Crystallization-Study of Jeremiah and Lamentations
Message Twelve
Experiencing and Enjoying the Contents of the New Covenant according to Our Spiritual Experience for the Accomplishment of God's Economy
Scripture Reading: Jer. 31:31-34; Heb. 8:8-12; Rom. 8:2, 28-29; 12:1-2
I. Based on the fact that Jeremiah prophesies concerning the new covenant, the book of Jeremiah may be considered an Old Testament book that is also a New Testament book; we need to see and appropriate the contents of the new cove nant as God's bequests to us—Jer. 31:31-34; Heb. 8:8-12:
A. In the new covenant four blessings are promised:
1. Propitiation for our unrighteousnesses and the forgetting (forgiveness) of our sins—v. 12.
2. The imparting of the law of life by the imparting of the divine life into us—v. 10a.
3. The privilege of having God as our God and of being His peo-ple—v. 10b.
4. The function of life that enables us to know Him in the inward way of life—v. 11.
B. Since forgiveness of sins is only a procedure by which to achieve God's purpose, this Scripture puts forgiveness of sins at the very end; however, according to our spiritual experience, we first obtain the cleansing that comes from forgiveness; then we enjoy God as the law of life, become God's people in the law of life, and possess a deeper knowledge of God in an inward way—cf. v. 12.
II. "I will be propitious to their unrighteousnesses, and their sins I shall by no means remember anymore"—v. 12; Jer. 31:34b:
A. Christ made propitiation for our sins to appease God's righteous-ness, to reconcile us by satisfying the demands of God's right-eousness—Heb. 2:17.
B. The precious and all-efficacious blood of Christ resolves all our problems so that we can remain constantly in fellowship with God to continually enjoy His organic salvation—1 John 1:7-9; 2:1-2:
1. Before God, the redeeming blood of the Lord has cleansed us once for all eternally (Heb. 9:12, 14), and the efficacy of that cleansing need not be repeated.
2. However, in our conscience we need the instant application of the constant cleansing of the Lord's precious blood again and again whenever our conscience is enlightened by the divine light in our fellowship with God.
3. Once God forgives us, He erases our sins from His memory and remembers them no longer; forgiveness of sins means the removal of the charges of sin against us before God that we may be delivered from the penalty of God's righteousness— John 5:24:
a. When God forgives us of our sins, He causes the sins that we have committed to depart from us—Psa. 103:12; Lev. 16:7-10, 15-22.
b. God's forgiveness of our sins results in our fearing Him and loving Him in our restored fellowship with Him— Psa. 130:4; Luke 7:47.
C. The precious blood of Christ satisfies God, it is the believers' access to God, and it overcomes all the accusations of the enemy (Exo. 12:13; Eph. 2:13; 1 Pet. 1:18-19; Heb. 10:19-20, 22; 9:14; 1 John 1:7, 9; Rev. 12:10-11); the Lord's precious blood is also the blood of the eternal covenant (Matt. 26:28; Heb. 13:20), typified by the blood through which the high priest entered into the Holy of Holies in Leviticus 16:
1. The blood of the covenant enables us to enter into the practi-cal Holy of Holies (Heb. 10:19-20), our spirit (Eph. 2:22; 2 Tim. 4:22), to enjoy God and to be infused by Him.
2. According to the revelation in the New Testament, we are not only brought into God's presence by the blood of the cove-nant—we are also brought into God Himself; the redeeming and cleansing blood brings us into God！
3. The blood of the covenant is primarily for God to be our por-tion for our enjoy ment—cf. Psa. 27:4; 73:16-17, 25; 1 Cor. 2:9; Heb. 10:19-20.
4. Eventually, the blood of Christ as the blood of the new cove-nant (Matt. 26:28; Luke 22:20) ushers God's people into the better things of the new covenant, in which God gives His peo-ple a new heart, a new spirit, His Spirit, the inner law of life (denoting God Himself with His nature, life, attributes, and virtues), and the ability of life to know God (Jer. 31:33-34; Ezek. 36:26-27; Heb. 8:10-12).
5. Ultimately, the blood of the new covenant, the eternal covenant (13:20), enables God's people to serve Him (9:14) and leads God's people into the full enjoy ment of God as their portion (the tree of life and the water of life) both now and for eter-nity (Rev. 7:14, 17; 22:1-2, 14, 17).
