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Scripture Reading: Eph. 1:4-5, 7, 9, 20-23; 3:8-11, 14-21
Ephesians reveals the eternal purpose of God. This Epistle is high, deep, and profound, and in it the apostle Paul used extraordinary terms and expressions to utter what was on his heart. If we spend time to consider these expressions, we will know Paul’s thought in this Epistle.
Ephesians 1:4 says, “Even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world to be holy and without blemish before Him in love.” God chose us, selected us, not in ourselves but in Christ. Our being chosen does not depend on what we are or what we do. It depends on what Christ is, what He has done, and what He will do for us. We should not look at ourselves. If we look at ourselves superficially, we may be proud, but if we consider ourselves in an honest way, we will be thoroughly disappointed. None of us is worthy of God’s selection. However, God selected us, not in ourselves, in our situation, or in our sphere but in Christ as the means, the sphere, the condition, and the circumstance. Christ is everything for God’s selection of us.
God selected us not only before we were born but also before the foundation of the world, even before the creation of the heavens, the earth, and Adam. Only God Himself was there in eternity past. When nothing had yet come into existence, God made a selection. A person can select only those things that he sees. This proves that in eternity past, even before we came into existence, God saw all of us. We may wonder how this can be. With human beings there is the matter of time. In all our homes we have clocks and watches; we are very much controlled by time. With God, however, there is no limitation of time. Eternity past, eternity future, and today are all the same to Him. In His eternal nature, God is unlimited. This is a wonderful matter. Our salvation was not an accident. It was something planned and purposed in eternity. In that plan God selected us, not in ourselves but in Christ.
God chose us to be holy and without blemish. A blemish is an imperfection. A good piece of wool, for example, may be free from any blemish in its color, texture, size, and design. According to our improper concept, we may think that God chose us in Christ to be free simply from perdition. Even until now this may be our subconscious thought. We may say, “Thank the Lord. He chose me before the foundation of the world to be saved from perdition.” However, this is not the Lord’s thought. His thought is that we should be holy and without blemish. To be holy is to be separated unto God and for God. God has chosen us to be separated unto Him and for Him for His purpose and to be without any blemish. God is a God of perfection. Anything that is imperfect has nothing to do with Him. However, we should look at Him, not at ourselves. We are not in ourselves; we are in Christ. In ourselves we are imperfect, but in Christ we are perfect. We all must believe this. The Lord’s recovery is to recover us back to the Lord’s word.
We were chosen in Christ to be holy and without blemish. Because of our fallen state, our concept regarding our present, our future, and our ultimate destiny is always according to our situation. However, we must all declare that it is possible for us to be holy and without blemish. Sometimes the young people are not able to believe this. They often turn the question to me, asking, “Do you believe that you can be holy and without blemish?” With us this is impossible, but there is no impossibility with the Lord; with Him everything is possible (Matt. 19:26). If God could create us, can He not make us holy? To be sure, He can make us holy, perfect, and without blemish. Therefore, whether we are good or bad, wonderful or pitiful, or in heaven or in hell does not matter. We must not look at ourselves according to ourselves, and neither should we consider the brothers according to themselves. We all need to consider one another according to Christ. We need to say, “This brother is holy and without blemish. I do not care to hear how unholy or worldly he is. One day he will be absolutely holy. If he is not holy today, he is in the process of becoming holy. God can do it, and He will do it.”
We believe that all the dear saints will be holy. They are holy brothers and holy sisters. In ourselves we are poor, unholy, and full of imperfections; therefore, we must look at one another according to Christ and say, “Hallelujah, here is a brother in Christ.” Because there is nothing unholy or imperfect in Christ, we are all holy in Him. If we do not believe this now, one day we will believe it. In the New Jerusalem we may look at one another and be surprised. We may recall the time that we considered one another and could not believe that we were holy. Then we will say, “Praise the Lord, holy brother.” Our being holy is not according to ourselves but according to Christ. The book of Ephesians is different from the book of Romans. The beginning of Romans reveals a pitiful situation in which we were all sinners and were all condemned (1:18—3:20), but in Ephesians 1 we are not condemned but chosen. Ephesians begins not with us but with God. God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and without blemish.
