In this message we want to see the renewing process that we need to pass through in our Christian life for God’s purpose. Second Corinthians 4:16 says that our inward man is being renewed day by day. Brother Nee once told us that the book of 2 Corinthians may be considered as an autobiography of the Apostle Paul. The life described in this Epistle is a life full of sufferings, but when we spend more time to get into the depths of this Epistle, we can see that it is actually talking about renewing. All the sufferings God has assigned to us have one unique purpose—to renew us. Regardless of whether we are good or bad, we are the old creation, but God in His economy desires to work out something new from His old creation. God spent a brief time to create the old creation. He spoke the things of the old creation into being in five days, He created man on the sixth day, and rested on the seventh day. This old creation is not God’s goal. Instead, the old creation is the material and sphere by which God gains something new.
According to the entire Bible, God uses four dispensations in His old creation to work out something new. The first dispensation is the dispensation before law, or the dispensation of the fathers from Adam to Moses’ giving of the law. The second dispensation is the dispensation of law from Moses’ giving of the law to the first coming of the Lord Jesus. The third dispensation is the dispensation of grace from the first coming of the Lord Jesus to His second coming. The fourth dispensation is the dispensation of the kingdom. After the Lord’s second coming, He will set up God’s government on this earth to practice God’s kingdom in its manifestation for one thousand years. In these four dispensations, which are all in the old creation, God works to produce the new creation. After the fourth dispensation, the new heaven and the new earth are brought in with the New Jerusalem as the center. The New Jerusalem is the composition of all God’s redeemed, regenerated, transformed, and glorified people. All of God’s redeemed people in God’s glorification will be the New Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem composed of God’s living, glorified people is absolutely new. Nothing old will be there.
Today we are in the process of being renewed to become the New Jerusalem. Thank God that today we are in the third dispensation, the dispensation of grace. In this dispensation, some wonderful things have happened. The first wonder that happened in this dispensation is that the Triune God Himself became a man. He did not only come to man but also came to man in His incarnation. He came to man by becoming a man. This is marvelous! The incarnation of the Triune God is many, many times greater than the creation of the heavens and the earth. One of the greatest wonders in this universe was God’s incarnation, His becoming a man. The very God, the complete God, entered into the womb of a human virgin and stayed there for nine months. Then He was born as a God-man. The little babe in the manger at Bethlehem whose name was Jesus was not only a man. He was both man and God, so He was a God-man.
The second wonder in the dispensation of grace is that the very God who created the heavens and the earth lived on this earth as a man, not just for a short period of time but for thirty-three and a half years. Instead of living in a famous place, He lived in a despised city of a despised region, Nazareth of Galilee. He was not born into a rich family, but into a poor family, and He did the work of a carpenter. We may say that this carpenter was Jesus, but we need to realize that Jesus was God. What a wonder that God lived on this earth for thirty-three and a half years!
The third wonder was His going to the cross to die an all-inclusive death. Through His death, He solved all the problems in the universe, terminating the entire old creation. In that all-inclusive death, He released His divine life.
The fourth wonder in the dispensation of grace was Christ’s resurrection and ascension. He rose up not only by Himself but also with all God’s chosen ones, including you and me. As a man, He ascended to the third heavens. From the earth to the moon is a short distance, but from the earth to the third heavens is a distance beyond the imagination of the human mind. In His ascension, He poured Himself out as the all-inclusive Spirit. That Spirit was the consummation of the Triune God. He poured out Himself as such a Spirit upon God’s chosen people to make them all His Body. Today we believers are parts of the Body of the wonderful Christ. All of these items have transpired as wonders, but our apprehension of these items is not so thorough. Because of our lack of vision, we suffer without seeing or apprehending God’s purpose in our suffering.