As we have seen, God has two sections of His work according to His plan, the work of creation and the work of building. God’s creation is for His building. Creation was according to His intention to build something by mingling Himself with His creatures. The first two chapters of the sixty-six books of the Scriptures deal with God’s creation, while the third chapter to the end of the Scriptures deal with God’s building. God’s creation was completed in the first two chapters, but from the third chapter until today and into the future is the time for God’s building.
At the completion of God’s work of creation there was the garden of Eden, the scenery of creation, and at the completion of God’s work of building there will be a city, the New Jerusalem, which is a sign, a symbol, of God’s building. In the garden there were many created things, but there was nothing built. However, in the garden there were the materials for the building: gold, bdellium (pearl), and onyx, a precious stone. At the end of the Scriptures, these three items-gold, pearl, and precious stones-are built together in the city. The entire city of New Jerusalem is of gold, the gates are pearl, and the foundations of the wall are precious stones. All the above show us that in the whole universe, according to God’s plan, there are only two sections of the divine work: creation and building. Today we are in the period of God’s building and under the process of God’s building.
The principle of God’s building is that God builds Himself into us and builds us into Him; that is, God mingles Himself with us, divinity with humanity, as one building. To create is to bring something into existence out of nothing. Building, on the other hand, means that two things that are already here are put together. God is here, and man is here, but now there is the need of some work to bring God together with man as one and to bring so many persons together as one in God and with God. This is the work of building.
Now we know the principle of God’s building, and we know what God’s work is in these days, the period, the age, of building. What God always has been doing, and what He still is doing, is working Himself into us, working us into God, and bringing all of us together as one in God and through God. We may illustrate this with concrete. God is the cement, the Spirit is the water, and we are the stones. When the cement is put into the water and the stones are put into the cement, the stones are bound together by the cement and water. The result is a building of concrete.
God first carried out His building work by coming as the divine Person to be incarnated into humanity to build a man with God, that is, to build a God-man. In the four thousand years from the time of Adam to the time of Christ there were many millions of people, but not one of them was a building of God with man. Before the incarnation, God was God, and man was man. God and man, man and God, were never mingled as one until the day that God Himself was incarnated to be born in a manger as a man. This man was a unique man, God mingled with man, a man with God, a God-man. What God did to work Himself into man and work man into Himself was the beginning of the divine building.
The Gospel of John deals with the matter of life. However, we must also see that this Gospel deals with the building. The apostle John wrote this Gospel, his Epistles, and the last book of the Scriptures, Revelation. At the end of Revelation there is a city with the tree of life. The city is the building, and the tree is the life. Therefore, in the New Jerusalem there are life and building. Life is for the building, and the building is of life.
In the Gospel of John, there is also life for the building. The Lord Jesus came that we may have life, and He came as life to us (10:10). John 1:1 and 4 say, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God....In Him was life.” Moreover, verse 14 says that He was incarnated to be a man, and this very man is a tabernacle. That a tabernacle is a building shows that this very God with life in Him is for the building.
At the end of the first chapter of John, the Lord told Nathanael that he would see the angels of God ascending and descending upon Him as the Son of Man (v. 51). As we have seen, this refers to Jacob’s dream, which was a dream of building. In this dream there were the heavenly ladder and the open heaven. Jacob poured oil upon the stone which he had used as his pillow, and he called it a building, Bethel, the house of God. The house of God is man as the stones and the Holy Spirit as the oil poured upon him. When the Holy Spirit is poured upon us, we become Bethel, the house of God.
The Lord came in the flesh as a tabernacle, and He told us that He is the heavenly ladder, which is for Bethel, the house of God and the temple of God. This shows us that the Lord coming to be life to us is for the purpose of God’s building, the house of God. This is dealt with in the first chapter of John.
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