Being Renewed Day-by-Day and Being Constituted with Christ for the NEW Jerusalem

Col. 3:10-11 And have put on the new man, which is being renewed unto full knowledge according to the image of Him who created him, where there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free man, but Christ is all and in all.

Every believer in Christ is “a little New Jerusalem” and every local church should be “a miniature of the New Jerusalem”. Our life and work as believers today should be to work out and live out the New Jerusalem, since this holy city is what God desires to obtain and works throughout the ages to gain.

The aspects and characteristics of the New Jerusalem need to become real and experiential to us, and we need to enjoy and experience what the New Jerusalem is and is made of.

The very nature of the New Jerusalem is pure gold, as clear as glass, and the street of the city is pure gold (Rev. 21:18, 21). Gold signifies the divine nature of God. The way we can experience the intrinsic nature of the New Jerusalem is by partaking of the divine nature and living a life according to the divine nature we received through regeneration (2 Pet. 1:4).

God is life, light, and love, and daily we need to exercise our spirit to enjoy God as Spirit, and remain in the fellowship of the divine life to enjoy God as life and as light. The more we enjoy and partake of God who is Spirit, life, and light, the more we become people filled in spirit, full of life, and shining with God as light.

We become beings of the New Jerusalem by enjoying and experiencing the divine nature of God.

The fact that the holy city is called “New Jerusalem” shows us that today the believers in Christ are undergoing a process of being renewed day-by-day so that they may become as new as God is to be the NEW Jerusalem.

We are being renewed today by passing through the cross, exercising our spirit, enjoying the washing of the regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit, and by the washing of the water in the word of God.

In ourselves we are old and stale, full of death, but whenever we set our mind on the spirit, fellowship with the Lord by exercising our spirit, and get into the word of God in a new way through prayer, we are being renewed, and the mingled spirit spreads into every part of our inner being to renew us inwardly and make us NEW, as new as the New Jerusalem!

Being a New Creation by Enjoying, Partaking of, and Living by the Divine Nature

When a man is born again of water and of Spirit (John 3:5-6), that is, when a man receives the Lord Jesus into his heart as his Lord and Savior, he has the authority to become a child of God (John 1:12-13) and the divine life and nature is dispensed into him.

Now as believers in Christ we need to enjoy and partake of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4) through God’s precious and exceedingly great promises in His Word, and we need to walk according to God’s nature.

But what is God’s nature? Footnote 3 on 1 John 1:5 in the Recovery Version helps us understand and enjoy what God’s nature is,

Expressions such as God is light, God is love (4:8, 16), and God is Spirit (John 4:24) are used not in a metaphoric sense but in a predicative sense. They denote and describe the nature of God. In His nature, God is Spirit, love, and light. Spirit denotes the nature of God’s person; love, the nature of God’s essence; and light, the nature of God’s expression. Both love and light are related to God as life, which is of the Spirit (Rom. 8:2). God, Spirit, and life are actually one. God is Spirit and Spirit is life. Within this life are love and light. When the divine love appears to us, it becomes grace, and when the divine light shines on us, it becomes truth. John’s Gospel reveals that the Lord Jesus brought grace and truth to us (John 1:14, 17) that we might have the divine life (John 3:14-16), whereas John’s Epistle unveils that the fellowship of the divine life brings us to the very source of grace and truth, which are the divine love and the divine light. John’s Epistle is the continuation of his Gospel. In John’s Gospel it is God in the Son coming to us as grace and truth that we may become His children (John 1:12-13); in John’s Epistle it is we, the children, in the fellowship of the Father’s life, going to the Father to participate in His love and light (see note 82 in ch. 4). The former was God’s coming out to the outer court to meet our need at the altar (Lev. 4:28-31); the latter is our entering into the Holy of Holies to contact Him at the ark (Exo. 25:22). This is further and deeper in the experience of the divine life. After receiving the divine life by believing into the Son in John’s Gospel, we should go on to enjoy this life through the fellowship of this life in John’s Epistle. The entire Epistle discloses to us this one thing, that is, the enjoyment of the divine life through our abiding in its fellowship. (1 John 1:5, footnote 3)

In the church life and in our daily Christian life we need to enjoy God as Spirit with the exercise of our spirit. Anything that we do or say without the exercise of the spirit becomes a form.

Also, we need to remain in the fellowship of the divine life so that we may enjoy God as love and light. We are now children of light and should therefore walk in love (Eph. 5:1-8). Daily, we need to remain in the fellowship of the divine life and enjoy, partake of, and live according to the divine nature which is in the fellowship of life.

The river of life in the middle of the golden street in the New Jerusalem (Rev. 22:1) brings to us both the supply of life (the tree of life growing on both its sides) and the divine nature (the golden street on which we walk), and it leads us to the throne of God and of the Lamb.

Just stay in the fellowship of life by exercising your spirit to touch the Lord, and God’s nature will be your enjoyment and the way you will walk, thus becoming a new creation in Christ, the New Jerusalem!

