God’s intention in His eternal economy is not to build us up in our perfection and integrity but to bring us into another realm, the divine realm, to regenerate us and then transform us and conform us to His image so that we may reflect God and express Him to others; for this, He tears down our natural man so that He might build up a renewed man in His nature and attributes.
Lord Jesus, bring us out of the natural realm into the divine realm. Cause us to have a transfer from our striving and struggling to please God or perfect ourselves to be upright into the realm of God! Hallelujah, we were born of God to be His children, and now we are being transformed, renewed, conformed to the image of Christ, built up with the saints, and glorified! Amen, Lord, gain in us what You are after today! Amen!
We believers in Christ need to come to the Lord again and again throughout the day, for our entire Christian life is a life of living Christ, a life of contacting the Lord, and not a life of doing good versus rejecting evil.
Job in the Old Testament did this; he feared God, stayed away from evil, and did what was good. He was upright and righteous, but all this was a product of his own work and effort.
Even though he was perfect in his inner being and had integrity in regard to his outward behaviour, this was not good enough; what God wants is not a good man but a man of God filled with Christ to express Christ.
Job did not understand this, for such a revelation was given only to us, those in the New Testament age, in our spirit.
We today, however, need to see what God desires to obtain in us and among us; He wants to gain a corporate expression of Himself in man but with no effort from man’s side but with God in Christ living in us to be expressed through us.
Just as our human living is spontaneous, a result of living by the human life, so our Christian life should be a spontaneous life of living Christ, as we live by the divine life.
The result of living Christ is having proper human integrity and being righteous, but the source and the means is not our own effort or our endeavour but Christ Himself living in us.
Expressing God is higher than fearing God and turning away from evil, for expressing God by living Christ fulfils God’s purpose and satisfies His desire.
Thank the Lord for revealing to us what is in His heart for us as believers in Christ; may we be saved from the realm of good and evil, the natural realm, and may we be brought into the realm of God, where we live Christ and express Christ.
Being Ushered into the Realm of God to Gain God and be Transformed to be One with God
If we have a vision of God’s eternal economy, which is to dispense Himself into man to gain a corporate expression through man, we will realise that Job was in the natural realm, but God wanted to usher him into the realm of God.
Job was in the realm of building something up for himself and of himself; he had his own integrity and perfection, but that was not waht God was after.
Job was building up himself in his perfection, uprightness, and integrity, thinking he was right and being proud of what he had built up. He trusted not in God but in what he built, and he glorified himself in his perfection.
However, God in His economy has no intention to build up these things; rather, He even considers these as frustrations and intends to strip them away from us.
Paul realised this when he said that he counted all things as loss on the account of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus (Phil. 3:8-13).
What God wants is not righteous men who try their best to be righteous; He wants to rather strip away anything of the natural integrity and righteousness and work Himself into us to obtain Christ as our lived-out righteousness.
All our efforts and perfecting ourselves in our integrity are in the natural realm. Like Job, we are so many times in the wrong realm; we need to be ushered into the realm of God to gain God and be transformed to be one with God.
This is what happened at the time of our regeneration; God was brought into us, and we were ushered into the realm of God. After our regeneration, however, we need to experience a continual transfer out of the natural realm into the realm of God.
On His side, God is faithful to call us into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord (1 Cor. 1:9).
He is also faithful to strip us and remove anything of natural attainments and perfection from us. When everything is stripped away, we will see God, and He will attract us to receive Him.
When Job was stripped and consumed of all outward things and even of his own perfection, then God appeared to him and he simply denied himself and repented in dust and ashes (Job 42:5-6).
When we see God, when we don’t just hear about Him or of Him but see Him, we repent, we deny ourselves, and we gain something of God. We are ushered into the realm of God.
This will cause a metabolic change in our being; something within us is changed, for the old and natural elements are removed and discharged, and God’s new and divine elements are added to our being.
