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Scripture Reading: 1 Pet. 1:2; Gal. 3:13; Eph. 1:7; 1 John 1:9; 1 Cor. 6:11; Rom. 5:10-11; 1 Pet. 1:3, 23; John 3:3, 5; 1 John 4:13; 2 Cor. 13:5; Rom. 8:9; John 14:17; 1 John 5:12; John 3:15; 2 Pet. 1:4; Heb. 8:10; Rom. 8:2; 1 John 2:27; 2 Cor. 5:17; John 1:12-13; Eph. 5:30; Rom. 12:5
The spiritual life is of different stages, and each stage has many spiritual experiences. As we saw in the previous chapter, the first experience in the spiritual life is regeneration. Many Christians think that they know what God’s salvation is, but most have neglected the aspect of regeneration. God’s salvation has many parts, but the main and central part is regeneration.
According to the teaching of the New Testament, God’s salvation is first composed of the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus. After a person repents and believes—repenting before God, confessing his sins, believing in the Lord Jesus, and receiving Him as his Savior—the first thing God applies to him is the “sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.” This phrase is used in 1 Peter 1:2. (In order to help unbelievers and even young believers, we need to know the experiences of life and the proper passages from the Scriptures.) God applies the sprinkling of the blood to us because we are sinners. We have no ground to receive anything from God; we have no merit in ourselves. The only ground we have is the blood shed by the Lord Jesus for us. In order to receive or claim anything, we need the proper ground. Without the ground we cannot claim anything. The redeeming blood, which is applied to us, is the ground for all the items of God’s salvation. It is the only ground on which we can stand to claim all that God intends to give us.
The second item in God’s salvation is redemption. After the sprinkling of the blood, we are redeemed. Many people in Christianity speak of being redeemed from sin, from Satan, or from hell, but this is not correct. To redeem means “to buy back, to purchase back with a price.” God did not need to pay anything to sin, Satan, or hell to buy us back. Rather, He needed to pay something to the requirement of the law. Therefore, we are redeemed from the curse of the law (Gal. 3:13). We were under the condemnation and curse of the law according to its requirements, so God had to pay something to fulfill its requirements. If there were no fall, there would have been no need of redemption. We need to be redeemed because we fell into the condemnation of the law and came under its curse.
Ephesians 1:7 also speaks of redemption through His blood, and 1 Peter 1:18 and 19 say that we were redeemed with the precious blood of Christ. Acts 20:28 and 1 Corinthians 6:20 tell us that we were obtained and bought. To be redeemed is to be bought, to be purchased with a price, which is Christ Himself. When God sprinkles the blood upon us, we are redeemed by that blood.
Third, we have the forgiveness of sins. God can forgive only those people whom He has redeemed; therefore, redemption comes first and then forgiveness. Ephesians 1:7 says, “In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of offenses, according to the riches of His grace.” Acts 10:43, 1 John 2:12, and Colossians 2:13 also speak of the forgiveness of sins.
After forgiveness we have cleansing. There is a difference between forgiveness and cleansing. Forgiveness deals with the responsibility of sin. Cleansing, however, deals with the stain of sin. If we damage a shirt, for example, we can be forgiven. Our responsibility is relieved, but the shirt still bears a mark or stain. Therefore, after forgiveness we still need the cleansing of the stain. By the blood of Jesus, God not only forgives us; He also cleanses us. That is, He releases us from responsibility and cleanses us from the stain and mark of our fall. First John 1:9 shows us the order of forgiveness and cleansing. It says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” After we are forgiven and cleansed of a sin, it is in the eyes of God as if we had never committed the sin.
After we are cleansed, we are sanctified, that is, separated. First Corinthians 6:11 shows us the proper order: “And these things were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” According to certain theological teachings, sanctification comes after justification, but this verse says differently. If we are not separated, if we are still in the heap of sinful people, we cannot be justified. We are forgiven, cleansed, and sanctified and then justified.
First Corinthians 1:2 and Romans 1:7 both say that we are called saints. Saints means “sanctified persons.” After we receive the Lord Jesus and are sprinkled with the blood, we are sanctified, that is, separated from all the people of the world. We are no longer the same as they are. We are different, separated by the blood.