Ephesians 1:5 says, “Predestinating us unto sonship through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.” This is a deep matter. To be predestinated is to be pre-marked, marked out before we were born or even created. It is as if God saw us in eternity and said, “I like this one.” Before the foundation of the world, God looked at us, selected us, and put a mark on us. We cannot recognize the mark, but God and all His angels can. Wherever we go, all the angels can see that we are those who have been marked out by God. The so-called scientific people may say that this is a mere superstition. However, it is no superstition; it is a fact. Day and night there is a mark on us.
Again, according to the natural concept, many Christians may say that God has predestinated us unto salvation. I too held this concept for many years. I read Ephesians many times, but I did not see the divine sonship. However, one day the Lord opened my eyes to see the divine sonship. Salvation is easy to understand, but sonship is not. God predestinated us not merely for salvation but even more for sonship. Sonship means that God makes us His sons. Once we were only God’s creation. At that time we were not born of Him, but now we are born of God (John 1:12-13). When I was young, Christian pastors and evangelists would tell us that we need God’s salvation because we are fallen. In their thought, if we were not fallen, we would not need salvation. However, even if we had never sinned and fallen, we still would not be sons of God. At best, we would be a humanly perfect item of God’s creation. God’s intention is not simply to create us but to make us His sons. In God’s predestination He marked us out in order to make us sons, those who are born of Him to have His life, nature, and all that He is. This is the proper meaning of sonship.
The divine sonship is not merely an individual matter. It is not simply that you become one son of God, I become another son of God, and others become many other sons of God individually. Rather, the divine sonship is corporate. The Bible tells us that God has many sons. Originally, Christ was the unique, only begotten Son of God (vv. 14, 18; 3:16; 1 John 4:9), but now He is the firstborn Son of God (Rom. 8:29; Heb. 1:6). Hebrews 2:10 says that God is leading many sons into glory, and verse 11 says that Christ, the firstborn Son, is not ashamed to call them brothers. Today God has not only one Son but many sons corporately. A family is a corporate entity. All the brothers in a family should be one because they are all of one father. One person by himself cannot be a family. A bachelor, for example, has only himself, not an actual family. A couple with one child is a family, and a family like that of Jacob, who had twelve sons and one daughter, is a much greater family. The divine sonship is a corporate entity that eventually becomes the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:2, 7).
The church is the totality of the divine sonship. Originally, Jesus Christ as the unique Son of God was the individual expression of God. John 1:18 says, “No one has ever seen God; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.” This expression of God by the individual Son, Jesus Christ, was a perfect expression, but it did not fulfill God’s goal. God’s goal is to have the totality of the divine sonship. As the redeemed, forgiven, saved, and regenerated sons of God, we have the divine nature of God (2 Pet. 1:4). Some may wonder how we as mere human beings can have the divine nature, and some have spoken evilly of this as an “evolution into God.” Such a speaking is in darkness, without any revelation. If by the Lord’s mercy we receive revelation, we will see that God has put His divine nature into the believers. We may compare this to the addition of tea to a glass of plain water. When we place a tea bag into water, the tea becomes mingled with the water to become tea-water. Once tea is mingled with water, we no longer call it water; we call it tea. However, we do not mean that it is only tea. Rather, it is tea mingled with water.
According to the facts of the Bible, God has mingled His divine nature with us to make us divine. When plain water is saturated with tea to have the element, color, appearance, and taste of tea, we may say that the water is “teaified.” The water remains water, but now it is saturated with the tea. In the same way, when God puts Himself into us, He sanctifies us. Because we have been born of God, we now have God’s divine life and divine nature. This does not mean that we are no longer human. We are still human, but we are humanity mingled with divinity. We do not preach “evolution into God.” God is God, and we are human beings. Nevertheless, God has put His divine nature into our being. Therefore, we are sons of God with the divine life and the divine nature. The divine life and the divine nature are the very elements of the divine sonship, which is the church. The church is not merely human; it also has the divine element. If we were all only human, we would not be the church. We would be a human society. The church is absolutely different from a human society or a religious organization. The church is something human, yet it is saturated and permeated with the divine nature. Because the church has the divine element, everything in it is holy and without blemish. Therefore, we should not look at ourselves. In ourselves we are unholy and full of blemishes. We must have a heavenly view. We have been chosen to be holy and without blemish, and we have been predestinated, pre-marked, to be the sons of God. This does not mean that from now on we are no longer human beings. We are still human beings, but another element has been added into our “plain water” to “teaify us,” that is, to sanctify us.
