How can we – fallen sinners – be one with God? We need Christ! How can we who do not have a heart for God and don’t go along with His heart and mind be one with God?
It is only by Christ as the Shoot of David who is our redemption and justification, ushering the Triune God into us to be our life, our inner life law, and our everything, so that we may know God, live God, and become God in life and nature.
The history of the children of Israel is a type of our spiritual history as children of God today, and their stubbornness in sinning against God is a type of our not being one with God.
In the time of the prophet Jeremiah in particular, the people of Israel did not listen to the Lord’s word, rejected His prophet, and even though they wanted to hear the word of God, they were not one with God, so they did not receive God’s word.
The stubbornness of the children of Israel in sinning against God was due to their not being one with God; they seemed to outwardly desire to have the word of God, but inwardly they didn’t care for it, they didn’t follow it, and they did not even listen to it.
Because they were not one with God, Israel had a lot of failures and defeats, and they lost God’s presence. Oh Lord Jesus!
May we realize that, if we are not one with God, we can’t hear His word, we do not listen to His speaking, and we don’t even receive His word.
But if we are one with God, if we practice walking with Him and living with Him, having our entire being with Him, we have a normal Christian life, we fight as a child of God, and we build up the Body of Christ.
If we are one with the Lord and we come to His word, we will have His presence, and we will have wisdom and insight, even inner knowledge concerning things.
In God’s eyes it is a sin not to be one with Him; sin is not only doing something evil, transgressing God’s law, or making a mistake – sin is not being one with God. Oh Lord!
If we look at Christians today, they seem to love the Lord and His word, but they are not one with God; the result is that they are not one with one another but rather, they are divided, each does his own thing, and the Lord’s testimony is very much affected.
May we return to the ground of oneness by realizing that we are one spirit with the Lord, living in the mingled spirit, walking according to the spirit, and having the Lord’s presence; this will cause us to keep the oneness with the Lord and with the saints, and we will have the oneness of the Body of Christ.
May we realize that we are not just men but God-men, that is, men filled with God as life; we are God-men so that we may not live by our human life but by the divine life, living a life in oneness with God and with the brothers and sisters in the Body.
Our Lack of Oneness with God issues in Lack of Oneness with the Body and in Not Going along with God’s Will
When we were unbelievers, we were not one with God; we did whatever we wanted, we were in rebellion against God, and we did not care for God and His economy.
After we became a believer, however, we started to have a turn toward God, and His heart began to be infused into us to become our heart.
However, as we go on with the Lord in the Christian life and the church life, we realize that again and again we transgress the principle of being one with God.
If we are in fire for the Lord, we tend to do many things apart from Him, not seeking to be one with Him; we may consider that, as long as we love the Lord, see a need, and are able to meet that need, we do a good thing for God – yet we neglect being one with the Lord! Oh Lord!
Many times we may not have a heart to be one with God, yet we like to be His people; we may ask Him to give us prosperity, to take care of us, to bless us.
Because we are not one with God, we don’t have a heart for His will, we don’t go along with His will; at the same time, however, we express our opinions, and we care for our likes and dislikes.
If we are not one with God, we are also not one with the fellow brothers and sisters.
Our lack of oneness with God leads to a lack of oneness with the Body; if we’re not one with God, we can’t be one with one another. This is one of the main reasons for the lack of oneness among the believers today.
There is no question whether the believers are genuine or not: many believers are genuine, bona-fide, regenerated people, but because they are not one with God, they are not one with one another.
Those who are not one with God don’t take His will and good pleasure but express their opinions and pursue their preferences.
Such ones forsake God as the source, the fountain, of living waters, and they hew out broken cisterns that can hold no water (Jer. 2:13).
This verse, Jer. 2:13, governs the entire book of Jeremiah, for we can clearly see that the people of Israel were not one with God but rather, they expressed their own opinions, they rejected God’s word, and they followed their own feelings and preferences instead of listening to the Lord.
It is such a danger among us also today, as believers in Christ, to not be one with God, and out from this there are many things that issue, such as not being one with others, expressing our own opinions, and following our own preferences and desires instead of listening to and obeying God’s word!
When we sense that we are not one with the saints, when we sense that our oneness with the saints is lacking, we need to realize that our oneness with God is lacking also.
When we are one with God, we are also one with one another; when we are one with God, His word profits us, and we forsake our preferences and opinions. Oh Lord!
Lord Jesus, we confess that we have transgressed the principle of being one with God. We come to You as Your people, Lord, and we want nothing and no one else but You. We come to You not merely to get Your blessing or the gifts that You give us: we just want to be one with You. We put our preferences aside, we empty ourselves out of all our opinions, and we forsake our desires and intentions; we just want to be one with You. Oh Lord, save us from living in sin by not being one with You! Save us from forsaking You as the fountain of living waters and hewing out broken cisterns for ourselves, which hold no water!
