Scripture Reading: 2 Chron. 11:5, 13-14; Rom. 8:4; Gal. 5:16, 25
In this message I would like to say a word about our need to be fundamental in a full and complete way and also about our need in our daily living to walk according to the compound, all-inclusive, life-giving Spirit.
I thank God that in 1 and 2 Chronicles there is a record showing us how God deals with His people in detail. God’s dealing with His people in the details of their living is for His people to enjoy the good land, Christ, in a very proper way. To enjoy the good land, the kings had to stand on the proper ground and they had to be fundamental, keeping the faith given by God through Moses.
It is the same with us today. The church ground is quite important, and to keep all the truths, to be fundamental, is also important. Today’s Christians claim to be fundamental, but they are fundamental only in part. They are not fundamental in full. Through the years we have been trying our best, by God’s mercy and grace, to be perfectly fundamental, that is, to be fundamental not just in part but in full.
Brother Watchman Nee, who was raised up by the Lord more than seventy years ago, read the Bible thoroughly again and again. The hundreds of missionaries who came to China from Europe and America were faithful in a sense, but they did not make clear to the Chinese Christians the basic truth of the assurance of salvation. The missionaries translated the Bible, preached from the Bible, and taught the Bible, but they did not point out that the believers in Christ could have and should have the assurance of their salvation. After Brother Nee was raised up by the Lord, he preached and taught the truth concerning the assurance of salvation, and I followed him to do this. Wherever we went we asked people if they knew whether or not they were saved. When we would ask this question, the pastors and preachers would laugh at us and tell us that we were proud for saying that we knew that we were saved. In this situation Brother Nee fought the battle for the truth concerning the assurance of salvation. Today millions of Chinese Christians everywhere believe in the assurance of salvation. They know that as long as they believe in the Lord Jesus, they are saved and may have the assurance that they have been saved. The situation now is very different from the situation when Brother Nee began to fight for this basic truth.
Brother Nee continued to fight for the truth, and eventually he released the truth regarding Christ as our life and our taking Christ as life. This was another truth which the missionaries in China did not make clear to the believers. Once the believers have the assurance of their salvation, they need to see that they have Christ in them as their life and that they should take Christ as their life and live by Christ.
During the past seventy-two years, in His recovery the Lord has gone on and on to recover many other truths. In particular, the Lord has recovered the truth concerning the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21 and 22. Many expositors of the Bible do not have the proper understanding of what the New Jerusalem is. Very few Bible teachers have written anything about the spiritual significance of the New Jerusalem. Among these few are a German teacher from long ago named Tersteegen and our dear friend T. Austin-Sparks, whom I regard as the last of the inner-life teachers. Like Tersteegen, T. Austin-Sparks saw that the New Jerusalem is not a physical city but a sign with a spiritual significance. Brother Sparks pointed out that the spiritual things concerning God, Christ, and the church are mysterious and that God uses signs to reveal the truth regarding such spiritual things. We took his word and still hold to it.
The book of Revelation opens with a word about signs: “The revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave to Him to show to His slaves the things that must quickly take place; and He made it known by signs, sending it by His angel to His slave John.” This indicates that the revelation in this book is composed of signs, that is, symbols with a spiritual significance, such as the seven lampstands, signifying the seven churches, and the Lamb, signifying Christ the Redeemer as the unique sacrifice to accomplish God’s eternal redemption. Even the New Jerusalem is a sign, the last and consummate sign, signifying the ultimate consummation of God’s economy. In the last fifty years, the truth concerning the New Jerusalem has become more and more clear to us. As a result, in our hymnal there are a number of hymns on the New Jerusalem.
If we would be fundamental in full, we must be fundamental with respect to all the truths. Among the many truths there are three great mysteries which were discovered by the church fathers in the second century: the mystery of the Divine Trinity, the mystery of Christ’s person, and the mystery of man’s deification — that God became a man that man may become God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead. Although Christians hold the truth concerning the Triune God and the truth concerning the person of Christ, after the first five centuries the truth concerning deification was gradually lost. In February of this year, I became burdened to release messages on this truth.
After I began to speak concerning God becoming a man that man may become God in life and in nature, I learned that the Catholic Church is also paying attention to this matter of deification. Not long ago a brother showed me that the Catechism of the Catholic Church, recently published by the Roman Catholic Church, presents the following:
Article 3
“He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, and was born of the virgin Mary”
Paragraph 1. The Son of God Became Man
I. Why did the word become flesh?
460 The Word became flesh to make us “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4): “For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God” (St. Irenaeus, Adv. haeres. 3, 19, 1). “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God” (St. Athanasius, De inc., 54, 3). “The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods” (St. Thomas Aquinas, Opusc. 57:1-4). (Catechism of the Catholic Church, pp. 115-116).
Here we see that the Catholic Church teaches that the believers in Christ can become God. Furthermore, another brother told me about a book, written in Arabic by a Catholic priest, which says the same thing about man becoming God. In order to be perfectly fundamental, we need to be clear concerning this great truth — the truth that God became a man that man may become God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead.
However, it is not adequate just to have the proper ground and to be perfectly fundamental. What we are, how we live, and how we behave mean a lot. God’s people in the Old Testament received of God through Moses a set of books called the law. Today God is dealing with us not according to the law but according to the compound, life-giving, indwelling, consummated Spirit. In the Old Testament time, God’s people were required to behave themselves according to the law. Today we are required by the New Testament to conduct ourselves according to the compound, life-giving, all-inclusive Spirit (Rom. 8:4).
God dealt with all the good kings of Judah according to the law of Moses in detail. Anyone who was wrong with the law even a little would lose a great part of the enjoyment of the good land. This typifies and signifies that today we must conduct ourselves according to the spiritual law, and the spiritual law is just the Spirit Himself, the compound Spirit.
We need to be careful in every detail. For instance, when we talk to our spouse, we have to talk according to the spirit. We need to walk in all things according to the spirit (Rom. 8:4). We need to be warned and be on the alert that whatever we say, whatever we do, whatever we express, our attitude, our spirit, and our intention must be purified by the life-giving, compound, all-inclusive Spirit. Otherwise, we will lose much in the enjoyment of Christ, today’s good land.
Now we are studying the books of history in the Old Testament. We need to learn the lessons from all the details recorded in these books. Consider the case of Asa. He was a good king and he did many good things. However, he offended God by forming an alliance with Ben-hadad king of Syria (2 Chron. 16:1-6). Furthermore, he became angry with the seer who rebuked him for trusting in the king of Syria instead of trusting in Jehovah. It might have been because of this offense that Asa became severely diseased in his feet. This disease caused his death (vv. 7-10, 12-13).
From the cases recorded in the books of history, we see that God is not only loving but also fearful. Therefore, as Paul says in Philippians 2:12, we must learn to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.
