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Scripture Reading: 1 Cor. 2:11-15
I. The genuine Christian perfection is not only for living a pious life but mainly for fulfilling God’s New Testament economy to make the believers God-men for the constitution of the Body of Christ that the New Jerusalem may be consummated as the eternal enlargement and expression of the consummated Triune God:
А. Although James mentions God’s begetting of the believers to make them the firstfruits of all His creatures (1:18) and the Spirit’s indwelling of the believers (4:5), his application is only on the negative side for the resisting of temptations and for the dealing with pleasures, the world, and the devil.
B. But in the New Testament, whenever God’s economy is mentioned, its application is always on the positive side for the heading up of all things in Christ (Eph. 1:10), for the ministering of the unsearchable riches of Christ to God’s chosen people for the producing of the church (3:8-10), and for the unique teaching of the New Testament, the stress and the center of which are Christ, the church as the organic Body of Christ, and the New Jerusalem as the consummation of God’s eternal economy (1 Tim. 1:3-4).
C. In this sense, James is very much devoid of God’s eternal purpose and His ultimate goal.
II. James does not say a word concerning the cross of Christ, but the New Testament teaching strongly emphasizes the cross of Christ:
А. The Lord said that anyone who wants to follow Him should deny himself (his soul) and take up his cross, indicating that the self, or the soul, of the Lord’s followers should be denied by being crucified with Him that they could live not by themselves but by Christ as their life — Matt. 16:24-25.
B. Paul says, “I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me,” indicating that the old “I” of the believers has been crucified, crossed out; in the Christian life it should no longer be their old crucified “I” who lives but Christ who lives in them — Gal. 2:20.
C. Paul also says, “I did not determine to know anything among you except Jesus Christ, and this One crucified” — 1 Cor. 2:2.
D. Paul also says, “Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom...I [have been crucified] to the world” — Gal. 6:14.
E. Paul also says, “They who are of Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and its lusts” — 5:24.
F. Paul lived a life of being conformed to the death of Christ — Phil. 3:10.
G. Thus, how could we have the genuine Christian perfection without the cross of Christ?
H. In the light of the divine revelation referred to above, the cross of Christ is the greatest lack of James.
III. Except in 1:1 and 2:1 where the title Christ is mentioned, James does not say anything further about the many marvelous aspects of Christ as the New Testament teaching stresses:
А. The all-inclusive Christ, who fills all in all — Eph. 1:23; 4:10.
B. The unsearchable riches of Christ — 3:8.
C. The embodiment of the fullness of God — Col. 2:9; 1:19.
D. God’s allotted portion to the saints as the good land for us to walk in, that is, to live, to walk, and to have our being in Him — v. 12.
E. The preeminent One in both God’s old creation and God’s new creation — vv. 15-18.
F. The Head and all the members of the Body and the One who is in all the members of the Body — v. 18a; 3:10-11.
G. Christ as the life of the believers (3:4), who is revealed into the believers (Gal. 1:16), who lives in and with the believers (2:20), who is formed in the believers (4:19), who makes His home in the believers (Eph. 3:17), to the glorious image of whom as the firstborn Son of God the believers as the many sons of God are transformed (2 Cor. 3:18; Rom. 8:29), and whom the believers live and magnify through the bountiful supply of His Spirit (Phil. 1:19-21).
H. Without experiencing such a Christ, how can a believer have the genuine Christian perfection, which is the issue of a life lived not by the natural life of the believer but by such a marvelous Christ who lives in him?
I. The above portrait of Christ also shows the defect in James’s presentation of Christ.
IV. James mentions the Spirit of God only once as the indwelling Spirit in us (4:5); in the whole book there is no indication of the Spirit of God as the following items, which items the Spirit of God was not yet before the resurrection of Christ (John 7:39):
А. The life-giving Spirit as the consummated Spirit of God, even as the consummation of the processed and consummated Triune God — 1 Cor. 15:45b.
B. The compound Spirit compounded with Christ’s divinity, humanity, death with its effectiveness, and resurrection with its power to be the anointing ointment to sanctify all the people, matters, and things in the service of God (Exo. 30:23-28; 1 John 2:20, 27).
