God, as we may have thought in the past. Rather, the work of the gospel comprises every step from a sinner’s regeneration to his maturity in Christ.
We have seen that the complete work of the gospel, the work of the New Testament priests of the gospel in offering sacrifices, includes four major steps. The first step is to help sinners repent and believe into the Lord and thereby be regenerated as the children in God’s family. The second step is to nourish the newborn babes. This is the feeding of the Lord’s lambs mentioned in John 21. In 1 Thessalonians 2:7 Paul says, “We were gentle in your midst, as a nursing mother would cherish her own children.” In the original language cherishing here includes nourishing; it indicates care that is more tender than mere nourishing. Only this can keep infants from an early death. In the past many have been baptized in the churches, but those who remained were few. The reason is that those who begot them did not feed them. If those of us who bring people to salvation feed them as lambs according to the Lord’s word and cherish them as Paul did, I believe that more than half of them will remain. In John 15:16 the Lord said that He chose us and set us that we would go forth and bear fruit and that our fruit would remain. For this reason, we should not only beget through the gospel, but we should also be nursing mothers to nourish and cherish the babes whom we have begotten in the Lord.
We know that to nourish and cherish babes is not accomplished in one or two days; it is a daily, continual work that requires a long period of time. First Peter 2:2 says that it is by the guileless milk of the word that newborn babes grow. This requires the nursing mothers’ nourishing. Paul regarded the Corinthian believers as infants in Christ and gave them milk to drink, not solid food (1 Cor. 3:1-2), and he did the same thing for the Hebrew believers (Heb. 5:12). He was truly a pattern to us. If we all are willing to do this, those whom we have brought to salvation will not suffer an “early death”; rather, they will receive adequate feeding and will grow in life so that they can present themselves to God as living sacrifices. When they are first saved, we offer them to God as sacrifices, but after we have fed them, they can present themselves to God. This is the work of what we have referred to as the home meetings.
The third step is to bring them to the small group meetings to be taught and perfected until they can do the work of the building up of the Body of Christ, as the gifted ones do, in preaching the gospel, nourishing, teaching, prophesying for the Lord, and even establishing churches. According to the organic practice revealed in the New Testament, the perfecting work in this step can be carried out only through the group meetings, because the work in this step requires mutuality. Hebrews 10:24-25 says, “Let us consider one another so as to incite one another to love and good works, not abandoning our own assembling together.” We believe that this refers to the small group meetings. Paul stayed in Ephesus for three years, on the one hand, ministering to the saints publicly in the meetings and, on the other hand, teaching and admonishing them from house to house. This step of the work is greatly lacking among us. In order to perfect the saints that they may all function in a full way and may be presented to God full-grown in Christ, we need to have people in the churches who do the work of teaching and perfecting in the small groups.
The fourth step is to work out a meeting for mutual speaking and mutual listening, a meeting in which the perfected ones can all prophesy, speaking for the Lord, speaking forth the Lord, and speaking the Lord into others. This is the most excellent matter. When someone has knowledge in truth and experience in life, and he also receives the Lord’s inspiration by his continual contact with Him, then having these three things, he can speak for the Lord, speak forth the Lord’s desire, and release the Lord’s riches. In this way he ministers Christ’s mysteries, riches, and sweetness into others. This meets the need of all the saints so that all are edified, and the church as a whole is built up.
This kind of meeting, a meeting for all to prophesy, has disappeared from church history for nearly nineteen hundred years. This is because it is a culminating work that requires labor. Hence, throughout the centuries the church has been afraid to touch this matter and therefore has simply evaded it. It seems that the Bible in the hands of Christians today does not have chapter 14 of 1 Corinthians, a chapter in which Paul speaks of nearly nothing else but prophesying. He begins by saying, “Pursue love, and desire earnestly spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy” (v. 1). Then he goes on to say, “He who speaks in a tongue builds up himself, but he who prophesies builds up the church” (v. 4). He also says, “So also you,...seek that you may excel for the building up of the church” (v. 12). Speaking in tongues is a low gift since it does not minister to people or build up the Body of Christ. However, prophesying, speaking for the Lord, speaks forth His desire, releases His riches, and ministers His transcendence and sweetness to all the saints. This is the most excelling gift.
