The New Jerusalem has the Glory of God; Today the Church should Have God’s Glory

The New Jerusalem has the glory of God for the corporate expression of God in the holy city of God

The New Jerusalem has the glory of God (Rev. 21:10-11). The whole city is filled with God and expresses God to the uttermost. God Himself is the light, the Lamb is the lamp, and the entire city has the glory of God. This means that the New Jerusalem fully expresses God, being a vessel that contains God and expresses God to the whole universe.

What God desires is to be expressed through a corporate man mingled with God, and for this He Himself became a man in the person of the Lord Jesus.

When the Lord came, He expressed God in everything: He didn’t do His own work but the work of the Father, He didn’t speak His own words but what the Father told Him to speak, He didn’t seek His own glory but the glory of the Father, and He didn’t do His own will but the Father’s will. In the Lord Jesus God had an individual expression of Himself on the earth.

The glory of God was concealed within the shell of His humanity, and when the Lord Jesus died and resurrected, the divine life within Him was released and imparted into millions of believers to regenerate them for His corporate expression.

Now we as the believers in Christ are the many grains, the reproduction and duplication of Christ as the first grain, and we have the divine life concealed within the shell of our humanity. Through the process of God’s organic salvation, through our regeneration, renewing, transformation, sanctification, building up, conformation, and glorification, the divine glory in us is being enlarged and eventually will become the city of glory, New Jerusalem.

Today in the church life as a miniature of the New Jerusalem we need to have God’s glory, the manifestation of what He is in His attribute of glory, as we behold the Lord and reflect Him, allow Him to make His home in our heart, lose our soul life, deny the self, and follow the Lord, and as we genuinely have God’s building among us.

Today we can have a foretaste of the New Jerusalem as the city that has the glory of God by taking time to behold Christ, allowing the face of Christ to be infused and imprinted in us, and denying our self so that the church may be built up in life. May the Lord gain His glory in the church today as a foretaste of the glory in the New Jerusalem!

Glory is God Expressed: First in the Lord Jesus, then in the Church, and Eventually in the New Jerusalem!

Glory is God expressed in splendor; whenever God is expressed, that is glory. Glory is not what people receive from others when they accomplish something but God Himself being expressed. The New Jerusalem has the glory of God – the holy city expresses God in His splendor (Rev. 21:10-11, 23).

The Lord Jesus was the first man who expressed God in full; He was the first God-man, God living in man and man living in God, to express God in all the aspects of His living. In the Gospel of John we see many aspects of the Lord Jesus in His person as the Son of God and the Son of Man – and the matter of glory (see John 1:14, 5:41, 44, 7:18, 8:50, 54, 12:23, 28, 13:31-32, 16:14, 17:1, 4, 5, 22, 24).

When He came, we beheld His glory, glory as of the only One begotten of the Father, full of grace and reality. He never sought His own glory but the glory of the Father. He desired that the Father would be glorified, and later in ch. 17 He asked that He would be glorified so that the Father would be glorified.

Before the world came into being, Christ was with God as the Son of God, having the glory of God; when He became a man, His glory was concealed within the shell of His humanity, and on the mount of transfiguration He was glorified in front of some of His disciples.

During all His life on earth the Lord Jesus always denied Himself, never expressed what He thought or desired, didn’t speak from Himself, didn’t act in His own name, didn’t do His own will, didn’t carry out His own work, and didn’t seek His own glory. Rather, He lived out God, expressed God, spoke God’s words, acted in God’s name, carried out God’s will, did God’s work, and sought God’s glory.

He yearned that the divine life concealed within Him would be released, and through His death His human shell was broken, and in His resurrection His divine life was released and imparted into millions of His believers!

Now we have God’s life within us: Christ is in us as the hope of glory (Col. 3:4). We have been called to and by His own glory (2 Pet. 1:3), and God called us into His eternal glory (1 Pet. 5:10). God’s salvation is with eternal glory (2 Tim. 2:10) and glory is the ultimate goal of God’s salvation (Rom. 8:21). God’s salvation leads us into glory (Heb. 2:10), and we are being daily transformed into the same image as Christ from glory to glory (2 Cor. 3:18).

Today God’s glory is in the church, where the believers are presently, daily, and continually being saturated and permeated with the treasure of glory within until they are being transfigured into the same image as Christ. Eventually, we will be glorified with Christ to bear God’s glory for God’s expression in the New Jerusalem (see Rom. 8:17, 30).

The New Jerusalem has the Glory of God, the Expression of God in Splendor

The entire city of New Jerusalem bears the glory of God: God Himself shines out through the holy city. As the consummation of God’s work throughout the ages, the New Jerusalem is composed of the redeemed, regenerated, transformed, and glorified sons of God, and everyone will shine for God’s expression.