After we are sanctified, we are justified. As we have seen, 1 Corinthians 6:11 speaks of justification. To this we may add Romans 5:1. Justification is based on our being sprinkled, redeemed, forgiven, cleansed, and separated. When we have these items, we are qualified to be justified. We are sprinkled with the blood, and by this blood we are redeemed, bought back. Based on this blood we are forgiven, and by this blood we are cleansed and even separated, that is, sanctified. Now further, by this blood we are justified, and we have no problem with God.
After justification we have reconciliation. We are reconciled with God and have peace. This is mentioned in Romans 5:10 and 11, which say, “If we, being enemies, were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more we will be saved in His life, having been reconciled, and not only so, but also boasting in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.” (Reconciliation in verse 11 is not atonement, as it says in the King James Version; atonement is an Old Testament word.) To be reconciled to God means that we have nothing contradictory to God. We are at peace with God in a full way.
To be sprinkled, redeemed, forgiven, cleansed, separated, justified, and reconciled is wonderful. Apparently, these items are good enough. However, these seven items are not the central item. They are all subsidiary items. Do not think that I despise the Lord’s redemption. I do not. However, all these items are simply the preparation for regeneration. Therefore, the eighth item of God’s salvation is regeneration. Here we come back to the very beginning of God’s eternal purpose. God’s eternal purpose is to work Himself into us as life. We must remember well the first two chapters of the Scriptures. God made man a vessel to contain God Himself (Gen. 2:7). Therefore, after God created man, He put him in front of the tree of life with the intention that man would receive the life signified by that tree, which is the divine life of God Himself (v. 9). Before man received God into him as life, however, Satan came in. Man became fallen, dirty, and condemned by God, so he needed to be sprinkled, redeemed, forgiven, cleansed, sanctified, justified, and reconciled. This shows us that all these items of God’s salvation are the procedure to recover fallen man, to bring him to the genuine, proper standing for God to fulfill His purpose to put Himself into man as his life.
The foregoing seven items are not the central and main items. They are the preparation for the main item, which is that man would be reborn. Regardless of whether we are bad or good, we need to be reborn. Many in Christianity have the wrong concept that we need to be reborn because we are sinful, but even if we were not sinful, we would still need to be reborn. If we are not reborn, we cannot have the divine life; we can have only the human life. How can we have the divine life from only our human birth?
Even if Adam had never fallen and had remained in the garden of Eden in a good condition, he still would need to be regenerated. Otherwise, even though he would be a good man, he would have only the created, human life, not the uncreated, divine, eternal life. Therefore, we must be clear that all the subsidiary items of God’s salvation are not the central and main items. Regeneration is the central item of God’s salvation, and these others are the preparation for regeneration.
First Peter 1:3 and 23 and John 3:3 and 5 speak of regeneration. Regeneration is nothing other than receiving Christ, the very embodiment of God, as the Holy Spirit. It is to receive Christ into our spirit. When we believe in Him and receive Him, He comes into our spirit. By this we have the second life, the divine, eternal life of God, and this life causes us to have the second birth. We had our first birth from our parents, and now we have the second birth by Christ as life as the Holy Spirit coming into our spirit, according to John 3:6b, which says, “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” In this way, regeneration is the very item that fulfills God’s eternal purpose, which is to work Himself in Christ through the Spirit into us so that He may be our life in our spirit. That is why we say that the foregoing items of God’s salvation are subsidiary, and only the last item—regeneration—is the main and central item.
We have been sprinkled, redeemed, forgiven, cleansed, separated, justified, and reconciled. Praise God, all the problems are gone! Now by being regenerated we have received God. God is within us. First John 4:13 says, “In this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, that He has given to us of His Spirit.” It is by regeneration that God comes into us to indwell us.
By regeneration Christ lives in us. Second Corinthians 13:5 is the best verse to prove this. It says, “Test yourselves whether you are in the faith; prove yourselves. Or do you not realize about yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you, unless you are disapproved?” As long as we have faith, regardless of how big or little it is, even if it is smaller than a mustard seed, we have Christ dwelling in us.