C. The all-inclusive Spirit as the Spirit of Jesus Christ with His bountiful supply through which the believers live Christ and magnify Christ (Phil. 1:19-21).
D. The Lord Spirit, indicating that Christ the Lord is the Spirit from whom the believers are transformed into Christ’s image of glory (2 Cor. 3:18).
E. The sevenfold intensified Spirit for the believers to overcome all the negative things in the degradation of the church (Rev. 1:4; 3:1; 4:5; 5:6).
F. The above items A to E indicate strongly that the book of James falls far behind the highest revelation concerning the Spirit of God revealed to Paul and John in the age of grace.
In this chapter we want to begin to see the lacks in the Epistle of James.
The genuine Christian perfection is not only for living a pious life but mainly for fulfilling God’s New Testament economy to make the believers God-men for the constitution of the Body of Christ that the New Jerusalem may be consummated as the eternal enlargement and expression of the consummated Triune God. Living a pious life has nothing to do with God’s economy. When I was young in China, I saw some disciples of Confucius who were highly ethical in their living. They seemed to be more honest than the missionaries, but what they were was only for themselves. They did not know God and did nothing for God. The genuine Christian perfection is not for our interests. It is for fulfilling God’s New Testament economy so that ultimately the New Jerusalem may be consummated to be God’s enlargement.
In Genesis 1 God is only Elohim, but He planned to have Himself, the unlimited Triune God, enlarged to be the New Jerusalem as seen in Revelation 21 and 22. The length, breadth, and height of the New Jerusalem are twelve thousand stadia each (21:16). This is the size of the enlarged God for His expression in the whole universe of the new heaven and new earth. A stadion equals about six hundred feet. The New Jerusalem is a big cube, which can never fall or be shaken. The New Jerusalem is God Himself enlarged with His redeemed by the way of constituting, uniting, and mingling. The unlimited Triune God is constituted into His redeemed by being united and mingled together with them as one entity. James does not say anything about the fulfilling of God’s New Testament economy to consummate the New Jerusalem.
Although James mentions God’s begetting of the believers to make them the firstfruits of all His creatures (1:18) and the Spirit’s indwelling of the believers (4:5), his application is only on the negative side for the resisting of temptations and for the dealing with pleasures, the world, and the devil. Regeneration, however, is mainly for the producing of many God-men to be constituted together as the church, the Body of Christ, which consummates in the New Jerusalem. The indwelling of the Spirit surely enables us to resist temptations, but that is not the main thing. The main purpose of the Spirit’s indwelling is to enliven us, to germinate us, to sanctify us, to renew us, to transform us, and to dispense all that the Triune God is into our being to make us parts of God’s enlargement.
In the New Testament, whenever God’s economy is mentioned, its application is always on the positive side for the heading up of all things in Christ (Eph. 1:10), for the ministering of the unsearchable riches of Christ to God’s chosen people for the producing of the church (3:8-10), and for the unique teaching of the New Testament, the stress and the center of which are Christ, the church as the organic Body of Christ, and the New Jerusalem as the consummation of God’s eternal economy (1 Tim. 1:3-4).
In this sense, James is very much devoid of God’s eternal purpose and His ultimate goal.
James does not say a word concerning the cross of Christ, but the New Testament teaching strongly emphasizes the cross of Christ.
The Lord said that anyone who wants to follow Him should deny himself (his soul) and take up his cross, indicating that the self or the soul of the Lord’s followers should be denied by being crucified with Him that they could live not by themselves but by Christ as their life (Matt. 16:24-25).
Paul says, “I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me,” indicating that the old “I” of the believers has been crucified, crossed out; in the Christian life it should no longer be their old crucified “I” who lives but Christ who lives in them (Gal. 2:20).
Paul also says, “I did not determine to know anything among you except Jesus Christ, and this One crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). Many in today’s Christianity determine to know everything except the cross. In today’s Christian bookstores there are books about things such as dating and marriage life but very little about the genuine, intrinsic significance of the cross of Christ, which crosses us out and ushers in Christ.
