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Scripture Reading: 1 John 4:15; Phil. 2:13; Rom. 12:5; Eph. 1:23; 3:19b; Rom. 15:16; John 21:15; 1 Thes. 2:7; 1 Pet. 2:2; Rom. 12:1; Eph. 4:12; 1 Cor. 14:1, 3-5
I. Realizing God’s desire, plan, and economy:
А. God’s desire is to work Himself into man to be man’s life and everything — 1 John 4:15; Phil. 2:13.
B. God’s plan is for the men who have His life and who are joined to Him organically:
1. To be the organic members of Christ, the embodiment of the Triune God — Rom. 12:5.
2. To be constituted the church as the organism of this Triune God — Eph. 1:23.
3. To be the Body of Christ as God’s fullness in Christ to express Him — v. 23; 3:19b.
C. God’s economy is an arrangement whereby every one of the many members of Christ is God’s priest of the gospel — Rom. 15:16:
1. Personally preaching the gospel to save sinners and to offer them to God as offerings — v. 16.
2. Nourishing and cherishing the new believers, helping them to grow in the spiritual life, so that they would offer themselves up to God as living sacrifices — John 21:15; 1 Thes. 2:7; 1 Pet. 2:2; Rom. 12:1.
3. Teaching and perfecting the saints for the work of the New Testament ministry in the building up of the Body of Christ — Eph. 4:12.
4. The perfected saints as prophets speaking for the Lord, supplying Christ, building the church, completing God’s New Testament economy, and fulfilling God’s eternal plan for the satisfaction of God’s desire in eternity — 1 Cor. 14:1, 3-5.
D. This is what God has shown us during the past four and a half years as the proper way for saints to meet and serve according to His ordination and the biblical revelation.
II. Exposing Satan’s evil intent, deception, and confusion:
А. Satan’s evil intent is to frustrate God’s desire of working Himself into man to be man’s life and everything.
B. Satan’s deception:
1. To kill the organic function of the members of Christ through religious service.
2. To replace the church as the organism of the Triune God through religious organization.
3. To counterfeit the Body of Christ as the fullness and expression of the Triune God through religious association.
C. Satan’s confusion:
1. Despising the function of every believer as a component of God’s priesthood of the gospel, by the gospel preaching of a few specially gifted ones.
2. Denying the spiritual, organic function of every believer in nourishing and caring for one another, by using a few clergy to shepherd and care for new believers.
3. Replacing the work of each saint being perfected to perfect others unto the work of the New Testament ministry of the building up of the Body of Christ, by the teaching and edification of the professional teachers.
4. Regarding prophesying and the speaking for the Lord as the exclusive gift of a few people, and not recognizing the fact that every believer can and should be a prophet speaking for the Lord.
D. This is the crooked way that Satan has used throughout the ages to damage and confuse the God-ordained, proper way for saints to meet and to serve God.
God has a desire in Himself. In contrast to this, Satan also has an evil intent, which is to damage. God has a plan, and Satan in contrast has a deception, which is to frustrate. God has an economy, and Satan in contrast has a work, which is to confuse. Hence, on the one hand, we have to realize God’s desire, plan, and economy. On the other hand, we have to expose Satan’s evil intent, deception, and confusion.
God’s desire is to work Himself into man to be life and everything to man. First John 4:15 and Philippians 2:13 both strongly confirm this fact. Since the time of Brother Nee we have been talking about this matter. When I began working in America, my speaking became even stronger. There are over one hundred messages already in print concerning this matter. Until today, when Christianity preaches the gospel, there is still very little mention of this matter. Mostly this gospel tells people that man is sinful, that God is righteous, and that the Lord Jesus has died on our behalf according to the righteousness of God. When one believes in Him, his sins will be forgiven, and he will be justified by God. As to life, Christianity touches only briefly the matter of regeneration.
Regeneration is God’s coming into us to be our life. Hence, regeneration is to have the life of God in addition to the life that man has in himself. It means to be born again. First, God regenerates us in our spirit. Then He expands from our spirit to our mind, occupying and saturating all the parts of our mind. This is transformation. We will then be a mature person in the eyes of God, waiting for the Lord to come back, at which time our body will be fully saturated as well. That will be the redemption of the body. Hence, first there is the regeneration in our spirit, then the transformation in our soul, and finally, at the coming of the Lord, the redemption of our body. In this way our whole being will enter into glory, that is, into all that the Triune God is. The above words are the light and revelation that we have accumulated through our sixty years of studying the Bible and the spiritual books.
In addition to God being our life, He wants to be our everything. Life is not a simple thing. Life requires wisdom, power, and light. Life also requires virtues like patience, forbearance, and forgiveness. These virtues are created by God and manifested in humanity. The human virtues created by God are merely shells. They are like gloves. The gloves are different from the hands. The inward reality of these virtues is the divine attributes of God. When the divine attributes get into us to become the content of our human virtues, together they become the good works described in the Bible and sought after by God. The good works that God is after are the ones that are lived out from our human virtues when God gets into us, the created men, to be the content of our goodness. The Bible calls these works virtues (2 Pet. 1:3). Hence, virtue is not just a kind of meritorious behavior but a kind of spiritual power.