By regeneration the Holy Spirit also is in us. Romans 8:9 and John 14:17 tell us this. Verse 17 says, “Even the Spirit of reality, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not behold Him or know Him; but you know Him, because He abides with you and shall be in you.” This means that we have all three of the Triune God within us. God the Father is in us, God the Son is in us, and God the Spirit is in us. That God is in us means that the greatest One in the entire universe is in us. First John 4:4 says, “Greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.” God is the greatest One, Christ is the strongest, most powerful One (Phil. 4:13), and the Holy Spirit is the most living One. Because the Triune God is in us, we have the greatness, the strength and power, and the living energy.
By regeneration we have received life, which is nothing less than the Triune God Himself. We should not think that the divine life is something different from God. It is God Himself in Christ through the Spirit.
First John 5:12 says, “He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.” And John 3:15 says, “That everyone who believes into Him may have eternal life.” Everlasting life, as in the King James Version, is an incorrect translation. Everlasting refers to time, but eternal refers to something more than time. It also refers to the nature and sphere.
In addition to the divine life, we have received the divine nature, the nature of God (2 Pet. 1:4). It is hard to define the difference between life and nature. If we have life, we have the ability to live; without life we have no ability to live. Nature is more for the taste of a life. A cat has the taste to eat mice. In the same way, a dog barks because barking is his nature. There is no need to teach a dog to bark; barking suits a dog’s taste.
We have the divine life; that is, we have the divine ability to live. Moreover, we have the divine nature as our taste. There is no need for regulations against going to Las Vegas to gamble, because we Christians do not have this taste. We have the heavenly, divine nature, and with the divine nature there is the heavenly taste. According to the nature of a pig, the dirtiest things are tasteful to it. A lamb, however, can fall into something dirty, but that is only an accident; it is not its practice. In the same way, we can fall into gambling, but this is not our practice because we have the divine nature within us. Not only so, to go to the movies does not suit the divine nature in us. There is not such a taste within us.
Life is mostly for ability and energy, but nature is mostly for taste. We have the strength, the ability, to live, and we have the divine nature with a holy, heavenly taste. After sisters go to the department store and buy worldly items, they are not joyful, because those things are not sweet to their taste. This is because they have the divine nature.
Recently a friend asked me if I drink, smoke, or go to the movies. When I replied that I do not, he said that it was too bad. I said, “No, it is pitiful to you, but it is joyful to me. We have different tastes. To drink, smoke, or go to the movies is a suffering to me. To you, however, it is an enjoyment because you have that kind of nature. I have another nature, the heavenly, divine nature.” We have not only the divine life, which is God Himself, but we also have the divine nature. It is an enjoyment for us to have a holy, heavenly living, and it is an enjoyment to walk with God. It is an enjoyment, not a regulation, because this is our taste. We are feasting all the time. If you do not believe this, try to go dancing, to the movies, or to gamble. There will be a factor, the divine nature as your taste, which will constantly trouble you.
We also have the law of life. Hebrews 8:10 and Romans 8:2 speak of the inner law, the law of life. Whereas a nature has a taste, a law is for regulating. We have an inner regulation regulating us all the time. By regeneration we have the three of the Triune God and the divine life, divine nature, and the law of life. Because we have the divine life and nature, out from this life with this nature we have the inner law of life.
With every kind of life with its nature there is a certain law. To eat mice is according to the law of the cat life, and to bark is according to the law of the dog life. In the same way, for an apple tree to bear apples is according to its law. An apple tree bears apples and a peach tree bears peaches because they have different lives with different laws. Within the life there is the regulating power. There is no need to regulate an apple tree, saying, “Little tree, you must remember that you are an apple tree. You must bear apples, not peaches.” Likewise, there is no need to tell a dog, “You must remember that you are a dog. Don’t forget to bark; that is a dog’s duty.” In actuality, it is hard to stop a dog from barking because barking is according to its law.
A law is not only a regulation but also a power. The law of gravity, for example, is a power according to the natural law. That a tree brings forth apples is not only according to its law; it is according to its power and energy. If we have a certain law, we have both a regulating and a power within us. Oh, we Christians need our eyes to be opened to see these wonderful matters within us! We have the divine life, the divine nature, and the divine law of life within us. There is no need to throw something up and then worry about how it will come down. The more we do something out of worry, the more we may hinder it from coming down. We should keep silent and watch the power of gravity. In the same way, we should keep silent and watch the inner law within us. It is not only a regulating factor; it is also a power. Many Christians think that one day power will come down upon us. They do not realize that they have the inner power. Like the atomic power in small atoms, the real and greatest power is the power within us.