Paul also says, “Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom...I [have been crucified] to the world” (Gal. 6:14). We have no boast but the cross.
Paul also says, “They who are of Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and its lusts” (5:24). Merely to resist temptations is insufficient. We must crucify our flesh with its passions and lusts.
Paul lived a life to be conformed to the death of Christ (Phil. 3:10). The more he lived, the more he was in the pattern, the mold, of Christ’s death.
Thus, how could we have the genuine Christian perfection without the cross of Christ?
In the light of the divine revelation referred to above, the cross of Christ is the greatest lack of James. The Christian perfection in James leads to self-cultivation, but Paul says that he had been crucified with Christ and was being conformed to the death of Christ by the power of His resurrection. It is this life that produces the Body life, which consummates in the New Jerusalem.
Regardless of whether we are a good man or a bad man, we have to be crossed out. It is no longer I, but Christ lives in me as the life-giving Spirit to issue in the Body of Christ. Self-cultivation does not carry out God’s economy, but self-denial does. We have to deny ourselves, realizing that whatever we are in the old creation has been crossed out, crucified. Every day we are dying. We are being conformed to the death of Christ so that Christ can live in us to bring forth the Body life, which will issue in the New Jerusalem as God’s eternal goal in His eternal economy. This is the proper insight of the New Testament revelation. These three great things — the Triune God, the all-inclusive Christ, and the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit — are for the producing of the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ is the real embodiment of the Triune God in Christ as the Spirit, and this Body will consummate in the New Jerusalem.
In 1 Timothy Paul teaches concerning godliness. He reveals that it is the manifestation of God in the flesh (3:16), not something of self-cultivation. Peter also speaks of godliness, saying that the divine power has granted to us all things which relate to life and godliness (2 Pet. 1:3). Godliness does not depend upon self-cultivation but upon the divine life. Godliness is the expression of the divine life, but self-cultivation is to build up the self. The real godliness issues in the Body of Christ, which will consummate in the New Jerusalem for the fulfillment of God’s New Testament economy.
James pointed out to Paul in Acts 21 that there were thousands of Jewish believers who were zealous for the law (v. 20). This shows the terrible mixture in the church at Jerusalem. This mixture was also a cause for God’s sending Titus, a prince of the Roman Empire, with the Roman army to destroy the city of Jerusalem, including the temple. This took place in A.D. 70, just a short time after Paul’s martyrdom, and was a fulfillment of the Lord’s prophecy that Jerusalem with the temple would be destroyed (Matt. 24:2). If this had not happened, the mixture of Judaism with God’s New Testament economy might have continued for centuries. God, however, would never sanction or justify such a mixture. This shows that it is not a small thing to be mistaken in God’s economy.
James’s concept of Christian perfection was very much in the realm of self-cultivation. Job also was perfect in his way, but God stripped Job of what he was so that he could be rebuilt with God Himself. Our integrity means nothing. Only God means everything.
In the New Jerusalem there are three main items: gold, pearls, and precious stones. The whole city has the appearance of a jasper stone (Rev. 21:11). God’s appearance, as the One sitting on the throne, is also like jasper (4:3). This shows that the New Jerusalem is the enlargement of God as the consummation of the Body of Christ. In the church today, people should see only jasper, God Himself. We should teach only that which remains in the New Jerusalem. We have to teach Christ with ourselves crucified by the life-giving Spirit as the power of resurrection.
Except in James 1:1 and 2:1 where the title Christ is mentioned, James does not say anything further about the many marvelous aspects of Christ as the New Testament teaching stresses. Instead, he uplifts and exalts the law with six kinds of particular terms: the word of truth, the implanted word, the perfect law, the law of freedom, the royal law, and the law that all believers have to keep. James was a lover, exalter, and promoter of the law, but Paul was different. In Colossians, a book of only four chapters, he exalts Christ as the preeminent One in the old and new creations (1:15-18) and as the embodiment of the Triune God (2:9). Hymns, #189 is a marvelous song on the Christ unveiled in Colossians.
Now we want to point out some of the marvelous aspects of Christ stressed in the teaching of the New Testament that cannot be seen in the book of James.
