We need to preach an uplifted gospel, even the present truth according to the highest peak of the divine revelation given to us by God, believing that God put in each person an ability to receive and understand the things of God. Amen!
The present truth is the highest peak of the divine revelation given to us by God through the ministry of the age; this is the revelation of the eternal economy of God!
The gospel of God’s eternal economy is “the gospel of the promise made to the fathers” in Acts 13:32; this is the promise that the seed of David (Christ according to the flesh) would become the Son of God (vv. 22-23, 33-34; 26:6, 16-19; 2 Sam. 7:12-14a; Rom. 1:3-4; Matt. 22:41-45). Amen!
God’s promise to David is that his seed (his son, a human seed) would become the Son of God (a divine Son).
When God became a man, He was the Son of David according to the flesh; God was incarnated by putting on the flesh to be the seed of David.
When He resurrected, He became the transfigured seed of David, the transfigured Son of David, for the life-giving Spirit is the transfiguration of the Son.
In Rom. 1:1 Paul introduces himself as a slave of Christ Jesus, a called apostle, separated unto the gospel of God; then, in vv. 3-4 he presents what this gospel is.
The gospel of God is concerning His Son, who came out of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was designated the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness, out of the resurrection of the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.
When he wrote this, he surely had in mind the portion in 2 Sam. 2:12-14 where the Lord promises David that He will raise a seed after him, one who will come out of his body, who will build a house for His name, and this one will be the Son of God.
Christ was the only begotten Son of God from eternity, but He didn’t have humanity; through His incarnation, He put on humanity, and through His death and resurrection His humanity was uplifted, sanctified, transformed, and transfigured into divinity, into the divine sonship, and He was designated the Son of God in His humanity.
Christ is now not only the only begotten Son of God with divinity from eternity to eternity but also the firstborn Son of God possessing both divinity and humanity.
The Lord Jesus spoke concerning this wonderful mystery in Matt. 22:41-45 when He asked the Pharisees concerning Messiah, whose Son is He, the Son of David or the Son of God, the Lord of David or the Son of David.
Then He proceeded to quote from the Psalms saying that, if the Christ is the Son of David, how come David calls Him in Spirit, my Lord?
This is a mysterious and wonderful matter, for through His crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, Jesus the Man was made by God both Lord and Christ.
We need to know this high gospel, be constituted with this uplifted gospel, and speak this gospel of the economy of God to others, believing in our heart that God has put a capacity in all men to receive and understand the high truth of God’s economy according to His heart’s desire.
We should Preach an Uplifted Gospel believing that God gave each man an Ability to Receive and Understand the Things of God
When Paul wrote the book of Romans, he called it “my gospel” and “the gospel of God”, and this gospel is a very high gospel, even an uplifted gospel.
The gospel according to Paul is a gospel of sonship, a gospel that transforms sinners into sons of God for the formation of the Body of Christ.
This is a very high gospel, for it involves God becoming a man so that man may become God in life and nature but not in the Godhead so that God would gain a corporate expression on earth, the Body of Christ.
We should not preach a gospel that has been lowered down or diluted, thinking that we need to adjust it to the level of the people’s understanding.
Rather, we should preach an uplifted gospel and never lower the concept (1 Thes. 1:1, 3-4, 10; 5:23; 1 Cor. 2:7-13).
Just as we receive, understand, and enjoy the things of God according to the uplifted gospel seen in the Bible, so every man has a God-created ability to receive and understand the things of God (see Job 32:8; Zech. 12:1; Eccl. 3:11; Acts 17:26-29; Isa. 43:7).
We may have the tendency to lower down the gospel to the people’s understanding, thinking that the truth in the Bible is too high, so we have to “lower it down” to come down to where we are or to where we think that people are. Oh, Lord!
If the Lord Jesus would do that, He would have probably never spoken what is recorded in Matt. 5-7 (the constitution of the kingdom of the heavens) or John 14-17 (the highest peak concerning the Father’s house, the Spirit’s new child, the Son’s vine, and the deepest prayer in the Bible).
The Lord Jesus didn’t think, The audience is fishermen – what can they understand? He never lowered down the truth of the gospel just because the audience would not get it, or would not understand what He meant.
Our God is the Most High, and we are sons of the Most High; what God speaks is most high, and we should never sacrifice the truth or lower it.
Rather, we should speak the truth and allow it to uplift us to its leve. We should not sacrifice the high truth of God’s eternal economy.
We should not allow our feelings or our condition to determine the high truth of God’s eternal economy, because the truth is the truth.
Whether our condition is high or low, the truth is the truth, and when we speak the truth, we are uplifted to its standard, and those who listen will also be brought up.
For example, Paul wrote to the young church in Thessalonica by telling them that they are the church in God the Father and in Christ Jesus, and in every chapter, he mentioned the Lord’s return.
He ended the first epistle to the Thessalonians by saying that God will saturate and permeate our whole being so that our spirit, soul, and body would be preserved complete at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thes. 5:23).
In his epistles to the Corinthians, even though they were soulish, fleshly, fleshy, with so many problems among them, Paul still unveiled twenty marvellous aspects of Christ for the saints’ enjoyment.
He spoke the wisdom of God in a mystery, for God has prepared amazing things to those who love Him – He prepared things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not come up into man’s heart.
When we love the Lord, the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God, doing active research to fill us with the deep things of God and with all His riches, revealing them to us in our spirit for our enjoyment and participation.
This is what Paul wrote to the church in Corinth. We should not think that those we speak to will never understand the uplifted gospel we speak, the gospel of God’s eternal economy; rather, we should believe that there’s a God-created ability in each one to receive and understand the things of God.
Even the new ones and the unbelievers can understand and receive the things of God, the things concerning God’s eternal economy.