When the Triune God works Himself into us to be our life and everything, we meet and fellowship by this life. Without this life there is no Christian meeting and no fellowship. Fellowship is the flow of the divine life. Today some have translated the word fellowship as “communication.” Communication gives a somewhat worldly connotation. First John 1 clearly shows us that the divine fellowship issues from the divine life. When an unsaved person comes to our meetings, he can imitate our singing and prayer. But he is absolutely outside of our fellowship. This is because he is not the same as we are. He does not have the divine life. When Christianity was first introduced to China, the term giao-you (meaning “nominal church member”) was a popular expression. After we were raised up by the Lord, we opposed the use of terms such as this. Giao-you is a worldly expression. We are not giao-you; we are brothers, having the same life. Because we are brothers sharing the same life, we are able to have fellowship one with another. Today, the basis of our meeting, gospel preaching, service, and work for the Lord is regeneration, by which we have the divine life.
God’s plan is for the men who have His life and who are joined to Him organically to be the organic members of Christ, the embodiment of the Triune God. There are two strong phrases here: to have His life and to be joined to Him organically. Because we have God as our life, we can be joined to Him organically. A broken staff can be glued together. It can even be surrounded by a metal ring, or even wrapped with gold. But there is no organic joining together. The reason for this is that there is no life. But the grafting of trees is different. When a living branch is grafted into a tree, very soon the two will grow into one. This is to be joined organically. In the same way, a broken arm can be joined together again through the circulation of blood, which is the fellowship of life.
There is an organic union between God and us. God grows into us, and we grow into God. God’s plan is to make this kind of people the organic members of Christ, who is the embodiment of the Triune God. God desires to make us who have His life and who are joined to Him organically the members of Christ. Christ is the embodiment of God. Hence, we become the organic members of Christ, the embodiment of God. These members are constituted the church, the organism of this Triune God (Eph. 1:23). This is a matter of constitution, and it is by life. The church is not an organization that has no life. Those who have His life and who are joined to Him organically are not just the members of Christ; they are also constituted the church as the organism of the Triune God. Even more, they are the Body of Christ as God’s fullness in Christ to express Him (v. 23; 3:19b).
God’s economy is His arrangement. The word economy is an appropriate translation (1 Tim. 1:4b). Its original meaning is a “house law,” meaning “a household management and administration,” and it has the derived meaning of “an arrangement or economy in administration.” God has an administrative arrangement. He arranges to have every one of the members of Christ to be God’s priest of the gospel (Rom. 15:16). Hence, no matter how much you feel that you are unable to preach the gospel, God has made such an arrangement. Actually, as long as you are a regenerated person, having God’s life within, your ability to preach the gospel is there by birth, just as a person’s speaking ability is there by birth.
God desires that we preach the gospel to save sinners, offering them up as sacrifices. Paul says in Romans 15:16 that he was “a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, a laboring priest of the gospel of God, in order that the offering of the Gentiles might be acceptable, having been sanctified in the Holy Spirit.” Verses 5 and 9 of 1 Peter 2 also say that we are built up “into a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ...But you are...a royal priesthood...so that you may tell out the virtues of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.” These few passages show us that we are a holy priesthood and that each one of us is a priest of the gospel for the telling out of the virtues of God’s salvation and for the offering up of the Gentiles as acceptable sacrifices to God. God’s virtues are the gospel that we preach. Hence, every one of us has to preach the gospel and lead the sinners to salvation, bringing them to God and offering them up as sacrifices. But this does not mean that you should go out to invite people to come listen to one man speaking. That is to be a Levite; it is not to be a priest. Today, we have to reconsider the service of the brothers and sisters. Formerly, we encouraged everyone to come arrange the chairs, clean the floor, mow the lawn, and trim the trees, thinking that by so doing, the whole church would be in service. But why did we not use that time to have everyone go and preach the gospel? For this I take the lead to confess to you my mistake.
After a person has received the gospel and been saved and baptized, he is like a newborn child. What follows is his need to be nourished and cared for so that he will grow in the spiritual life to the point that he can offer himself up to God as a living sacrifice (John 21:15; 1 Thes. 2:7; 1 Pet. 2:2; Rom. 12:1). This is the second step. However, it is not enough for a child just to be nourished and cared for; there is still the need of teaching and perfecting. The same is true with the spiritual life. Hence, there is a third step, which is to teach and to perfect the saints for the work of the New Testament ministry unto the building up of the Body of Christ (Eph. 4:12). In the end these perfected saints are to be the prophets, speaking for the Lord and supplying Christ to build up the church, completing God’s New Testament economy and fulfilling God’s eternal plan for the satisfaction of God’s desire in eternity (1 Cor. 14:1, 3-5). This is the revelation of the Bible.