III. "I will impart My laws into their mind, and on their hearts I will inscribe them"—Heb. 8:10; Jer. 31:33a:
A. The center, the centrality, of the new covenant is the inner law of life; the law of the divine life, the law of the Spirit of life (Rom. 8:2), is the automatic principle and the spontaneous power of the divine life.
B. The Triune God has been processed through incarnation, cruci-fixion, resurrec tion, and ascension to become the law of the Spirit of life installed in our spirit as a "scientific" law, an automatic principle—vv. 2-3, 11, 34, 16.
C. God's relationship with us today is based fully on the law of life; every life has a law and even is a law; God's life is the highest life, and the law of this life is the highest law—cf. Prov. 30:19a; Isa. 40:30-31.
D. Romans 8, the subject of which is the law of the Spirit of life (v. 2), may be considered the focus of the entire Bible and the center of the universe; thus, if we are experiencing Romans 8, we are in the center of the uni verse:
1. God is in us now as a law that operates automatically, sponta-neously, and uncon sciously to free us from the law of sin and of death; this is one of the biggest discoveries, even recoveries, in God's economy—7:18-23; 8:2.
2. We enjoy the dispensing of life into our being for the accom-plishment of God's economy by the working of the law of the Spirit of life—Jer. 31:33; Heb. 8:10; Rom. 8:2-3, 10, 6, 11.
3. The enjoyment of the law of the Spirit of life in Romans 8 ushers us into the reality of the Body of Christ in Romans 12; this law operates within us as we live in the Body and for the Body—8:2, 28-29; 12:1-2, 11; Phil. 1:19.
E. By imparting His divine life into us, God puts the highest law (singular—Jer. 31:33) of this highest life into our spirit, whence it spreads into our inward parts, such as our mind, emotion, and will, and becomes several laws (plural—Heb. 8:10):
1. The spreading of this law in us is the imparting (Rom. 8:10, 6), and the imparting is the inscribing (2 Cor. 3:3); while the Lord is spreading, imparting, and inscribing, He reduces the old element of Adam from us and adds into us the new element of Christ, accomplishing metabolically the transformation of life for us—v. 18.
2. By the working, the spreading, of the law of life within us, God makes us the same as He is in life, nature, and expression; we are conformed to the image of the first born Son of God by the working of the law of life—Rom. 8:2, 29.
F. While we remain in touch with the Lord, staying in contact with Him, the law of life, the law of the Spirit of life, works automat-ically, spontaneously, and effortlessly—Phil. 2:12-13; Rom. 8:2, 4, 6, 13-16, 23; 1 Thes. 5:16-18:
1. We must cease from our own struggling and striving—Gal. 2:20a; cf. Rom. 7:15-20:
a. If we have not seen that sin is a law and that our will can never overcome this law, we are trapped in Romans 7; we will never arrive at Romans 8.
b. Paul willed again and again, but the result was only re-peated failure; the best that a man can do is to make res-olutions—7:18.
c. When sin is dormant within us, it is merely sin, but when it is aroused in us by our willing to do the good, it becomes "the evil"—v. 21.
d. Instead of willing, we should set our mind on the spirit and walk according to the spirit—8:6, 4; Phil. 2:13.
2. We must cooperate with the indwelling, installed, automatic, and inner operating God as the law of the Spirit of life by prayer and by having a spirit of dependence, calling upon the Lord and pray-reading His Word in order to main tain our fel-low ship with Him—Rom. 10:12-13; 1 Thes. 5:17; Eph. 6:17-18:
a. The secret of experiencing Christ as the law of life is to be in Him, the One who empowers us to do all things, and the secret of being in Him is to be in our spirit—Phil. 4:13, 23.
b. In order to live in our spirit, we must take time to behold the Lord, praying to fellowship with Jesus to bathe in His countenance, to be saturated with His beauty, and to radi-ate His excellence—2 Cor. 3:16, 18; cf. Matt. 14:23.
G. The function of the law of life requires the growth in life, for the law of life functions only as it grows—Mark 4:3, 14, 26-29:
1. Christ's intercession on the throne motivates the life seed that He sowed into us at the time of resurrection—Heb. 7:25; Rom. 8:34.
2. The firstborn Son is interceding for us so that the life He has sown into our spirit may be motivated to grow, develop, and saturate all our inward parts, until we are completely per-meated with His glorified and uplifted being.
3. While the divine life grows in us, the law of life functions to shape us, to conform us, to the image of Christ as the firstborn Son of God so that we may become His cor porate expression; the law of life does not regulate us from doing wrong; it reg-ulates the shape of life—vv. 2, 29:
a. The indwelling prototype, the firstborn Son of God, auto-matically works in us as the law of life to conform us to His image, to "sonize" us; the Lord is working des perately to make every one of us the same as the firstborn Son.
b. God's way to mass reproduce this prototype is to work His living prototype, the firstborn Son, into our entire being; if we cooperate with and open up to this wonderful prototype, He will spread outward from our spirit into our soul.
c. The firstborn Son is the prototype, the standard model, for the mass reproduction of the many sons of God, who are His many brothers to constitute His Body as the new man for the corporate reproduction and expression of the stan-dard model, the firstborn Son of God—v. 29.
4. The law of life does not primarily function in the negative sense of telling us what not to do; rather, while life grows, the law of life functions in the positive sense of shaping us, that is, conforming us to the image of Christ; through the function of the law of life, we all will become the mature sons of God, and God will have His uni versal, corporate expression.
IV. "I will be God to them, and they will be a people to Me"— Heb. 8:10; Jer. 31:33b:
A. For God to be our God means that He is our inheritance—Eph. 1:14:
1. God created man as a vessel to contain Him (Gen. 1:26-27; Rom. 9:23-24); there fore, God is man's possession, just as the content of a vessel is its possession.
2. God is not only our inheritance but also the portion of our cup (Psa. 16:5) for our enjoyment; to be saved is to come back to God and enjoy Him anew as our posses sion, as signified by a man's returning to his possession in the jubilee (Lev. 25:10; Luke 4:18-19; 15:17-24; Acts 26:18; Col. 1:12).
3. God gives us the Spirit not only as a guarantee of our inher-itance but also as a foretaste of what we will inherit of God (2 Cor. 1:22); the Spirit's pledging adds more of God into us little by little until we enter into eternity and have God as our full enjoyment.
B. For us to be God's people means that we are His inheritance— Eph. 1:11, 14, 18; 3:21:
1. We not only inherit God as our inheritance (1:14) for our en-joyment but also become God's inheritance (v. 11) for His enjoyment.
2. It is by having God wrought into us that we are being consti-tuted into God's inheri tance; this is transformation, and it is also subjective sanctification.
3. God put His Holy Spirit into us as a seal (v. 13) to mark us out, indicating that we belong to God; this seal is living, and it works within us to permeate and transform us with God's divine element until the redemption of our body.
4. Consummately, the mutual inheritance of God and man be-comes God's inheritance in the saints for eternity (v. 18); this will be His eternal expression to the uttermost universally and eternally (Rev. 21:11).
V. "They shall by no means each teach 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; Jer. 31:34a:
A. The function of life enables us to know God in the inward way of life; we can know God subjectively from within by the sense of life, which is the feeling, the consciousness, of the divine life within us—Rom. 8:6; Eph. 4:18-19; Phil. 3:10a:
1. The sense of life comes from the divine life (Eph. 4:18), the law of life (Rom. 8:2; Heb. 8:10), and the anointing of the Spirit (1 John 2:27).
2. The sense of life on the negative side is the feeling of death, and on the positive side it is the feeling of life and peace— Rom. 8:6; Isa. 26:3.
3. We should live according to the sense of life in the principle of life, not according to the principle of right and wrong, the principle of death.
4. This is to live according to the principle of the tree of life, not according to the principle of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—Gen. 2:9.
5. The sense of life makes us 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.
B. "In order to serve God and work for Him, a Christian must learn to stay away from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil… Only those who touch the tree of life will see their life and work remaining in the New Jerusalem" (Messages Given during the Resumption of Watchman Nee's Ministry, vol. 1, pp. 94-95).
VI. Ultimately, our enjoyment of the indwelling Spirit as the auto-matic law of the divine life, the law of the Spirit of life, is in the Body of Christ and for the Body of Christ with the goal of making us God in life, nature, and expression but not in the God head to accomplish the goal of His eternal economy—the New Jeru salem—Rom. 8:2, 28-29; 12:1-2; 11:36; 16:27; Phil. 1:19; cf. Gal. 4:26-28, 31.