In the New Covenant God is our God and we are His People, and we Know God Inwardly

The revelation of God’s highest grace toward man is His new covenant with man; in the new covenant God promises to put His law within us, write His law into our mind that we may know God, He will be our God and we will be His people, we will not need anyone to teach us because we will know God subjectively and that God will forgive our iniquity and remember our sins no longer.

One of the most important matters in the new covenant is the law of life, which is different from the law of letters; the law of letters is outwardly to keep and obey (even though we can’t keep or obey this law!), but the law of life is inwardly – it is God’s Spirit with His life within us, “written” on our mind and “inscribed” on our heart.

Today we are no longer under the old covenant of the law in letters but under the new covenant in life, and we have God’s life in us with its law; the law of life operates in us to make us sons of God (to “sonize” us) and to cause us to function as members of the Body of Christ.

Today we want to see the next two aspects of the new covenant, how God is our God and how we know the Lord subjectively and inwardly. Hallelujah, God is our God and we are His people! Praise the Lord, we can know God inwardly, personally, subjectively, and organically!

In the New Covenant God is our God and we are His People

As promised in Jeremiah and quoted by Paul in Heb. 8:10, in the new covenant God promises that “I will be God to them, and they will be a people to Me”.

What does it mean that God will be our God and we will be His people? As seen in the first four commandments of the law, God desires to be God – He wants to be our God. In the world today who takes God as his God? Where is God? Do people take God as God?

Satan rebelled against God and even wanted to be God, and when he tempted the Lord Jesus he told Him to worship him….as a Man, Jesus had a God – God was His God. Only God is God, and there’s no one else who is God. Even though in the world today it often seems that God is silent and hidden, God desires to gain a group of people to whom He can say, I am their God and they are My people.

People today say and do things as if there’s no God, but we have God as our God and we are His people. Paul testified in Phil. 4:19, My God will fulfill all your needs according to His riches; to Paul God was His God. Though people may reject God, ignore God, and put God aside, we as His people under the working of the law of life can know Him and take Him as our God, and we are His people.

For God to be our God means that He is our inheritance, and for us to be God’s people means that we are God’s inheritance (Eph. 1:11, 14, 18; 3:21). Before we had God, we had nothing, and before God had us, He was childless; but God came and dispensed Himself into us and we became His children, His inheritance.

Through regeneration we have received the life of God; now God is our everything – God is our inheritance – and we are God’s possession, His treasure, His special people – we are God’s inheritance. God is the source of everything we possess; we depend on Him, we live by Him, we need Him, and He is our God.

We have the privilege of having God as our God and of being His people because we have God’s life in us; according to the inward divine life, we are God’s people, and He is both our Father and our God. God’s relationship with us today is fully based upon the law of life – His relationship with us is in life.

God is our inheritance and we are His inheritance, His possession. God has made us His personal treasure, His particular possession; through the working of the law of life He is imparting something precious into our being, making us His personal treasure, His people.

Hallelujah, in the new covenant we have the privilege of having God as our God and of us being His people – the enabling of life for us to participate in the enjoyment of God in fellowship with Him so that He can be known by us, apprehended by us, and lived by us (1 John 1:3, 7)!

Because God is our God, we can enjoy Him in Christ as the bountiful supply of the Spirit; because we are His people, God can enjoy the Christ that has been wrought into us and is making His home in us. Praise the Lord!

Praise the Lord, God is our God and we are His people! Lord, even though others may ignore You, reject You, and put You aside, we take You as our God and we declare that we are Your people. Thank You for putting Your life in us and thus making us Your people. Thank You we are enabled by the divine life to participate in the enjoyment of God and in fellowship with Him so that He can ne known by us, apprehended by us, and lived by us. Lord, You are our possession and inheritance, and we are becoming Your inheritance!

In the New Covenant we will all Know God Inwardly and Live God

In the new covenant, God promises that “They shall by no means each tell his fellow citizen and each his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for all will know Me from the little one to the great one among them” (Heb. 8:11).

