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Scripture Reading: Rev. 1:9, 11-12; Rom. 8:9-11; 1 John 3:9; 5:1-4; Titus 3:5; Eph. 4:23; 2 Cor. 3:18; Rom. 12:2; 8:29; Phil. 3:21
We have seen that every single local church as a lampstand is an embodiment of the Triune God. When all the local churches are put together, they are the multiplication of the lampstand as revealed in Exodus 25; therefore, in this age the lampstands are the multiplied embodiment of the Triune God as the testimony of Jesus. In Paul’s fourteen Epistles he mainly teaches the mystery of God, which is Christ (Col. 2:2), and the mystery of Christ, which is the church (Eph. 3:4). Christ and the church are a great mystery (5:32). Christ is the embodiment of God, and the church as the Body of Christ is the embodiment of Christ; the embodiment of Christ simply means the embodiment of the Triune God. This again shows that the book of Revelation is the conclusion of all the books of the Bible, especially of all the books of the New Testament, which reveal Christ and the church. The conclusion of all the aspects of the church revealed in the foregoing twenty-six books of the Bible is that the church in this age is signified by the lampstand.
Revelation is a book of signs, which are symbols with spiritual significance. The first sign of this book is the lampstand, a sign of the church. A sign is a picture, and a picture is always better than one thousand words. It would be hard to describe the lampstand without a picture of it. For example, it is very difficult to describe a person’s face. How can one give the dimensions of a person’s nose, ears, or cheeks? By looking at a picture of a person’s face, though, we are able to see exactly what that person looks like. This is why the end of the New Testament gives us a conclusion of all the definitions of the church in the sign of the lampstand.
The three aspects of the lampstand are the element, the shape, and the expression. The golden element signifies God’s divine nature. Also, Christ is described in the New Testament as the embodiment of the invisible God (Col. 2:9). He has a form and a likeness, and He is a mold for us to be conformed to (Rom. 8:29). Christ desires to be formed in us (Gal. 4:19). This shows that Christ is the shape of the lampstand. The Bible does not tell us that the Father has an image or a form, nor does it say that the Spirit has a likeness. The words image, form, likeness, and mold are ascribed to the second of the Trinity, so He is the shape of the lampstand. The expression of the lampstand is the Spirit. In our daily life we have the fruit of the Spirit, and the fruit of any tree is its expression. Then in our ministry, in our service in the church, we have the manifestation of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is mentioned in Galatians 5, where our daily walk is revealed, and the manifestation of the Spirit is mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12, where our ministry or service in the church is mentioned. In our life we have the fruit as the expression, and in our ministry we have the manifestation as the expression. According to the entire revelation of the Bible, God the Father is the element, God the Son is the shape, and God the Spirit is the expression. When these three aspects are put together, we see the lampstand, which is the embodiment of the Father, of the Son, and of the Spirit.
A local church is a lampstand, signifying the Triune God embodied in human beings. This is the great mystery of godliness revealed in 1 Timothy 3:16 — God manifested in the flesh. This not only transpired in Jesus Christ as an individual person, but this also transpires in all the local churches. Jesus Christ Himself was a lampstand, and today every single local church is also a lampstand. In element or in nature, in shape or in type, in expression or in manifestation, a local church is exactly the same as Jesus Christ. The local churches are the testimony of Jesus.
By the time we reach the book of Revelation, everything has been covered already in the Old and New Testaments. There is nearly nothing new in the book of Revelation. Not only the holy writings but also all the secular writings, after talking about so many things and covering so many aspects, have a conclusion. In the conclusion they repeat and confirm what has already been spoken. The Bible is the same. After sixty-five books everything has been revealed, and now there is the need of a conclusion.
In the lampstand there is the crucial and vital concept that the Triune God is being wrought into His redeemed (Rom. 8:9-11). In the last chapter we saw that the lampstand is the embodiment of the Triune God, which means that the Triune God has been wrought into His redeemed. Without such an explanation we cannot understand the lampstand thoroughly. We are now looking at the lampstand from another angle, another perspective. The lampstand signifies that the Triune God has been wrought into His redeemed, but now we need to ask how this takes place. We have already seen that in order for the Triune God to be wrought into us we all need to eat (John 6:57), drink (4:14; 1 Cor. 12:13), and breathe (John 20:22) of the Lord. We want to see how this takes place, though, from another perspective.
First, the Triune God is wrought into His redeemed by the divine birth (1 John 3:9; 5:1-4). At the time I believed in the Lord Jesus, I was very clear that I was born of God. I was taught by the Brethren that he who has been begotten of God does not practice sin (3:9) and that he who has been begotten of God overcomes the world and Satan (5:4). For years, however, I was not clear that by the divine birth something divine had been born into my being. We all need to have the deep realization that through the divine birth, at the time we believed in the Lord Jesus, the divine element was born into us. Birth is not something vain; it always brings some element into the one born. A Chinese boy who is born of a Chinese father has the Chinese life and the Chinese nature. His eyes, nose, hair, face, color, and blood are all Chinese. The Chinese element has been born into that little baby. The more the little baby boy grows, the more the Chinese things come out. Everything that is Chinese is in the Chinese gene. In the Scandinavian countries most of the people have blonde hair. A Danish boy does not need to worry about having black hair. Someone who is born black does not need to worry about having blonde hair. The black birth brings the black hair genes into the baby’s being.