Being Renewed Day-by-Day by being Constituted with Christ to become the New Jerusalem

How much we live Christ depends upon how much of Christ has been constituted into our being. [Quote from, Witness Lee]

In the new man Christ is all and in all. The old man and the natural being has no place in the new man, and there’s no room for the natural person in the new man. Christ is in all the members of the new man, and Christ is all the members of the new man, since the new man is Christ – He is the head and the Body, the new man (1 Cor. 12:12).

This means that all the members of the Body of Christ, all the believers in Christ, are being constituted with Christ and even becoming Christ (in life and nature) to be the one new man!

We are born of Christ, we grow in Christ, we hold Christ as the Head, we are being constituted with Christ, and therefore we can say that we are Christ in life and nature (but not in His Godhead)!

To become the same as Christ is we need to be renewed day by day by being reconstituted with Christ, remodelled and remade with Him, having Him wrought into every part of our inward being through His making His home in our heart daily (Eph. 3:16-17).

How much we live Christ depends upon how much of Christ has been constituted into our being. If we are being bountifully supplied by the Spirit of Jesus Christ we will live Christ for His magnification (Phil. 1:19-21).

Every day we need to pray to the Father to strengthen us into our inner man according to the riches of His glory so that Christ may make His home in our heart, so that we may be filled unto all the fullness of God and express Him in full as the Body of Christ (Eph. 3:16-18).

Though our outer man is decaying, being wasted away, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day (2 Cor. 4:16). We need to live such a daily church life as seen in the New Jerusalem, the city that is new!

We may pass through trials, unpleasant situations, sufferings, and circumstances which cause us pain, but all these are to help the renewing process in us. While we are in the midst of sufferings we need to receive the renewing – otherwise the sufferings we pass through mean nothing to us.

The reason we go through trials and sufferings is so that we may be pressed into Christ, conformed to His death, and be renewed with Him to become as new as the New Jerusalem! It is good to tell the Lord,

Lord, save us from remaining the same day after day and year after year. Renew us more every day. We want to be transformed by You and be renewed day by day so that we with all the saints we can become the New Jerusalem and build up the New Jerusalem! Lord, we don’t want to remain the same. Renew us. Transform us. Reconstitute us. Gain us!

The reason we don’t live out Christ all the time is because we are short of Christ, we are not fully constituted with Him. The reason we “forget” to live Christ but rather lose our temper or live in our natural man is because Christ has not been constituted into us that much.

Our temper is quick to rise, quicker than the electricity. But when Christ is being wrought into our being and constituted into us, we will live Christ out spontaneously!

This means that we need to open to the Lord to be renewed by Him. We need to be renewed day by day firstly by being revived every morning – rise up with the sun and enjoy the Lord, and allow the Lord as the rising sun to visit you from on high (Luke 1:78-79). May our walk be brighter and brighter (and not dimmer and dimmer) until the full day (see Prov. 4:18; Judges 5:31).

We can be daily renewed through the work of the cross (2 Cor. 4:10-16, having the killing of all the negative things in our being through the cross), the Holy Spirit and the washing of regeneration (Titus 3:5, we are being reconditioned, remade, and remodelled with the divine life), our mingled spirit (Eph. 4:23, our spirit spreading into our mind to occupy and possess our mind), and the holy word of God (Eph. 5:26, the washing of the water in the word).

Lord, we open to You today to be renewed by You! We want to be revived every morning and be renewed day by day. Visit us as the rising sun, and make our walk with You brighter and brighter. We want to experience the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit. Recondition us, remodel us, and remake us with Your divine life to make us as new as the New Jerusalem. Lord, may our mingled spirit spread into our mind and renew our mind. Keep us in Your word, enjoying the washing of the water in the word so that we may be renewed! Lord, reconstitute us with Yourself for us to live Christ!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, bro. Ed Marks’ sharing in the message for this week, and portions from, God’s New Testament Economy (ch. 27), as quoted in, the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Aspects of the Christian Life and Church Life Seen in the New Jerusalem, week 5 / msg 5, The Intrinsic Significance of the Name New Jerusalem and the Dimensions of the Holy City.
• Hymns on this topic:
  # Day by day, / Our inward parts are being renewed by the Lord; / Every day, / Fresh and rich supply to us He does afford. / It is our destiny, / To live a normal life in the divine dispensing, / It is a blessing, / To be satisfied with ordinary days / in the divine dispensing. (Song on Being Renewed Daily)
  # And this life came in us / In our spirit through the Spirit; / This is where we were made alive! / Now this life is spreading. / Lord, don’t stop—just keep invading. / For this, Lord, we must be daily revived.  (Song on Being Renewed)
  # By the cross discern the spirit, / With the mind by light renewed, / All emotion consecrated, / And the will in love subdued. (Hymns #748)
  # Now we Thy new creation are- / New spirit and new heart; / We’re daily from the old renewed, / New life Thou dost impart. (Hymns #16)