Message Twelve

The New Jerusalem—
the Ultimate Consummation
of the Building of God

Scripture Reading: John 1:14; 2:19-21; Rev. 21:3, 22;
2 Sam. 7:12-14a; Rom. 1:3-4; 8:28-29

1. The New Jerusalem is the ultimate consummation of the building of God into man and of man into God, the building of a great corporate God-man as the mutual abode of God and man, the universal incorporation of the processed and consummated Triune God with the processed and consummated tripartite man—John 1:14; 2:19-21; Rev. 21:3, 22.
2. Second Samuel 7:12-14a is a prophecy in typology revealing that the desire of God’s heart is the building of God into man (God becoming man) and the building of man into God (man becoming God) for the building of a great corporate God-man, the New Jerusalem:
   1. The seed of David (v. 12) becoming the Son of God (v. 14a) is the building of God into man and the building of man into God for the building of God’s house, the mutual abode of God and man (v. 13); this is the fulfillment of the greatest prophecy in the Bible—Rom. 1:3-4; Matt. 16:18.
   2. Christ “came out of the seed of David according to the flesh” (building God into man in incarnation), and He “was designated the Son of God” (building man into God) in resurrection—Rom. 1:3-4:
      1. By His incarnation Christ, the only begotten Son of God in His divinity (John 1:18), built God into man, into David’s lineage, to become the seed of David, the son of David.
      2. In resurrection Christ’s humanity was deified, sonized, meaning that He became the Son of God not only in His divinity but also in His humanity; in resurrection He was designated the Son of God, made the firstborn Son of God, possessing both divinity and humanity—Rom. 1:3-4; 8:29.
      3. If a seed dies by being buried in the soil, it will eventually sprout, grow, and blossom in resurrection, because the operation of the seed’s life is activated simultaneously with its death; in resurrection Christ “blossomed” as the firstborn Son of God, and He became the life-giving Spirit to dispense, to build, Himself as life into our being to be our inner constitution—John 12:23-24; