What is the goal of your Christian life and work? What are you living for, and what is the ultimate goal of everything that you do?
God’s unique goal in His divine economy is the New Jerusalem, and He does everything for the obtaining of this holy city. God desires to obtain a building which is the union, mingling, and incorporation of God with man, where God and man dwell in one another for eternity.
For this goal, God created us, saved us, regenerated us, and He is now sanctifying us, renewing us, transforming us, conforming us, and He will glorify us until we become God in life and nature but not in the Godhead.
But what about us, what is our goal? We need to see that the degradation of the church in general today and the degradation among Christians in particular is mainly due to the fact that nearly all the Christian workers have been distracted to take many things other than the New Jerusalem as their goal.
We need to see the current degradation and be the overcomers who answer the Lord’s call today. We need to overcome not only the negative things but even the positive things which replace the New Jerusalem as the goal.
We want to have the same goal as God has, the New Jerusalem!
Lord, make us the overcomers of today who have the New Jerusalem as their goal! May nothing replace the New Jerusalem as the goal of our Christian living and work. Work Yourself into us, Lord, and constitute us until we become the New Jerusalem in reality!
The New Jerusalem – the Goal of God’s Economy
The conclusion of the Bible and the goal of God’s economy is a building, the New Jerusalem. It is not a physical building since many of the things in it are signs with spiritual significance, but it is a spiritual entity, a blending and mingling of divinity and humanity.
What great miracle – what a deep mystery, that God and man should be blended, joined, and mingled!
Rev. 21:3 says that the New Jerusalem is “the tabernacle of God”, where God dwells, and Rev. 21:22 says, “the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple” – we as the many redeemed saints dwell there.
The gates are pearls inscribed with the names of the 12 tribes of Israel (Rev. 21:12), and the 12 foundations are inscribed with the names of the 12 apostles (Rev. 21:14).
In the New Jerusalem, God is the center, essence, and universality, and the redeemed people are fully one with God! The consummation and the goal of God’s work throughout the ages is a divine-human incorporation, a miraculous structure of treasure, the New Jerusalem.
The New Jerusalem is the ultimate consummation of the building up of the believers, who have been made God in life, in nature, in constitution, in function, and in expression but not in the Godhead.
Our Unique Work is to Work Out the New Jerusalem
The unique work God is doing today is to work Himself into man and to make man the same as He is in every aspect (except His Godhead) so that man may match God and live one with God for eternity.
The goal is the New Jerusalem – and we need to be brought up on a high mountain in spirit to see the holy city, the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:10).
Today all the believers in Christ are undergoing the process of transformation, in which the old man is being discharged and something new, Christ Himself, is being manifested by replacing everything old with Himself (2 Cor. 3:18).
The consummation of this process is the New Jerusalem – we should do only one work today, which is to make God’s chosen people beings in the New Jerusalem (Rev. 3:12)!
Our work should be to live out and work out the New Jerusalem by cooperating with the Lord and allowing Him to work Himself into us and dispense Himself into every part of our being so that we may be made God in life and nature but not in the Godhead.
Wow, the goal of the Christian life and work is so high, so excellent, and so glorious! As we become the same as God in life and nature, the New Jerusalem is being lived out, produced, and worked out!
In Christ God became a man so that He would make man God in His life and His nature, so that the redeeming God and the redeemed man can be mingled and constituted together to be one entity – the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:3, 22).
This is our goal – to live out and work out the New Jerusalem!
The High Peak of the Revelation in the Bible
I am eternally grateful to God for the ministry of the age, and specifically for brother Witness Lee‘s ministry which opens up the Bible and unveils the hidden mysteries in God’s economy to us.
I have never seen the matter of the New Jerusalem until I opened to the Lord and got into the many messages and footnotes given by our brother.
Have you ever seen that your Christian life and walk with God is actually a process in which you are being deified, constituted with the processed and consummated Triune God so that you may become God in life and nature to be His corporate expression for eternity (John 1:12-14; 14:20; 15:5a; Rev. 21:3, 10-11)?
This is the high peak of the divine revelation, and we miss so much if we don’t pray a lot over all these matters, asking the Lord to make them real to us. Brother Lee even encouraged us to do nothing else but help all believers to be beings in the New Jerusalem.
On God’s side, the Triune God was incarnated to be a man – God became a man. On our side, we are being daily deified (by the continual growth of Christ in us) so that we may be made God in life and nature for His eternal corporate expression.
This is something of the High Peak Truth revealed in the Bible, and it is very deep and full of meaning. May the Lord use these coming days, weeks, months, and even years to unveil us that we may really see the New Jerusalem, so that we may live out and work out the New Jerusalem until we become the New Jerusalem in reality for eternity!
Lord, uplift our view of the Christian life and work. Cause us to know the highest truth so that we may live out and work out the New Jerusalem! Lord, go on in us, grow in us, and deify us. Make us the same as You are so that we may be Your corporate expression on earth. Obtain the New Jerusalem by continually and gradually working Yourself into us day by day. Lord, level by level and step by step bring us further until we reach the highest peak, the New Jerusalem!
References and Further Reading
- Sharing inspired from, How to Be a Co-worker and an Elder and How to Fulfill Their Obligations (ch. 3), Life-study of 1 & 2 Samuel (msg. 30), and the Conclusion of the New Testament (page 4362), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Unique Work in the Lord’s Recovery, week 9 (entitled, The Consummation of the Unique Work in the Lord’s Recovery—the New Jerusalem).
- Further reading:
# The Unique Goal of the Christian Work: the New Jerusalem (via, agodman.com);
# Paul’s Prayer for the church regarding revelation (via, newjerusalem12.wordpress.com);
# Watchman Nee and Witness Lee, two ministers with one ministry (via, holdingtotruth.com); - Hymns on this topic:
# New Jerusalem—the ultimate sign; / The ultimate goal of God’s economy;
# God’s economy is His plan to dispense Himself / Into His chosen, predestinated and redeemed people / As their life / Their life supply
# From the fruit of daily living, New Jerusalem we’ll see, / It’s the ultimate in mingling—it’s divine humanity. - Pictures credit: the first from a friend, the second: Rev. 21:10.
The New Jerusalem is a composition of God’s chosen, redeemed, regenerated, sanctified, renewed, transformed, conformed, and glorified people who have been deified (John 3:6; Heb. 2:11; Rom. 12:2; 8:29-30). For us to be deified means that we are being constituted with the processed and consummated Triune God so that we may be made God in life and in nature to be His corporate expression for eternity (Rev. 21:11). The New Jerusalem is built by God’s constituting Himself into man to make man the same as God in life, nature, and constitution so that God and man may become a corporate entity. The New Jerusalem is God Himself enlarged with His redeemed by the way of constituting, uniting, and mingling (John 3:29a, 30a; 14:20; 15:4a; 1 Cor. 6:17). Thus, the deification of the believers is a process that will consummate in the New Jerusalem. On God’s side, the Triune God has been incarnated to be a man; on our side, we are being deified, constituted with the processed and consummated Triune God so that we may be made God in life and in nature to be His corporate expression for eternity. This is the highest truth and the highest gospel (Rev. 3:12). (The Conclusion of the New Testament, p. 4362)
I'm reminding of Brother Lee's words shortly before he went to be with the Lord. He wanted all the coworkers and elders (who should be patterns to all of us) to see that they should only do one work, the work of the New Jerusalem. We should help all the believers in Christ to advance step by step and level by level until we are all the same–no more flesh, no more self, all are beings of the New Jerusalem. May the Lord truly purify us to care only for what He cares for–the New Jerusalem and do one work–one that is not merely human (of wood, grass and stubble) but divine–mingled with the Triune God by whom we live (of gold, silver and precious stones). Only such a living and work will reach God's goal.
Amen, brother, I was reading that recently also. It is so impressive to see that even at the end of his life brother Witness Lee had a clear vision and even a high vision of what the Christian life and work is about. It is concerning and for the New Jerusalem. May the Lord really purify us and reconstitute us so that we may do the work of making the believers beings of the New Jerusalem! How much we need to grow in life today and be open to the Lord to deal with our inner being as we work together with Him, so that we would build with gold, silver, and precious stones!
To be overcomers we should take the goal of God’s eternal economy, the New Jerusalem, as our unique and ultimate goal…We need to daily drink the flowing God, the Spirit, as our river of water of life; we need to eat the overcoming Lion-Lamb as the tree of life to be our fresh and rich supply; and we need to take the Triune God as the essence, the element, and the way to build and consummate the New Jerusalem. This is the consummation of the full ministry of Christ. (Witness Lee, How to Be a Co-worker and an Elder and How to Fulfill Their Obligations, Chapter 3, Section 8)
more via http://www.ministrysamples.org/excerpts/TEN-GREAT-THINGS-ACCOMPLISHED-BY-CHRIST-IN-HIS-FULL-MINISTRY-IN-THREE-STAGES.HTML