This is what the Bible calls transformation; as a result of being ushered into the realm of God by seeing God and denying the self, we are transformed into the image of God (Rom. 12:2; 2 Cor. 3:18).
The result of this process of transformation is that we become persons who reflect God: we behold Him and we reflect Him, and we express Him and also dispense Him into others.
This is God’s intention with Job, but he did not understand it, for he was in a different realm and also he was not in the New Testament age, when we can exercise our spirit and see God’s economy.
This is also God’s intention with us today; God wants to transfer us out of the natural realm into the realm of God, in the divine and mystical realm of the processed and consummated Triune God, so that He may make us one with Him and even part of Him.
He wants to make us part of His corporate expression, the corporate God-man on earth expressing God! So many times, however, we are in the wrong realm, as Job was; we are in the natural realm, the realm of right and wrong.
We need to be ushered into the realm of God to see that God intends to build Himself into us. For this, He was incarnated, He went to the cross, He died, He was resurrected, and He came into us.
He came into us to bring us into Him and make us one with Him. We are one with Him as one spirit (1 Cor. 6:17), and we’re being transformed into His image.
He is renewing our mind, He is working to balance our emotions, and He is subduing our will.
He wants to make us the same as He is. We don’t know what we will be when He comes, but we know that we will be like Him, for we will see Him even as He is (1 John 3:2).
May we come to the Lord day by day to allow Him to transfer us out of the realm of the natural being into the realm of the new creation.
We were born in the natural sphere, but by regeneration we’re born into the divine realm; now we need to be continually ushered into the realm of God by exercising our spirit to cooperate with Him so that He may build Himself into us and make us the same as He is.
Lord Jesus, thank You for regenerating us with the life of God to usher us into the realm of God! Hallelujah, by faith and baptism we have been transferred out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of the Son of God’s love. Amen, Lord, we open to You. Keep us turning to You. We want to go on with You day by day. May we allow You to usher us into the realm of God throughout the day. Save us from living and doing things merely in the natural realm. Save us from trying to perfect ourselves or make us more upright. Transfer us into the realm of God as we turn to our spirit, call on Your name, pray-read the word, fellowship with God, and fellowship with the saints. May we be fully brought into the realm of the new creation, the realm of the divine things! Amen, Lord, continue to renew our mind, subdue our will, and deal with our emotions. Sanctify us. Transform us. Conform us to Your image. Keep us under Your divine dispensing until we are built up as the Body of Christ consummating in the New Jerusalem!
Realising that God Tears down our Natural man in his Perfectness to Build up a Renewed Man in God’s Nature and Attributes
In principle, the situation with many Christians today is the same as it was with Job; they do not see what God’s intention in creating man is, and they do not realise what is His purpose in dealing with man.
Today we live in an age in which we have the divine revelation, the Bible has been opened up, and God’s economy is unveiled.
Nevertheless, so many believers in Christ do not have an understanding of God’s economy, nor do they see God’s dispensing according to the divine economy.
They think that being a Christian is a matter of believing that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is our Saviour who died for us on the cross, shedding His blood for our sins, and He saved us.
Now that we are saved, many Christians think that the Holy Spirit is with us to help us to behave ourselves, do good, and glorify God in our living. Then, one day we will go to heaven after we die.
This is a similar concept held by Job, so he tried to build his own integrity and perfection. Oh Lord!
We need to realise, however, that God is not after such things. What God desires is to gain an expression of Himself in a group of human beings, and He does it by means of His divine dispensing of Himself so that man would be ushered into the realm of God to live Christ.
The New Testament tells us that being a Christian involves not only regeneration but also sanctification, transformation, the divine dispensing of the divine economy, building up the church as the Body of Christ, and the New Jerusalem as the enlargement of the processed and consummated Triune God (John 17:17; 1 Thes. 4:3-4; 2 Cor. 7:1; 2 Cor. 5:17; 3:18; Eph. 4:22-24; 1 Cor. 12:12-27; Rom. 12:4-5; Eph. 4:15-16; Rev. 21:1-2).