The third blessing of the new covenant is that we don’t need to be taught outwardly concerning God but we will know Him inwardly. We have the anointing from the Holy One, and the anointing teaches us all things; we have no need to have others teach us but the anointing (the divine life flowing and moving in us) teaches us in all things to abide in the Lord (1 John 2:21).

In each one of us there’s an inner knowledge of God, and from young to the old we can know God inwardly. Knowing the Lord subjectively is the highest point of God’s salvation in His economy; God rescued us from the world, took us through a process of being reconstituted with Him, and brought us to a high mountain to fellowship with Him so that we may know Him!

This is the eternal life, to know God, the True One, and the One whom He has sent (John 17:3); the true eternal life is to know God subjectively (1 John 5:20). We need to know God not only by His doings (as the children of Israel saw His mighty works) or by His principles, His ways (as Abraham knew God in his interceding for his nephew Lot) but know God Himself by His life and nature.

The function of the divine life in us enables us to know God inwardly, in the way of life. Whenever we exercise our spirit we have an inward intuition in our spirit causing us to know God and receive directly from God in an inward way, in the way of life.

We can know God subjectively from within by the sense of life; the sense of life is the feeling, the consciousness, of the divine life within us (see Rom. 8:6; Eph. 4:18-20; Phil. 3:10).

As believers in Christ, we have an inward “sixth sense”, the sense of the divine life in us; the sense of life causes us to know whether we are living in the natural life or in the divine life, and whether we are living in the flesh or in the spirit. We should practice living according to the sense of life in the principle of life, and not merely according to the principle of “right” and “wrong”, good or evil – which is the principle of death.

For example, there’s no rule in the Bible about what time we should get up in the morning and what to do when we have a time with the Lord, but if we follow the sense of life within, we will know between us and the Lord what time to wake up and how to turn to the Lord to enjoy Him and grow in Him.

Many times things around us may be good and things may be going well, but within we have a sense of darkness, dulness, and dryness, sensing that God as life is not flowing in us; this is a sign we should not go ahead with what we’re about to do!

What a blessing it is to have the ability to know God subjectively! However, some may ask, If we all know God subjectively, why is the Bible so full of teachings? One reason the Bible is full of teachings is that many times we don’t listen to the sense of life within, so we need the teachings without to strengthen the inner sense of knowing God within us.

To know God subjectively in the way of life is the base for us to live God; through the spontaneous, automatic function of the divine life within us we have the capacity to know God inwardly, to live God and even to be one with God in His life and nature so that we may be His corporate expression.

How we live depends on what we know inwardly; the inward subjective knowing of God in the way of life affects our daily living, causing us to live God and be one with God.

Lord, we want to know God not only by His doings and His ways but know God Himself in His life and nature. May we be those who live by the sense of life within so that we may know God inwardly in a subjective way in life. Thank You for imparting Your life into us and thus giving us the capacity to know God, to live God, and even to be constituted with God in His life and nature so that we may be His corporate expression. Lord Jesus, we want to pay attention to the sense of the divine life within so that we may know You inwardly, live You outwardly, and be Your expression!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, brother James Lee’s sharing in the message for this week, and Life-study of Isaiah, msg. 47 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on,Crystallization-Study of Exodus (2) week 7 / msg 7, The Covenanting God and His Covenants (2) – The Contents of the New Covenant.
• All Bible verses are taken from, Holy Bible Recovery Version.
• Hymns on this topic to strengthen this burden:
  # Thou art my God—the All-Sufficient One, / Thou canst create for me whate’er I lack; / Thy mighty hand has strewn the lonely track / With miracles of love and tender care. (Hymns #671)
  # It is the inner sense in us, / The inmost consciousness, / Discerning matters inwardly, / God’s will to thus express. / ’Tis by this sense that God we know, / The sense of inner life; / ’Tis pow’rful and spontaneous, / And not of any strife. (Hymns #738)
  # Th’ anointing’s here! It teaches us in everything; / The sense of life we always have within. / Obey this sense, and you will know what you must do, / And live by Life—Yes, clear in everything. (Hymns #1118)