God the Father is the source of glory, God the Son is the expression of God’s glory, God the Spirit is the shining out of God’s glory, and the people of God is the diffuser to both express and magnify God to the whole universe. The glory of God is the content of the New Jerusalem, and the whole city is filled with God’s glory.

In eternity the New Jerusalem will be completely filled with God’s glory! Today as believers in Christ we are a little New Jerusalem and in the church life we are the miniature of the New Jerusalem, and therefore we need to be filled and saturated with God for His glory.

Day by day, week by week, month by month, and year by year, the quantity of God increases in us and His glory in us is brighter and brighter. As we allow the Lord to blend us together, temper us, and build us up organically in His Body, the Person expressed in the local churches is Christ Himself, the Lord of glory.

In the church today we should have God’s glory, manifesting and expressing Him in this marvelous divine attribute. The Lord Jesus prayed for this in John 17:22 and Paul also prayed for this to happen in the church in Eph. 3:21.

2 Cor. 3:18 But we all with unveiled face, beholding and reflecting like a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit.

But how can we have God’s glory today in the church? I really enjoyed five simple experiential matters which, if practiced over time, will cause the glory of God to actually be expressed in a local church (these five ways were shared with us by bro. Ron Kangas, based on God’s word):

1. Take time to behold the glory of the Lord (see 2 Cor. 3:18). Day by day we need to spend time with the Lord to simply behold Him. We need to stop our activities, turn our heart to the Lord, open to Him, and exercise our spirit in faith to behold the Lord and gaze on Him. His face is in our spirit, the practical Holy of Holies today, and we need to simply behold Him. As we behold the Lord in our spirit, we are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, and others will see Christ’s glory in us in the church.

2. Let the Lord strengthen us, make His home in our heart, and gain all the glory in the church (Eph. 3:14-21). We need to allow the Lord to strengthen us into our inner man according to the riches of His glory so that He may settle down in us, making His home deep down in our heart. God with His glory in Christ as the Spirit strengthens us within and then makes His home in our heart, and we need to allow Him to make His home in all the parts of our being. The result is that He will get the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus (v. 21).

3. We need to follow the Lord through death and resurrection for His glory to be manifested in us (John 12:23-26). The Lord was glorified by falling to the earth to die, being buried, and then being resurrected; we need to follow Him by denying our self, losing our soul-life for His sake, and taking up our own cross today in our Christian life and church life.

We need to be one with Christ in His life-releasing death, being willing for our shell to be broken so that others may receive life. If the church is to have the glory of God, some saints need to die by denying their self and losing their soul life, being one with the Lord in His life-releasing death for His glory.

4. We need to be one in the divine glory by denying our self today (John 17:22-24). Just as the Lord Jesus denied Himself, did not live according to His desire or preference, but did everything with the Father, by the Father, and for the Father, so we need to deny our self so that the element of God’s glory within us can bring us to the highest level of oneness – the oneness in the Triune God. With the Triune God there is no self, and when our self is denied, we are one with the Lord and with the saints. This expresses God among us in His glory.

5. We must have God’s building among us. When God’s building is completed, His glory comes and fills His house. When the tabernacle was erected and the temple was built, God’s glory filled His house. When we are built up together by the Triune God in His life, God’s glory will fill the church. If we are built together, we are saved in life from our self-likeness and self-expression, and we are delivered from independence and individualism. When God gets the built-up Body, He has a glorious corporate expression on the earth.

Lord Jesus, we want to take time to behold Your face in our spirit so that we may be transformed into the same image from glory to glory! Strengthen us into our inner man according to the riches of Your glory so that we may allow You to make Your home in our heart and build us up together in love for Your glory to be manifested in the church. Lord, we want to be those who follow You by denying our self and losing our soul life so that we may be one with You in Your life-releasing death for Your glory. Build us up with one another in Your life and save us from self-likeness and self-expression. Lord, gain Your glory in the church today!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, bro. Ron Kangas’ sharing in the message for this week, and portions from, The Conclusion of the New Testament (msg. 11), as quoted in, the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Aspects of the Christian Life and Church Life Seen in the New Jerusalem, week 8 / msg 8, Having the Glory of God.
• Further reading: recommending ch. 19 in, The Vision of God’s Building (by Witness Lee).
• Hymns on this topic:
  # ’Tis the holy city, / New Jerusalem; / With His saints God mingles, / Makes His home with them. / He becomes their content, / His expression they; / They shall share His glory, / One with Him for aye. (Hymns #971)
  # In spirit while gazing on Thee, / As a glass reflecting Thy glory, / Like to Thyself transformed I’ll be, / That Thou might be expressed thru me. (Hymns #501)
  # Jerusalem, the ultimate, / Of visions the totality; / The Triune God, tripartite man— / A loving pair eternally— / As man yet God they coinhere, / A mutual dwelling place to be; / God’s glory in humanity / Shines forth in splendor radiantly! (Song on New Jerusalem)