Who can do such an excelling thing? Paul says, “You can all prophesy one by one” (v. 31). Although prophesying is an excelling gift, God’s grace will enable us to attain it if we pursue it faithfully. We are not able, but He is able. It is not we but the grace of God (15:10). At the end of chapter 14 he says, “So then, my brothers, desire earnestly the prophesying” (v. 39). To this day this chapter of the divine Word has not yet been fulfilled. We believe that the Lord will recover this matter among us. He has been waiting for more than nineteen hundred years. Is today not the right time for Him to recover this chapter in the Bible among us?
In the past we may have heard, to some degree, something concerning the practice of the new way among us. It is very regrettable and heartbreaking that several churches have wrongly understood the new way that has been brought in and have also spoken mistakenly about it. The new way is not door-knocking alone; it does not consist merely of knocking on doors to visit people for gospel preaching. That is only the beginning of the new way. To practice the new way is to come back to the Bible and take the way ordained by God for the New Testament priests of the gospel to carry out the work of the gospel. This way includes primarily four major steps. The first step is to personally visit people for the preaching of the gospel to lead sinners to be saved through regeneration and then to offer them to God as sacrifices. The second step is to go to the homes of the new believers to nourish and cherish them that they may grow in life so that they can present themselves as living sacrifices to God. The third step is to ask the new believers to participate in small group meetings so that they all will be helped and instructed, and so that everyone opens himself and everyone fellowships. Such opening and fellowshipping bring in mutual interceding, mutual caring, and mutual shepherding. Moreover, these small group meetings afford everyone the opportunity to ask questions concerning truth and life. During this time, no one leads the meeting or acts as the only person who answers questions, but all of the attendants answer according to the measure and depth of what each one knows. Everyone speaks a brief word and adds to the speaking of others. In less than ten minutes seven or eight people can answer a question in a complete way so that everyone learns and everyone is taught.
If we have this kind of small group meeting, week after week, for fifty-two weeks yearly, how much and how greatly we will be benefited! These meetings are neither the worship services in the denominations nor the meetings among us for listening to messages. In the small group meetings there are no religious ceremonies nor predetermined programs and procedures. Instead, everyone who comes to the meeting begins the meeting while still in his home or on the way, coming with singing and praying. Whoever comes into the meeting can simply sing and pray without waiting, and when others come, he can begin to open up himself for mutual fellowship. If there is any problem or need, they simply pray for one another. Spontaneously, in this way there is care and shepherding. Any question concerning truth and life can be brought out for all to answer and to teach and learn from one another so that all may be perfected. The fourth step is to help the perfected ones to be God’s prophets speaking for the Lord in the meetings, speaking the Lord into people, so that all the saints are supplied and the Body of Christ is built up. This is the culminating step.
These four steps taken together constitute the new way of which we have spoken in these days, that is, the way ordained by God from the past unto eternity, which He has revealed in the Bible for us to take. I fully realize that this way does not seem convenient to many of our dear saints, but the commission that I have received from the Lord is not to speak messages that are convenient to the brothers and sisters. If so, I would have failed the Lord and cheated you. At this time I am speaking sincerely and faithfully concerning what the Lord intends to recover in us. The proper church life in the Lord’s recovery today is one in which every believer is a New Testament priest of the gospel. Although we all have our own occupation or business, we should still set aside an amount of time and present ourselves to go out personally for preaching the gospel and offering saved sinners to God as sacrifices. We should also go to the homes of the new believers to have home meetings that we may nourish and cherish them and lead them to grow. Moreover, every week we need to spend time to bring them to the small group meetings that they may be taught and perfected. Furthermore, we ourselves should pay the price to love the Lord, pursue to be spiritual, delve deeply into the truth, have experiences in life, always maintain the fellowship between us and the Lord, and always be ready to receive inspiration in our spirit so that we may be those who prophesy for the Lord in the meetings. If we are willing to do these things, we become the genuine New Testament priests of the gospel to carry out the entire gospel work, that is, to deliver a God-chosen and called one from the position of a sinner to become a child of God and a member of Christ, and to help him to grow, be perfected, and eventually prophesy for the Lord for the edification of the saints and the building up of the Body of Christ. If we truly do this, God’s New Testament economy will be accomplished quickly, and the day of the Lord’s coming will be near. May the Lord bless us.
