We have seen that the New Jerusalem is a full picture of all the building work of God throughout the generations. It condenses all the thoughts, main points, and main lines of all the Scriptures. If we study the Scriptures carefully with the help of the Holy Spirit, we will be very clear that God’s intention is to give Himself to us as life in Christ and through the Holy Spirit. In this way, God is able to mingle Himself with us and cause us to be built together as a corporate Body, a corporate vessel, a corporate container, to contain God in Christ through the Spirit and to express God through Christ. This is the central thought of God.
God is triune; God the Father is embodied in the Son, and the Son is realized as the Spirit. First, God flows out to be life to us in Christ. When Christ came, He told us that He is the bread of life which comes down out of heaven, the food of eternal life from heaven (John 6:47-51). Second, God flows out to be life to us by the Holy Spirit, who is the living water for us to drink (7:37-39). God first flowed out to us through the Lord Jesus as our food supply, and then He flowed Himself into us as the Holy Spirit to be the living water for us to drink. God the Father in the Son is food to us, and God the Father as the Spirit is drink, the living water, to us. Therefore, we can feed on the Lord Jesus and drink of the Holy Spirit. When we feed on the Lord Jesus and drink of the Holy Spirit, we enjoy the Triune God, we experience the Triune God, and we are mingled with the Triune God as one. In this very experience of this enjoyment of the Triune God, we are built up together as one corporate Body. On the one hand, this corporate Body is a bride for Christ, a counterpart to match Christ. On the other hand, this corporate Body is a habitation, a dwelling place, for God to be His satisfaction and rest. Eventually, when we come to the end of the Scriptures, we have the New Jerusalem as a picture, showing how God is everything to us, how He is life to us in Christ, how He is the living water to us in Christ through the Holy Spirit, how He by being life and everything to us is mingled with us, and how He builds us together as one corporate Body to contain Him in order to express Him. In the holy city, the New Jerusalem, God is everything in Christ through the Spirit.
The writer of Revelation, the apostle John, is the same as the writer of the Gospel of John. If you pay full attention to this matter, you will realize that all the things the apostle John spoke of concerning the Lord Jesus in his Gospel are condensed and embodied in the picture of the New Jerusalem. In his Gospel, John tells us that the Lord Jesus is the Lamb of God (1:29). He also tells us that the Lord Jesus is the Bridegroom who has the bride (3:29-30) and that He is the light (1:4; 8:12), the way, the reality, and the life (14:6). Then he tells us that the Lord Jesus is the living bread from heaven, full of the life supply, and the living water (6:51; 7:37). All these items are condensed and embodied in the picture of the New Jerusalem.
Furthermore, the picture depicted in the last two chapters of the entire Scriptures concerning the New Jerusalem corresponds to the picture portrayed in the first two chapters of the Scriptures. In the first two chapters of the Bible we see the tree of life, and we also see a river flowing by the tree of life. Then we see gold, bdellium (pearl), and precious stones in the flow of the river by the tree of life. Here there is the tree of life, the flow of the river, and three items of precious materials for the building. Now in the last two chapters of the Bible, again we see the tree of life, the river of water of life, and the gold, pearls, and precious stones as materials for the building.
There is a difference between the materials at the beginning of the Bible and the materials at the end of the Bible. In Genesis 2 the three precious items were merely materials; they were not yet built. The materials were present, but there was not yet a building. However, when we come to the ultimate consummation, we see a building built with these three kinds of materials. The holy city, the New Jerusalem as the divine building, is built with gold, pearls, and precious stones. Whereas at the beginning of the Scriptures we have a garden, at the end of the Scriptures we have a city. A garden is a scene of nature, of God’s creation; a city is something built up with the materials created by God. In the first two chapters of the Scriptures we see a beautiful scenery of God’s creation centered on a garden. But at the end of the Scriptures we see a beautiful building as the ultimate conclusion of the building work of God throughout all the generations.
If you would ask me what God has been doing from Genesis 3 to Revelation 20, I will tell you that God has been doing only one thing, that is, the work of building. God is carrying out this work by building Himself with His chosen and redeemed people. God is the Creator, and all creation is the creature with humans as the center. Although He is the Creator, His intention is to build Himself into man as His creature to mingle Himself with him. He desires to be the contents of His creature and to make His creature a vessel to contain Him, the Creator. This is the very central thought of God, and this is the real meaning of the church. What is the church? The church is a composition of created human beings mingled with the Creator. The Creator, the Triune God, is the contents of this people, and this people is built up together as a corporate Body to contain God and express God in Christ through the Holy Spirit. Therefore, the church is a group of people who are regenerated by God, filled by God, occupied by God, transformed by God, and who contain God and express God all the time. This is the very meaning of the church. God in Christ through the Spirit is the contents of this corporate Body, and this corporate Body is the vessel to contain God and express God. The reason we must spend so much time on this picture of the New Jerusalem is that this is the only picture in all the Scriptures which fully shows us the real situation, the real condition, and the real nature of the church.
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