Since we have been born of God, we must realize that everything of God has been born into us. In “God’s gene” there are holiness, righteousness, love, and the highest morality. Through our growth in life, everything in the gene that we have received will come out. When we grow, eventually the divine holiness, the divine righteousness, and the divine love grow out of us. What a wonderful thing that we all have been born of God! What birth can exceed this birth? No birth is so high or so supreme as the birth of God. We have received a supreme birth, the birth of God, and by this birth something divine has been born in us, into our being.
Many of the teachings in today’s Christianity turn people away from the divine gene to endeavoring and striving for self-improvement. These teachings are off from God’s economy. We all must realize that we have been born of God, and all the divine attributes have been born into our being. In this divine gene are included all the divine attributes. We do not need teachings concerning self-improvement or concerning how to be a better Christian. We need the scientific teaching of the divine life to find out how to water this life and nourish this life to cause this life to grow. We do not need the teaching that teaches people to improve their behavior and to try, endeavor, strive, and struggle to do good. This teaching is the same as the teaching of Confucius.
In the fall of 1964 I came to Dallas, Texas, for the ministry of the word. In one of these meetings I shared that today we do not need the teachings, but our desperate need is for the living Christ. After this meeting a group of people surrounded me and contended with me that we do need the teachings. They used 2 Timothy 3:16 as their basis in saying that all Scripture is profitable for teaching. The teaching Paul was talking about here, of course, was the healthy teaching (1 Tim. 1:10). Healthy implies the matter of life. Anything that is healthy refers to the health of life. The sound teaching of the apostles, which is according to the gospel of the glory of God, ministers healthy teaching as the supply of life to people, either nourishing them or healing them. Any teaching that distracts people from the center and goal of God’s New Testament economy is not healthy. When these ones surrounded me after the meeting and told me this, I still insisted that they did not need teachings but the living Christ. Many Christians today have received many teachings, yet they are still so poor because the teachings they received were not the healthy teaching. Teachings that are not healthy do not help us. We need the watering and the “fertilizing” that help us to grow in life. We need the kind of teaching that teaches us how to fertilize and water for the growth in life. I have been teaching this way in the United States for the last twenty-two years. Our burden in the ministry is to minister the Lord as the healthy food to all His children. Many of us can testify that when we read the Life-study messages, we do not get mere teachings, but we enjoy the Lord Himself as our food, our nourishment.
We all must see the tremendous significance of the divine birth. The divine gene has been born into us. We need to be those who are taking care of the divine gene within us, and our mind needs to be renewed to have such a proper understanding of the divine birth. Even though I am older than many of you, I am actually very young because I have the divine gene within me. We need to tell our relatives, friends, neighbors, and colleagues that the divine gene, which includes the divine life and the divine nature, has been born into us. This is our capital, and there is no mathematical figure adequate to describe it. God Himself has been born into us. Even if someone has been recently saved, we need to tell him that God has been born into him and that he has God in him (1 John 4:15). The new birth is that God has been born into me and into you. The Triune God has been wrought into our being by the way of being born into us. We need the scientific teaching, the scientific study, of the Bible concerning God being in us. We need to find out how God is in us and what He is doing in us.
Paul did this kind of scientific teaching in Romans 8:9-11: “You are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Yet if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not of Him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of the One who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who indwells you.” In these verses Paul talks about Christ being in us and indwelling us in a very scientific, thorough, and detailed way. We all need this kind of scientific study and teaching concerning the very God who has been born into our being. We need this teaching to tell us how this God is living in us and working in us.
The Triune God is also wrought into His redeemed by the renewing of the Spirit (Titus 3:5; Eph. 4:23). We all need the practical knowledge and experience of the renewing of the Spirit. The lampstand as the embodiment of the Triune God is altogether a doctrine if we do not have the adequate experiential knowledge. This is why we need the fellowship in this chapter in order to get into the experiential knowledge. The renewing of the Spirit is the Spirit applying all the divine things, of which we have been born, into our being in our practical life. You have been born of a certain set of parents, and you have your disposition, your view, your thinking, and your likes and dislikes. Now, however, you have been born of God, and God has been born into you to be your everything. How could this God who is everything be applied to you? The Spirit is here to apply all the divine things into your being in your daily life — this is the renewing of the Spirit. To renew simply means to replace. The Spirit replaces our old being with the divine being. We were born of our parents as the old being, and we have been born of God as the new divine being. Now the Spirit is replacing our old being every day with His new being, and this is the renewing of the Spirit.
God is wrought into our being first by being born into us and second by Himself as the Spirit working in us to replace our old being with Himself as the new being, which is the renewing of the Spirit. Our birth is once for all, but the renewing is lifelong. After God begot us, He came into us to dwell in us as the life-giving Spirit to replace our old being with Himself as the new being. This is not merely a matter of renewing our mind but a matter of God replacing our entire being with Himself. The renewing of the Spirit is God Himself indwelling us as the Spirit to replace us with God Himself.
