John possessed the four characteristics given to man by God in the creation of man: having God’s image to express Him, having God’s authority to represent Him, having a human spirit to receive God, and having God’s life to live Him out. Furthermore, he had the good qualities of Abel, Noah, and Abraham of the age of individual priests, and he also inherited the arrangement of the age of the priesthood established by God. Not only so, he was a Nazarite, one who voluntarily consecrated himself to be a priest to God. He did not drink wine or liquor but was filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb (Luke 1:15). He was a person who lived absolutely for God and who was qualified to serve God. It was through him that God ended the institution of the Old Testament priests and initiated the reality of the New Testament priests. God bestowed on him an unprecedented, divine, and great commission to go forth to preach the gospel of the kingdom of God to bring people to repent and be baptized that they might enter into the kingdom of God. This was not a type but a reality. Furthermore, he told people that he was not Christ, he was not the reality, but he was a voice crying in the wilderness to preach the baptism of repentance and usher in the Christ who was to come. This is the way the dispensation of Christ as the reality arrived. The kingdom of God was no longer a type but a reality, and likewise the Christ of God is not a type but a reality. When people heard John’s preaching and repented, John immersed them into water. This means that he put people into death that they might be regenerated by Christ in the position of death and be raised from death to become God’s New Testament believers, those who truly have God’s life for them to live out God. John the Baptist offered these repentant and saved ones to God. Thus, the service of the priests of the gospel of God began with him.
After John the Baptist, the Lord Jesus came. He continued the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom of God that John the Baptist carried out (Matt. 4:17). He was the Christ of God as the embodiment of God to bring God to people. In His preaching of the gospel, He told people not only to repent but also to believe into Him and receive Him as the reality of God. After He had accomplished His gospel ministry, He was crucified and thereby accomplished an all-inclusive death, solving all the problems between God and man. Furthermore, through His redemptive death, He released the divine life. Then He was resurrected from death and imparted the divine life released by Him to everyone who believes in Him, so that all who believe in Him would be resurrected with Him to be the many sons of God. At the same time, He also became the life-giving Spirit to enter into His redeemed ones that they may be the many sons of God and the members of His Body. After accomplishing all these things, He ascended to the heavens on high and, as the all-inclusive Spirit, poured out what He had received of the Father so that all the members of His Body may receive, as He received, the power to go forth and preach the gospel as His witnesses.
Our gospel preaching today is mainly the preaching of such a Christ, who as the embodiment of God became the reality of God, solved all our problems through His crucifixion and resurrection, and released the divine life so that all who believe in Him may become the sons of God to express Him and the members of His Body to be presented to God. To serve God in this way is to be a priest of the gospel of God. Therefore, the work that is carried out by the New Testament priests of the gospel is still primarily to offer sacrifices. However, the sacrifices offered by the New Testament priests and the sacrifices offered by the Old Testament priests are altogether different. In the Old Testament, what the priests offered as sacrifices were bulls and goats, whereas in the New Testament, what the priests offer as sacrifices are sinners who have been saved into Christ and joined to Him. The bulls and goats as sacrifices in the Old Testament were types of Christ who was yet to come, whereas the redeemed sinners are in Christ who has now come. As such, they have become a part of Christ and are offered to God as living, spiritual sacrifices by the New Testament priests of the gospel.
These living sacrifices offered to God were chosen and predestinated by God before the foundation of the world and are called out from all the nations and peoples in the New Testament age. Hence, in the New Testament age, there is the need of a group of people to execute God’s calling by going to the sinners to blow the trumpet of the New Testament gospel. They are people who can express God and represent Him and who have the life of God and live Him out. They contact God constantly and are intimately close to Him. They know God’s heart, and they live and work according to His heart’s desire. They are a group of people who can bring God to people and who can also bring people into the presence of God. By God’s life and power and through their spiritual experience, they work on all those who have been chosen and called by God that they may make them, one by one, spiritual sacrifices in Christ. They not only make God’s chosen and called ones offerings to God once they are saved, but they also nourish them and lead them to grow in life that they may present themselves as living sacrifices to God. Furthermore, they teach and admonish every man in all wisdom until they can present to God every man full-grown in Christ. Thus, after these living sacrifices have been saved, have grown in life, and have been perfected, they arrive at the stage where they can serve as priests of the gospel of God, as the other believers do, to carry out the same kind of work on those who are to be saved after them. This work of the gospel is not merely for sinners to be regenerated as the children of God, as we may have thought in the past. Rather, the work of the gospel comprises every step from a sinner’s regeneration to his maturity in Christ.
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