THE ALL-INCLUSIVE, EXTENSIVE CHRIST REPLACING CULTURE FOR THE ONE NEW MAN TABLE OF CONTENTS
Message Six
The Universal History according to God's Economy— the Divine History within the Human History to Fulfill the Lord's Heart's Desire to Have the One New Man in Reality
Scripture Reading: Joel 1:4; 3:11; Eph. 1:3-6; 2:15; 4:22-24; Micah 5:2; Rev. 19:7-9
I. In this universe there are two histories: the history of man, the human history, and the history of God, the divine history; the former is like an outward shell, and the latter, like the kernel within the shell—cf. Joel 1:4:
A. The divine history within the human history is revealed in the Bible in considerable detail; God's history is our history because He is in union with us:
1. We need to see God's history in eternity past as a preparation for His move to be in union with man:
a. The divine history began with the eternal God and His economy; according to His economy, God wants to work Himself into man to be one with man, to be man's life, life supply, and everything, and to have man as His expression—Eph. 3:9-10; 1:10; Gen. 1:26; 2:9.
b. God in His Divine Trinity held a council in eternity to make the determination concerning the crucial death of Christ for the carrying out of God's eternal economy—Acts 2:23.
c. The second of the Divine Trinity was preparing to carry out His "goings forth" from eternity into time to be born in Bethlehem as a man—Micah 5:2.
d. God blessed the believers in Christ with the spiritual blessings in the heavenlies before the foundation of the world—Eph. 1:3-6.
2. God's history in man began with the incarnation and continued with His processes of human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension; Hosea 11:4 says that these are the cords of a man, the bands of love:
a. The divine history, God's move in man, is with the processed Christ, the God-man, as the prototype, unto the new man to consummate in the New Jerusalem, the great God-man, the ultimate fulfillment of God's eternal economy.
b. Through Christ's incarnation and human living, He brought the infinite God into the finite man, He united and mingled the Triune God with the tripartite man, and He expressed in His humanity the bountiful God in His rich attributes through His aromatic virtues.
c. Christ's crucifixion was a vicarious death, an all-inclusive death, an all-inclusive judicial redemption, which terminated the old creation and solved all problems (John 1:29); in His crucifixion He redeemed all the things created by God and fallen in sin (Heb. 2:9; Col. 1:20), He created (conceived) the new man with His divine element (Eph. 2:15), and He released His divine life from within the shell of His humanity (John 12:24; 19:34; Luke 12:49-50).
d. In His resurrection He was begotten to be the firstborn Son of God (Acts 13:33; Rom. 1:4; 8:29), He became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b), and He regenerated millions of people to be sons of God as members of the Body of Christ and constituents of the one new man, the church (1 Pet. 1:3; Col. 3:10-11).
e. He ascended to the heavens and then descended as the Spirit to produce the church as the one new man for the corporate expression of the Triune God—Joel 2:28-32; Acts 2:1-4, 16-21.
B. Thus, the church as the reality of the one new man is also a part of the divine history, the intrinsic history of the divine mystery within the outward, human history; at the end of this part of the divine history, Christ will come back with His overcomers as His army (Joel 1:4; 3:11) to defeat Antichrist and his army.
C. Following this, the thousand-year kingdom will come; eventually, this kingdom will consummate in the New Jerusalem in the new heaven and new earth; the New Jerusalem will be the ultimate, the consummate, step of God's history.
II. With Peter (the fishing ministry), Paul (the building ministry), and John (the mending ministry), we can see the Lord's heart's desire to have the one new man:
A. God used Peter on the day of Pentecost to bring in many Jewish believers (Acts 2:5-11); furthermore, Cornelius received a vision in prayer (10:30), and Peter also received a vision in prayer (vv. 17, 19) through which God's plan and move (vv. 9b-14, 27-29) to gain the Gentiles for the practical existence of the one new man were carried out.
B. Paul unveils in Ephesians 2:14-15 that Christ created both the Jews and the Gentiles into one new man through His new-man-creating death (cf. 4:22-24); Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 12:13 that we were all baptized into one Body, "whether Jews or Greeks"; in Galatians 3:27-28 Paul tells us that those who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ, and "there cannot be Jew nor Greek"; in Colossians 3:10-11 Paul tells us that the Jew and the Greek have no place in the new man.
C. John tells us that the Lord purchased by His blood "men out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation" (Rev. 5:9); these redeemed ones constitute the church as the one new man; through John we also see that the churches are the golden lampstands (1:11-12), and consummately, these lampstands become the New Jerusalem; in the lampstands and in the New Jerusalem we can see no differences in peoples.
D. This all indicates that daily we need to put off the old man and put on the new man by drinking of the one Spirit (1 Cor. 12:13) so that we may be renewed in the spirit of our mind in every area of our practical daily life for the carrying out of the Lord's heart's desire to have the one new man in reality (Eph. 4:22-24).
III. With the divine history there is the new creation—the new man with a new heart, a new spirit, a new life, a new nature, a new history, and a new consummation—Hymns, #16; Ezek. 36:26; 2 Cor. 3:16; Matt. 5:8; Titus 3:5:
A. The divine history, the history of God in man, was from Christ's incarnation through His ascension to become the life-giving Spirit and then continues with His indwelling us through God's organic salvation of regeneration, sanctification, renewing, transformation, conformation, and glorification to bring us into the full reality of the one new man and to make us the glorious bride of Christ—Eph. 4:22-24; Rom. 5:10; Rev. 19:7-9.
B. Now we need to ask ourselves this question: Are we living in the divine history, or are we living merely in the human history?
1. We all were born in the human history, but we have been reborn, regenerated, in the divine history; if our living is in the world, we are living in the human history; but if we are living in the church as the reality of the one new man, we are living in the divine history; in the church life God's history is our history; now two parties—God and we—have one history, the divine history.
2. We praise the Lord that we are in the divine history, experiencing and enjoying the mysterious, divine things for our organic salvation and for His spreading through the preaching of the gospel of peace to the whole inhabited earth (Eph. 2:14-17; 6:15; cf. Matt. 24:14) so that we may become the one new man in reality to be His overcoming bride.