In Titus 3:5 Paul tells us that God saved us through the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit. We all need to be saved from our old being into God Himself as the new being. This kind of saving is the renewing of the Spirit, through which God works Himself into our being. This renewing is carried out by the indwelling Spirit. We need this kind of teaching. We do not need the kind of teaching that tells us how to be humble or kind. This is like the teaching of Confucius, and this is not Christ. We have to see that all the divine things have been born into us, and now we need God Himself in us as the indwelling Spirit to apply all the divine things into our being to replace our old being with God Himself as the new being. This is the renewing of the Spirit.
Furthermore, the Triune God is wrought into us by the transformation with the divine life (2 Cor. 3:18; Rom. 12:2). The renewing of the Spirit and the transformation with the divine life are very close. Transformation is not merely change but a kind of metabolic change. The Greek word for transformation is the source of the English word metamorphosis. The literal meaning of the Greek word is “a change in form.” In the metabolic process some new element is brought in to replace the old element and to discharge it. The resultant metabolic change that takes place is transformation. The new element comes in, the old element is replaced and discharged, and the new element becomes prevailing. One of the best illustrations of this is the process of petrification. A current of water brings in the new elements of minerals into the wood and deposits them there; this current also carries away the old element of the wood until the very cell structure of the wood is entirely replaced with stone. This piece of wood becomes a piece of precious stone, and this is transformation.
The Greek word for transformed is used in Romans 12:2, where we are told that we need to be transformed by the renewing of the mind. It is also used in 2 Corinthians 3:18, which tells us that as we behold and reflect the glory of the Lord, we are being transformed into the same image. Philippians 3:21 also tells us that the Lord Jesus will transfigure, or transform, our body. Romans 12:2 and 2 Corinthians 3:18 refer to the transformation of our soul, our inner being, and Philippians 3:21 refers to the transformation of our body, our outward being. The Greek word for transformation conveys the thought that the divine element is being brought into our being by the current of the Spirit to replace our old element, to discharge it, and to make the divine element so prevailing in our life and in our living. Transformation takes place first in our soul and last in our body at His coming back. By this way God is wrought into our being. He is wrought into us not merely by birth but also by the renewing of the Spirit and by the transformation with the divine life.
Suppose that a person’s face is very pale. The cosmetic way to change his appearance is for him to put some makeup on his face. This is like the work of a mortician in the mortuary. The work of the mortician is to make the appearance of a corpse look as pleasant as possible. This, of course, has nothing to do with the metabolic change of transformation. If a person eats healthy food and sleeps well, his complexion will look very healthy. When the nourishing, healthy food is digested and assimilated by us, the issue is transformation. God has begotten us with Himself, and He Himself has been born into our being. He now indwells us as the Spirit to apply all that He has put into us to replace our old being with Himself as the new being. This is the renewing of the Spirit. While He is doing this kind of renewing, He transforms us metabolically with the divine life as the element to make us “pieces of petrified wood.” We are all now under God’s divine petrification. A piece of petrified wood is a compound of the deposit of all the mineral elements that have been wrought into the wood. We are like the pieces of wood, and God Himself is the heavenly mineral elements. Through the years and day by day the heavenly minerals have been deposited into our being to make us pieces of precious stone. This is transformation, and this is the way that God works Himself into our being. Then we become the lampstand in reality.
Our becoming the golden lampstand is also by the conformation to the image of the firstborn Son of God (Rom. 8:29; Phil. 3:21). Conformation refers to the image, the shape. Every life has its own essence, its own power, its own shape, and its own expression. For example, the apple life has its essence, its life power to grow, and its shape. An apple spontaneously grows into the appropriate shape. It is the same way with a peach or a banana. Life grows into its own shape, and life has its own expression. The life of an apple or a banana has its own particular expression as the issue of its growth. We also have the divine life, which is the life of God’s firstborn Son, and this life has its essence, power, and shape. This life grows into its own shape. As we grow, we are being conformed, shaped, into the image of the firstborn Son of God. We are not imitating Christ, but we are being conformed to His image by growing. Washington apples are conformed to their particular form by their full growth. They are not imitators, but they are growers. They grow in the apple life unto the conformity of a Washington apple. In like manner, we are not imitating Christ, but we are growing by Christ as our life, and eventually we grow unto the conformity of Christ. Then at His coming back, He will transform our body of humiliation metabolically by His great power and with His divine element, conforming it to the body of His glory. By that time we will be fully and thoroughly wrought with all the attributes of God. We have not reached that point yet, but today we are in the process, and today we can be the golden lampstand.
By the new birth, the renewing, the transformation, and the conformation, God has been gradually working Himself into us, and by this we all become part of the golden lampstand. This is the church. This is more than holy, more than righteous, and more than mere learning. This is something divine and golden. This is the mingling of divinity with humanity for the fulfillment of God’s divine economy.