By regeneration we also have the anointing (1 John 2:27). This is not only the ointment itself but the anointing as the action, the moving, of the ointment. The anointing is the moving of the Holy Spirit, or we may say, the moving of the Triune God. There is always something moving within us.
When we are regenerated, we immediately have God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit, the eternal life, the divine nature, the law of life, and the anointing. These seven are actually one. God the Father is in God the Son, the Son is the Spirit, and the Spirit is the very essence of the divine life. The divine life is nothing other than the Triune God, and the divine nature is something of this life. If we have the life, we have the nature; if we do not have the life, we do not have the nature. We cannot separate these two. The law of life comes from the life with the nature, and the anointing is the moving and acting of the Triune God in the Spirit. Therefore, the three of the Triune God are life to us with His nature; we have the law of life and the anointing as something so living in us.
If we are to know the things of life, we must be clear about these seven items. Otherwise, we will not be able to grow in life in an adequate way. In the early years of my Christian life I was not clear about these matters, so I was not happy at that time. Since I have become clear about these seven items, I have been a happy Christian. I realize that I have God, Christ, and the Spirit in me, and I have the divine life, the divine nature, the law of life, and the anointing. Some men are great, having a high position, high education, and millions of dollars, but inwardly I am greater. I have God, and many of them do not, so they are poor, pitiful people. I have Christ and the Spirit, and they do not. I have the divine life, the divine nature, the law of life, and the anointing, but they do not. All they have is dung, refuse, nothing of any worth. By regeneration the Triune God—the Father in the Son as the Spirit—has wrought Himself into us as our life with the divine nature, so we have a living law within us and the anointing of God Himself. On the one hand, we need to be humble, but on the other hand, we should not look down on ourselves. We must realize that we are great persons, for all the spiritual riches with the fullness of the Godhead are in us.
After we are regenerated, we become the new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). What is the difference between the old creation and the new creation? In the old creation there is nothing of God’s essence, that is, nothing of God Himself. In the new creation, however, there is the very essence of God. The old creation was made by God’s hand, but the new creation is something of regeneration with God Himself as life. Moreover, in the old creation we can see the power of God, but the life of God is not in it. God is not mingled with the old creation, but in the new creation God Himself as life is mingled with the creature. Therefore, because God is in the new creation, it is something new. Only God Himself is ever new, and God Himself is newness. Without God in something, that thing is old, but anything with God in it can never be old. The New Jerusalem, the new heaven and new earth, the new man, and the new creation will never be old because God is in them, and God is new and newness. Today we are the new creation.
We are also born of God to be the children of God (John 1:12-13). We are not adopted children. Rather, we are born of God with his life in us. The authority, the right, for us to be God’s children is the divine life. If a child is born of someone, he has the life of that person as the right and authority to be that person’s child. We have been born of God, so we have the authority to be His children.
We are also the members of the Body of Christ (Eph. 5:30; Rom. 12:5). Being members of the Body of Christ means that we are the parts of Christ. You are a part of Christ, and I am a part of Christ.
We are the new creation, God’s children, and the members of Christ. Of course, we are many other things, but these three are the most basic ones. As the new creation, we have God Himself mingled with us. Therefore, we are no longer only men; we are now God-men. We are also the children of God, born of Him and having Him as our life. Moreover, we are the members and parts of Christ, being one in life with Him. We must be very clear concerning these matters. Then we can go on to grow in a proper way in the spiritual life and develop in what we have received and in what we have become. We need to be developed as the new creation, as the children of God to build up the house of God, and as the members of Christ to build up the Body. The church is the Body built up with the members of Christ, and it is the house, the dwelling place, the habitation, of God built up with His children.
If we spend the time to read these messages with the Scriptures, to study them, pray, and pray-read, we will have an inner realization and understanding, and we will see these things properly. Then we will know that the central point of God’s salvation and His eternal purpose is that God is working Himself in His Trinity into us as everything to make us parts of His dwelling place and the members of the Body of Christ, and we will also grow into this stature.