In Ephesians Paul speaks of the all-inclusive Christ, who fills all in all (Eph. 1:23; 4:10).
Paul also speaks of the unsearchable riches of Christ (3:8).
Colossians tells us that Christ is the embodiment of the fullness of God (2:9; 1:19).
Christ is God’s allotted portion to the saints, just as the good land was God’s allotted portion to Israel (v. 12). The good land is a type of Christ allotted to us as our portion for us to live, walk, work, and move in Him. He is the land to us. (See Hymns, #1164-#1169 on Christ as the good land.)
Christ is the preeminent One in both God’s old creation and God’s new creation (vv. 15-18).
Colossians 1:18a and 3:10-11 reveal that Christ is the Head of the Body, all the members of the Body, and the One who is in all the members of the Body.
Christ is the life of the believers (3:4), who is revealed into the believers (Gal. 1:16), who lives in and with the believers (2:20), who is formed in the believers (4:19), who makes His home in the believers (Eph. 3:17), to the glorious image of whom as the firstborn Son of God the believers as the many sons of God are transformed (2 Cor. 3:18; Rom. 8:29), and whom the believers live and magnify through the bountiful supply of His Spirit (Phil. 1:19-21). There is no comparison between Paul’s word and James’s word.
Without experiencing such a Christ, how can a believer have the genuine Christian perfection, which is the issue of a life lived not by the natural life of the believer but by such a marvelous Christ who lives in him?
The above portrait of Christ also shows the defect in James’s presentation of Christ.
James mentions the Spirit of God only once as the indwelling Spirit in us (4:5); in the whole book there is no indication of the Spirit of God as five marvelous items: the life-giving Spirit, the compound Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the Lord Spirit, and the sevenfold intensified Spirit. Such a Spirit was not yet before the resurrection of Christ (John 7:39). James does not say anything about these rich items of the Spirit. Such a Spirit was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified in His resurrection. Thus, after Jesus’ resurrection such a Spirit came into existence.
James does not speak of the life-giving Spirit as the consummated Spirit of God, even as the consummation of the processed and consummated Triune God. First Corinthians 15:45b says that the last Adam (Christ in the flesh) became a life-giving Spirit. The Spirit Himself is the processed and consummated Triune God. The Father is embodied by the Son and the Son is realized as the Spirit, so this Spirit is the consummation and the totality of the Triune God.
I came to the United States with the burden to teach that Christ is the life-giving Spirit. Hymns, #539 is on this truth. I wrote it in 1963. The first two stanzas of this hymn say,
The compound Spirit compounded with Christ’s divinity, humanity, death with its effectiveness, and resurrection with its power is the anointing ointment to sanctify all the people, matters, and things in the service of God (Exo. 30:23-28; 1 John 2:20, 27). The complete God and the perfect man are in this Spirit. Christ’s death with its effectiveness and His resurrection with its power are also in this Spirit. When we have this Spirit, all these ingredients become our bountiful supply.
Philippians 1:19-21 reveals the all-inclusive Spirit as the Spirit of Jesus Christ with His bountiful supply through which the believers live Christ and magnify Christ.
Second Corinthians 3:18 refers to the Lord Spirit, which indicates that Christ the Lord is the Spirit from whom the believers are transformed into Christ’s image of glory. The Lord Spirit is a compound divine title like the Father God and the Lord Christ. This means that the Lord is the Spirit (v. 17). There are a number of people in today’s Christianity who do not recognize this. They say that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are three separate persons. The Bible, however, reveals that the three of the Divine Trinity are distinct but can never be separated.
In Revelation we see the sevenfold intensified Spirit for the believers to overcome all the negative things in the degradation of the church (1:4; 3:1; 4:5; 5:6).
The above items (A to E) concerning the Spirit indicate strongly that the book of James falls far behind the highest revelation concerning the Spirit of God revealed to Paul and John in the age of grace.
We need to realize that many Christians today are, in principle, like James. James was a pious person fearing and worshipping God. What he wrote was very good ethically, helping the people who fear God to be perfect. But James was devoid of the visions of God’s high revelation. Today many in Christianity are like this. They teach the right things concerning God, yet they are devoid of the higher vision of God’s high revelation.