To be One with God we need Christ to Usher in the Triune God as our Life and Everything to make us the Same as God
First, Jeremiah shows us the basic sins of God’s people — forsaking God and hewing out their own cisterns. Then the human heart is gradually exposed as being deceitful and incurable. We are wicked and hopeless, having a fallen nature that cannot change. In order to be one with God, we need Christ as the Shoot of David to be our redemption and justification. This ushers the Triune God into us to be our life, our inner life law, our capacity, and our everything. This is the new covenant (31:33). In the new covenant, we do not do anything. Rather, we are simply one with God to let Him write Himself into us as the law of life. This law of life implies the Triune God with the highest capacity for our function. God lives in us and has the freedom, in matters great and small, to dispense Himself into our being to carry out His economy. This dispensing will bring in the restoration of all things and will consummate in the New Jerusalem in the new heaven and new earth. The New Jerusalem is the consummation of the economy of God accomplished by His eternal dispensing. Witness Lee, Life-study of Jeremiah, msg. 32
Just like the children of Israel, we were not one with God, we did not have the heart to do God’s will, we did not take His good pleasure, we offended God, we transgressed His ordinances, and we committed sins against His commandments.
Our heart was deceitful and incurable (Jer. 17:9); our nature is sinful and rebellious, and it could not be changed (Jer. 13:23). How could we be reconciled to God?
How can we – fallen, rebellious, incurably sinful, and unchangeable in nature – be brought to God and even be made the same as He is?
The answer is given by the Lord in Jer. 23:5-6, where He says that He will raise David a righteous Shoot, and He will reign as King and act prudently, He will execute righteousness in the land, men will be saved, and is name is Jehovah our righteousness.
In ourselves there’s no hope or solution, but Christ came as the righteous Shoot – God became a man, He put on the flesh to be the descendant of David to die on the cross; He shed His blood in order to accomplish redemption for our justification.
When we believe into Christ, He as the righteous Shoot becomes our justification and redemption, and this ushers in the Triune God to be our life, our person, and our everything!
When we believe into the Lord, we are justified, we are redeemed, and we’re put in a position that allows the Triune God to come into us to be our life and He is free to work out His eternal economy in us by is dispensing of Himself into our being.
Praise the Lord Jesus Christ, the righteous Shoot, who is our redemption and justification, and who opens the way for God to work Himself into us by dispensing Himself into our being! Amen!
Even now, after believing into Christ, we still may sin against God by forsaking Him as the fountain of living waters and hewing out our own cisterns.
Our heart is still being exposed by the Lord that it is being deceitful and incurable; we do not improve over time, our heart doesn’t “become better” and more trustworthy as we love the Lord and grow in life.
Rather, we have a deeper realization that our heart is untrustworthy, it is incurable, and it is deceitful.
Furthermore, in our fallen being we are wicked and hopeless; our fallen nature cannot change, and we don’t improve or become better as time goes by.
When we have this realization, all we can do is take Christ as the Shoot of David to be our redemption and justification; we come to Him, we believe into Him, we apply His blood, and the Triune God comes into be our life and everything!
When we repent, confess, and apply the blood, the Triune God comes in to be our life, our life law, our capacity, and our everything.
According to the new covenant, God writes Himself with His law of life into us (Jer. 31:33), and we as His people simply cooperate with Him and let Him work Himself into us.
We are simply one with God to let Him write Himself into us as the law of life. This law of life implies the Triune God with the highest capacity for our function; the Triune God lives in us, we give Him the freedom in big and small matters to dispense Himself into our being and carry out His economy.
Amen, as He dispenses Himself into us in this way, the restoration of all things will be brought in, and it will consummate in the New Jerusalem in the new heaven and the new earth.
Hallelujah, based upon Christ’s redemption we are justified, and the Triune God comes in to be our life and everything.
This creates a situation in which God is able and free to work out His eternal economy in us by His dispensing of Himself into our being.
This is a principle in the Bible and in the book of Jeremiah, and this is what happens in our Christian life and church life.
We are redeemed, we are justified, and we have become one with God; eventually, we will know God, live God, and be constituted with God in His life and nature to become His corporate expression. Hallelujah!
This is what the Bible teaches, especially in the New Testament, and this is the essence of the book of Jeremiah.
Oh Lord, we come to You as we are; we admit that we have forsaken You and have hew out cisterns for ourselves to replace You. We return to You as the fountain of living waters. Lord, our heart is deceitful and incurable, and our fallen human nature is unchangeable; we are wicked and hopeless. Oh, Lord, our desire is to be one with You…so we come to You, we take Christ as the righteous Shoot to be our redemption and justification. Amen, Lord, we receive the divine dispensing of the Triune God to be our life, our inner life law, our capacity, and our everything! Dear Lord, we are one with You and we allow You to write Yourself into us as the law of life, so that the Triune God with the highest capacity for our function would be wrought into our being. Amen, Hallelujah for God’s way to make us one with Him!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Minoru Chen for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Jeremiah, msg. 32 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization Study of Jeremiah and Lamentations, week 6, The Principle of Being One with God as Revealed in the Book of Jeremiah.
- Hymns on this topic:
– God’s eternal purpose / Is to join with man, / Causing man, His vessel, / To be born again, / His own life imparting, / Filling to the brim; / Man may thus express Him, / And be one with Him. (Hymns #971)
– Thy law of life in heart and mind / My conduct regulates; / The wealth of Thy reality / My being saturates. (Hymns #539)
– We’re under the New Covenant, / With glorious items, three: / The law of life, spontaneous, / Transforming utterly; / We are His people, He’s our God— / Oh, bless’d reality; / We all are fully able now / To know God inwardly. (Hymns #1188)
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