Prayer: Lord, we look unto You. Be with us and speak to us. Lord, have mercy upon us that we all may be open to You. Thank You for Your speaking. Lord, be with us to the uttermost. Speak a word to our hearts, to each one of us. Cover us with Your prevailing blood. Thank You again for Your presence. Amen.
In the previous chapter, we shared concerning being renewed day by day. In that fellowship we pointed out that God has an eternal goal to produce a new creation out of the old creation. God desires to have a new creation. We saw that God spends a long time to take His people through a long process for the producing of a new creation. God spends four dispensations to do His work. These dispensations are the dispensation of the fathers, the dispensation of law, the dispensation of grace, and the dispensation of the kingdom. God uses these four dispensations to create a new creation out of His old creation.
The old creation does not have the divine life and nature, but the new creation does (John 1:13; 3:15; 2 Pet. 1:4). Anything created by God that does not have God in it as its life, nature, appearance, and expression is old, but anything that has God within it as its life, nature, appearance, and expression is a new creation. Before we were regenerated, we were the old creation. After we were regenerated, we became a new creation. To be regenerated is to be made a new creation. Second Corinthians 5:17 says, “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.” In the sense of being in Christ, we are the new creation, but in actuality in our daily life, we are not that new because we do not have Christ as the only One that occupies us, that fills us up, and that is our life, nature, appearance, and expression. Even though we have been regenerated to be made a new creation, we are still the old creation most of the time according to our daily walk in actuality. Regardless of how long we have been in the Lord, we still keep our old habits. Sometimes we live in the spirit to live Christ, but most of the time we still live in our old habit, our old nature. We have to admit that this is the old creation. We are regenerated, but still today there is a mixture in our daily living. Our living is partly the new creation and even more the old creation.
In our morning watch with the Lord, we may really enjoy, praise, and worship Him. At that time in our morning watch, we are the new creation. After our time with the Lord in the morning, we may come to the dining table and confront something that is not so pleasant to us. Then we may say something that is not proper and that our conscience condemns. We may call that a failure, a defeat, a mistake, an offense, or a sin. What happened at the dining table, however, was not merely a sin, an offense, a mistake, a failure, or a defeat. That was our old creation.
At the Lord’s table, we praise and worship the Lord, and it seems that we all are the new creation. While we are the new creation, though, we are even more the old creation because we are so much in our old habit. We were born into the old creation, and we have been living according to our old habit for years. When I talk about our habit, I do not only mean things that are bad. One person may be very slow according to his natural constitution, while another person may be very quick. It is easy for quick persons to make mistakes, whereas slow persons are slow in doing things and in producing things. Regardless of whether we are quick or slow, however, we are the old creation. What we are in our natural constitution according to our birth is the old creation. Some people are talkative according to their natural constitution while others are quiet. Although some talkative ones may function in the meetings, we should not think that all the functioning is of the new creation. Some functioning may be according to a person’s quick temperament in his natural constitution. Some will never speak because they have a quiet disposition. Both the talkative ones and the quiet ones are the old creation.
What shall the Lord do with us? He surely does not want the old creation. We have God doctrinally, but we may lack God as our life and nature in our daily life. We may be slow in our disposition, but many times God’s nature is to do things immediately, especially in the meetings. We may be quiet in our nature, but God wants us to be a new creation to utter something in the meetings against our natural habit. God desires that we all be His new creation, having Him as our nature. He also wants us to express Him. God is our portion, but can we say that He is our new habit? We all have to be brought out of our old habit into taking God as our new habit.
The New Testament says that God chose us before the foundation of the world and marked us out (Eph. 1:4-5). He desires to make His chosen ones the new creation. His way to do this is first to put Himself into us, to regenerate us. We are reborn, regenerated, to become God’s children. This is wonderful, but the New Testament reveals that regeneration alone is not adequate. After regenerating us, God has to renew us, sanctify us, transform us, conform us to His image, and glorify us. Transformation needs sanctification and also renewing. Transformation is a metabolic change. When we are transformed, a new element is added to us metabolically to replace the old element. The new element is God Himself. God is “new” (as a noun). There is no oldness with God.
After we have been regenerated, we have God, but we do not have much of God. This is why Colossians 2:19 says that we need to grow with the growth of God, or increase with the increase of God. This means that we grow by the increase of God within us. If we have little increase of God, we grow little. If we have much increase of God, we grow much. When we have God in us to the fullest, we will have the full growth. God has to be increased within us. When God is increasing within us, His new element is being added into us. When the divine element comes into us, it renews us regardless of whether we are slow or quick in our natural disposition. As we are contacting God, God infuses Himself as the divine element into our being. This new element is added into our existing element. When this new element is added into us, something is worked out within us.
God desires to add Himself into our being, but He does not increase in us when we do not contact Him. We may go through a period of time in which we do not contact God or pray to Him. Instead, we are doing everything by ourselves and in ourselves. During this time, God is not added into our being, and we are not increasing with the increase of God. This is why we encourage all the saints to have morning watch. Our morning watch with the Lord is not just for us to exercise our mind to read the letter of the Bible, but it is for us to exercise our spirit. This is why we have to say, “O Lord Jesus.” Our calling on the Lord is our spiritual breathing. We have to contact God by praying to Him and calling on Him. Then He adds Himself into us. When we contact Him, He is adding more and more of the divine element into our being. As the new element of God is being added into our being, this new element metabolically renews us. I may be a quick person naturally, but because God’s element comes into my being, this element renews my natural habit. I may be slow in my natural disposition, but God renews me with His element to discharge my old element.