For God to accomplish what is in His heart concerning man, He first needs to tear down our natural man in his perfectness and uprightness and then rebuild us to gain a renewed man in God’s nature and attributes.
He begins by regenerating us with His life and nature to usher us into the realm of God. He continues by renewing our mind and by sanctifying us in His word so that we may be ushered into the realm of God in our soul, not only our spirit.
Through the process of renewing, God “peels off” some aspects of our natural being, and through transformation, He tears down our natural man so that He may cause us to be conformed to the image of Christ, the firstborn Son of God (Rom. 8:29).
According to the view of God’s eternal economy, God’s intention was to tear down the natural Job in his perfection and uprightness so that He might build up a renewed Job in God’s nature and attributes (Job 1:6-8; 2:3-6).
We may have sufferings, we may be sick, we may suffer some loss in our business, or we may have some hardships in our human life; we may pass through these things, yet our inner being may not be changed at all.
By change we don’t mean becoming more ethical, more enduring, or more moral; the change we need is the increase of the element of God in us, God being added to us.
We all have hardships and sufferings in our human life, but do we have the increase of God in us as we go through all these things? Does each blow that we suffer bring us more of God, as we inwardly open to Him?
Do we gain more of Christ as we suffer, go through hardships, and experience loss? Or do we become more resilient, a better person, and gain more morality and self-righteousness?
May we open to the Lord and turn our heart to Him so that, as we go through dealings and hardships, we would gain more of God.
May we be blind to everything else and pay attention to Christ, the treasure of peerless worth, to gain Him and be found in Him!
Lord Jesus, we want to gain more of God in all things. Oh Lord, even as we go through hardships, sufferings, and loss, may we open to You to gain more of You. Save us from preserving the self or building the natural man. We allow You to tear down the natural man by means of all things happening to us and around us; renew us, Lord, and build Yourself into us! Keep us open to You to be renewed, sanctified, and transformed, and conformed to Your image. Usher us fully into the realm of God to gain God and be found in Christ! Amen, Lord, have Your way to peel off, consume, and strip anything that is natural in us; add more of Yourself to our being until we are a renewed person in God’s nature and attributes! We open to Your divine dispensing. Keep dispensing Yourself into us until we are transformed and conformed to the image of Christ! Amen, Lord, gain Your image in us! Be expressed through us. May it be no longer we who live but Christ who lives in us. May Christ increase in us. May Christ be reflected and expressed in us! Amen!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration for this article/sharing comes from the Word of God, the enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by the brothers on this topic, and portions from, Life-study of Job, msg. 31 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Noah, Daniel, and Job – Patterns of Living an Overcoming Life on the Line of Life to Fulfill the Economy of God (2026 International Chinese-Speaking Conference), week 5, God’s Intention with Job— That a Good Man Become a God-man – day 3.
- Hymns on this topic:
– It is not resolving / Now to run the race, / But ’tis by Thy mercy / I receive Thy grace. / It is not by knowledge, / But by grace alone, / I can pass thru suff’ring / To Thine image grown. (Hymns #751 stanza 3)
– God hath us regenerated / In our spirit with His life; / But He must transform us further— / In our soul by His own life. / Spreading outward from our spirit / Doth the Lord transform our soul, / By the inward parts renewing, / Till within His full control. (Hymns #750 stanzas 2-3)
– Olives that have known no pressure / No oil can bestow; / If the grapes escape the winepress, / Cheering wine can never flow; / Spikenard only through the crushing, / Fragrance can diffuse. / Shall I then, Lord, shrink from suff’ring / Which Thy love for me would choose? / Each blow I suffer / Is true gain to me. / In the place of what Thou takest / Thou dost give Thyself to me. (Hymns #626 stanza 1 and chorus)