However, our actual situation is not like this today. We have managed our meeting hall well, but our gospel preaching, home meetings, small group meetings, and prophesying are not doing as well. This is because we are accustomed to cleaning the meeting hall, but we are not accustomed to preaching the gospel and nourishing people. We even consider that we cannot do the job ourselves. This is a mistake in our leading in the past. What we have said above is what God has shown us during the past four and a half years as the proper way for saints to meet and serve according to His ordination and the biblical revelation.
Today there are two trees before us. One is the tree of life, and the other is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. One is genuine; the other is a counterfeit. In the market there are often counterfeit goods. Satan is the top counterfeiter. For this reason we have to expose his evil intent, deception, and confusion.
Satan’s evil intent is to frustrate God’s desire of working Himself into man to be man’s life and everything. The New Testament shows us clearly that God lives in us and that we live in God (1 John 4:15). We know that He lives in us and that we live in Him by the life that He gave us. However, many people do not emphasize this point in their preaching of the gospel. This is the frustration of Satan’s evil intent. For this reason we have compiled a booklet for the preaching of the gospel, called The Mystery of Human Life. We did this because the center of our gospel preaching is God working Himself into man to be his life and everything.
Satan’s deception is to kill the organic function of the members of Christ through religious service, to replace the church as the organism of the Triune God through religious organization, and to counterfeit the Body of Christ as the fullness and expression of the Triune God through religious association. The service in Christianity today is almost entirely religious. When a person becomes a member, all he needs to do is to listen to sermons and give money. Eventually, his organic function as a member of Christ is annulled. Moreover, the religious organization has replaced the church as the organism of the Triune God, and the religious association has become a counterfeit to the organic Body of Christ.
Satan’s confusion comes, first, by his using a few specially gifted ones to preach the gospel, thereby despising the function of every believer as a component of God’s priesthood of the gospel. When man exalts the gospel preaching of the gospel giants, the function of thousands of believers as God’s priesthood of the gospel is despised. Today, many believers cannot preach the gospel. This is true even among us. They can zealously invite people to come to gospel meetings, but after the message they still have to find some gifted ones to talk to their friends. This is the result of honoring the few gifted ones while despising the corporate priesthood. The New Testament priests that God is after are a priesthood and a corporate entity. The word priesthood is difficult to translate into Chinese. This is why the Chinese Union Version translates it only as “priest” without the “hood” (1 Pet. 2:5, 9). But this is to miss a great truth. Our own Chinese translation, however, has taken great pains to bring out this distinction. The New Testament priests do not exist as individuals. Rather, they function as a priesthood. Therefore, there will surely be a despising of the priesthood of the gospel whenever the gift of gospel preaching of single individuals is too highly honored.
Second, Satan’s confusion comes when he uses a few clergy to shepherd and care for new believers, thereby denying the spiritual, organic function of every believer in nourishing and caring for one another. God’s economy is for every believer to nourish and care for the new believers and for one another (1 Cor. 12:25). However, Satan’s confusion is to have a few clergy to shepherd and care for the new ones. Shepherds in Ephesians 4:11 has been translated by some as “pastors.” Man’s concept today is that a doctor is needed for illness, a lawyer is needed for a lawsuit, and a pastor is needed for help in prayer and supplication. Many Christians cannot even pray. They ask a pastor to come and pray for them. But the Bible shows us that many brothers and sisters, even all of us, are shepherds. Hence, the way of using a few clergy to shepherd and care for the new believers is a denial of the spiritual, organic function of every believer in nourishing and caring for one another.
Third, Satan’s confusion comes when professional teachers are used to teach and edify the saints, thereby replacing the work of each saint being perfected to perfect others unto the work of the New Testament ministry of the building up of the Body of Christ. God’s economy is for the gifted ones to perfect the saints so that the latter would all participate in the work of the building up of the Body of Christ (vv. 11-16). But the practice in Christianity is to employ the professional teachers to teach and edify the saints. In this way the work of each saint being perfected to perfect others unto the work of the building up of the Body of Christ is replaced.
Fourth, Satan’s confusion comes when prophesying and speaking for the Lord are regarded as the exclusive gift of a few people, and the fact that every believer can and should be a prophet speaking for the Lord is not recognized. This was also the case among us in the past. As a result, we suffered greatly during the past forty years. If we had taken the proper view and way forty years ago when we began our work here, I believe that most of the brothers and sisters would be able to prophesy by now.
Using a few specially gifted ones for the preaching of the gospel, using a few clergy to shepherd and care for new believers, using professional teachers to teach and edify the saints, and regarding prophesying and the speaking for the Lord as the exclusive gift of a few people are the confusion of Satan. They make everyone unclear. Now we have to expose Satan’s confusion and rise up together to attack Satan, the evil one. The above describes the crooked way that Satan has used throughout the ages to damage and confuse the God-ordained, proper way for saints to meet and to serve God. It is not an evil way. But it is a crooked way. It makes us crooked. Hence, we have to expose it.