It is not easy to define what the church is. When I was young, I often heard about the church in our Sunday school class. At that time we thought that the church was simply a physical building that had a high tower with a bell in it. Today many people still understand the church in this way. Gradually, however, we found out that the church is not a physical building. Later on, we received an improved definition of the church from the teachers among the Brethren. They told us that the church is the gathering together of the believers. When the believers, the called ones, gather together, that is the church. This definition is according to the Greek word ekklesia, which is translated “church.” However, this is still a somewhat natural understanding of the church. According to the New Testament, the church is not only the meeting together of the believers. Rather, the church is the Body of Christ (Eph. 1:22b-23; 1 Cor. 12:27; Col. 1:18), and it is the totality of the sonship of all God’s children. This sonship indicates that we possess the divine life and the divine nature.
According to our experience, we cannot deny that as human beings we do have the divine life and the divine nature. We do not mean that we are God Himself. We can never be God Himself; we will be human beings for eternity. Nevertheless, in our humanity there is the element of God’s divinity. We in the church are still human, but there is another element within us, which is God Himself. If someone spills a glass of plain water on his shirt, it will not change the appearance of the shirt, but if the water has the element of tea in it, it will leave a brown color. In the same way, no one should touch us without being affected by the divine element within us. We can boast to Satan, saying, “Satan, do not touch me. I am a son of God, and within me is another element—God’s divine life and divine nature.”
This church as the divine sonship requires us to gather together not in our self but in the divine life and the divine nature. Whenever we come together and even in our daily life, we should not live by ourselves. We need to live according to the extra element within us, the divine life and the divine nature. This is the reason that the Christian walk requires faith. To have faith is to believe in something that we cannot see, feel, or touch. We must all live according to something unseen (2 Cor. 4:18). In himself no one can be a perfect husband. Realizing this, a brother may pray, “O Lord, help me to be a perfect husband.” However, the Lord does not care to help us in this way. Rather, He wants us to forget about ourselves and live by Him. We should tell the Lord, “I can never be a perfect husband; therefore, I will forget about myself and not live by myself. Instead, I want to live by You.” We are still a “glass of water,” but now our color, appearance, taste, and element have changed. In ourselves we are not good. If someone rebukes us and says that we are not a perfect husband, we can say, “You are speaking the truth, but I am actually worse than this. I have nothing good in myself.” Then we can say to the Lord, “I do not ask You to help me to be good. Instead, I want to forget about myself. Thank You, Lord, that You are in me. I am no longer only water; I have the divine tea in me.”
If we can see that we are all “teaified,” that is, sanctified, the church will be rich, uplifted, and living. When someone drinks tea-water, he cares mainly for the tea, not for the water. We are still “water,” but we have an additional element with its color, appearance, and taste. The church is not a religion, a society, or a social body. Therefore, it does not serve people with mere “water” or with “dry tea.” People cannot take tea by itself. In order to take tea, it must be mingled with water. If someone looks at a glass of plain water, he may say that there is no tea, but if he has a glass of tea-water, he will see the tea. Likewise, some people today say that there is no God. They should not say this. If they would come to the church, they will see God. When we meet together as the church, we must have the element, color, appearance, and taste of God. After people attend our meeting, they should not say, “I saw some American people, British people, young people, and older people.” To see only this much is meaningless. Rather, they should say, “I cannot explain what impressed me in that meeting. I did not even care for that way of meeting, but I received something there that I cannot deny.” What people must receive in our meetings is God Himself (1 Cor. 14:24-25). This is the meaning of the church as the divine sonship.
In the past fifty years I have seen many cases like this. Sometimes the parents of a young person did not want their son or daughter to be involved with the church life, but once the parents started coming to the church meetings, they received the “tea-water.” In this way many parents eventually took the way of the church. This is our experience in the Lord’s recovery. Christianity today is a religion that offers a limited concept of salvation, but the Lord’s recovery is to bring us back to the living sonship. Here we do not care for mere opinions or concepts. Rather, we are all drinking “tea-water” and serving others with it. In this chapter I have used the illustration of tea-water because the spiritual reality that it points to is mysterious, abstract, and profound, and we do not have the adequate vocabulary in our human language to express it. We all must have a heavenly vision. Today we praise the Lord that we are saved, forgiven, and redeemed. However, we are also the sons of God. We have the divine sonship with the divine life and the divine nature within us. We are not God Himself, but we do have God’s life and nature. Therefore, God lives in us, and we can live by God. This is not merely to be saved, forgiven, and redeemed. It is altogether a matter of the divine sonship.