In each one of us, there is a spirit, even a God-shaped vacuum that only God can fill. God has put eternity into man’s heart; in each man, there’s a divinely implanted sense of a purpose working throughout the ages which nothing under the sun but God can satisfy.
The high truth in the Bible is for all men, and we need to be one with the Lord to speak an uplifted gospel, believing that the Lord will enlighten those we speak to and make these things real to them.
Lord Jesus, thank You for entrusting us with an uplifted gospel, the gospel of the eternal economy of God. Hallelujah for the gospel of the promise made to the fathers, the promise the seed of David would become the Son of God! Thank You, Lord for becoming a man so that You would open the way for men to be born of God and be sons of God! Amen, Lord, we want to learn to preach an uplifted gospel, the gospel of the eternal economy of God. Save us from trying to lower down the gospel to what we think is the level of the people’s understanding. We believe that within man there’s a God-created ability to receive and understand the things of God, and we are bold to speak an uplifted gospel, the gospel of God’s eternal economy!
The Lord’s Special Commission to us is to Present the Truth concerning God’s Eternal Economy Item by Item according to the Entire Bible
How we thank and praise the Lord for unveiling us to see not only the gospel of peace, the gospel of grace, the gospel of the forgiveness of sins, and the gospel of life, but also the gospel of the kingdom, the gospel of the eternal economy of God!
According to this gospel, as revealed in the Bible, God became a man so that man may become God in life and nature but not in the Godhead for God to gain a corporate expression, the church as the Body of Christ, which consummates in the New Jerusalem.
This is the gospel of sonship – God desires to gain sons of God, and for this, He went through a process of incarnation, human living, crucifixion, and resurrection and ascension.
Now He seeks those who are open to Him for Him to dispense Himself into them and regenerate them, sanctify them, transform them, conform them to His image, and glorify them so that He may be manifested through them.
We need to serve God in the gospel of His son by speaking not only concerning His redemption, justification, and forgiveness but also concerning the sonship, concerning God’s eternal economy.
According to this gospel, sinners in the flesh can be transformed into sons of God in the Spirit for the building up of the Body of Christ.
This is the uplifted gospel entrusted to us by God, the gospel of the kingdom, which we must preach for a testimony to the whole inhabited earth.
We must present the truth concerning the eternal economy of God item by item according to the entire Bible; this is the Lord’s special commission to us (1 Cor. 1:9; 9:16-17, 23; 1 Tim. 1:3-4; 2:7; 4:16; 2 Tim. 1:11; 2:2, 15; Col. 1:28).
Paul taught God’s economy, and we need to be those who teach not only the Lord’s salvation and forgiveness of sins but even more, the gospel of the eternal economy of God.
We have been appointed as a herald, someone who is an official reporter of God’s New Testament economy.
We need to enjoy the Lord, experience Him, be constituted with the truth of God’s economy, and speak the gospel of God’s eternal economy to others, reporting to them what we have seen, enjoyed, and experienced.
God created man in His image and according to His likeness; He created man in His own image for man to not only look like Him and act like Him but for man to receive God’s life and become the same as God in life, nature, expression, and function, but not in the Godhead.
When Christ came, He started a new species, a new race of people, the God-man kind; all believers in Christ are God-men, constituents of the Body of Christ to express God corporately.
May we speak not only the ABCs of God’s salvation but also the gospel of the eternal economy of God to really satisfy the thirst and hunger in man’s heart because of the way that God created man.
As we preach the gospel in an uplifted way, we believe that the hearers have the ability to understand what we are saying, and we trust in the Spirit of reality to come in and guide them into the reality of what they hear.
We need to be bold to speak the truth concerning Christ as the embodiment of God, the Spirit as the realization of Christ, the Body of Christ as the issue of the Spirit, and the New Jerusalem as the consummation of the Body of Christ.
Thank You, Lord, for entrusting us with the special commission of presenting the truth concerning the eternal economy of God item by item according to the entire Bible. Amen, Lord, we want to enjoy You and experience You according to the high peak of the divine revelation in God’s word, and we want to report to others the eternal economy of God in all its details. Thank You for becoming a man, living a perfect human life, dying an all-inclusive and all-terminating death on the cross, resurrecting to become a life-giving Spirit, and ascending to be the Lord of all. Hallelujah, we as men can receive God to be regenerated, sanctified, transformed, conformed, and glorified so that we may be part of God’s glorious expression through man consummating in the New Jerusalem!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by bro. Ed Marks for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Exodus, msg. 113 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Knowing the Truth, being Absolute for the Truth, and Proclaiming the Truth in this Present Evil Age (2021 Memorial Day Weekend Conference), week 6, Knowing and Spreading the Up-to-date Truth of the Highest Gospel of God’s Eternal Economy according to the Ministry of the Age.
- Hymns on this topic:
– Lord, Thou art the “Seed of David,” / For the kingdom Thou wast raised; / For God’s glory and His building / On the throne Thou hast been placed. / Truly Thou art “David’s offspring,” / Yet “my Lord” he calleth Thee, / For Thou art his “root” and fountain, / ”Lord of all” eternally. (Hymns #191)
– God ordained us unto sonship, / Ere creation’s work was done, / To conform us by His Spirit / To the image of His Son; / That His only dear Begotten / Might become the firstborn One, / And by Him with many brethren / His expression full be won. (Hymns #741)
– An uplifted gospel have we, / One we’re not ashamed to proclaim. / Our gospel’s the highest of all, / For it is God’s goal and God’s aim. / No longer so lowly and poor, / We’ve found that we’re God’s holy sons. / No more will we preach as before; / Now each man on earth can be won. (Hymns #1292)
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