They preach and teach that God is unique and that He created the heavens, the earth, and all things. He also created man, but man fell. Thus, because God loved man, He gave His only begotten Son, Jesus, to be our Savior. Jesus came and lived on this earth as recorded in the four Gospels to show God’s love, God’s kindness, and God’s goodness to people, healing them and doing miracles to rescue them for three and a half years. Then He went to the cross and died for man’s sins to be man’s Redeemer. He resurrected to show His power, in which death could not bind Him. Then He ascended to the heavens to be glorified, crowned, and enthroned. Finally, He sent His believers into all the earth to preach Him, which is to establish the kingdom of God. Of course, there is nothing wrong with this teaching, which they call the fundamental teaching.
But what the Lord’s recovery has seen and picked up from the New Testament is so high, concerning God’s eternal economy, the all-inclusive God processed and consummated, the all-inclusive Christ, the life-giving compound Spirit, the divine eternal life, and the church as the Body of Christ. This mystical Body of Christ consummates in the New Jerusalem. In today’s fundamental teaching of Christianity, not one of these items is fully, adequately touched. They say that God never changed. The Bible tells us that God never changed in His nature, but He did become a man. Was that not a change? The procedure for Him to become a man was a process, the process of conception. He entered into a virgin’s womb and stayed there for nine months to be born as a man. He was God, but after being processed, He became a God-man. No longer was He merely God, but He was God plus man. He passed through the process of human life as God living on this earth for thirty-three and a half years. He went to the cross and was buried in the tomb for three days. Was that not a process? Then He entered into resurrection to become the life-giving Spirit. Surely this is also a process. By this we can see that today’s teaching in Christianity is inadequate.
Who today sees the intrinsic significance of God’s incarnation, Christ’s death, and Christ’s resurrection? Many say that God came to be a Savior. That is not wrong, but the Lord has shown us that God’s incarnation indicates that God became one with man. God brought Himself into man and joined Himself with man, even mingled Himself with man that man may become God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead. All the items in the Bible have their intrinsic significance. We do not eat the skin of an orange but the intrinsic content of the orange. The inner content is the real significance of the orange.
One wrong teaching today is that the believers in Christ go to heaven when they die. The Bible shows that God has prepared two Paradises for His believers. The first Paradise is for today. When a believer dies, his body is buried in the earth, but his spirit and soul go to the first Paradise. The Lord Jesus told the criminal on the cross, “Today you shall be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). This Paradise is the pleasant section of Hades. Hades is divided into two sections: the section of torment for the perished unbelievers and the pleasant section called Paradise. That is the place where the Lord Jesus went after He died (Acts 2:27, 31) and the place where Abraham and the poor man Lazarus are, as described in Luke 16:19-31.
They remain in Paradise, a place of comfort, waiting for the Lord’s coming back. When the Lord comes back, they will be resurrected from Paradise and from the earth with a body, soul, and spirit. Then they will be judged at the judgment seat of Christ (2 Cor. 5:10). If they are overcomers, they will go into the New Jerusalem in the thousand years of the kingdom. That initial stage of the New Jerusalem is called “the Paradise of God” in Revelation 2:7. But if you are a defeated genuine believer, you will be condemned at the Lord’s judgment seat. Then what you did as wood, grass, and stubble will be burned (1 Cor. 3:12-15), and you will be disciplined in the thousand years of the kingdom to get yourself matured, perfected, and transformed. At the end of the thousand-year kingdom, you will enter into the New Jerusalem in its consummate stage in the new heaven and new earth to meet together with all the overcomers.
I share this to show again that the teaching of today’s Christianity is like that of James — right to a certain degree but devoid of the highest peak of God’s revelation. The Lord’s recovery is absolutely different. For over seventy years we have dived into the intrinsic significance of the Bible. We have read the different interpretations of the Bible throughout the church’s history, and the Lord has given us the discernment to see what is according to His eternal economy. We need to see the difference between the Lord’s recovery and today’s Christianity. The Lord’s recovery is up to the standard of the divine revelation, but Christianity is devoid of it.
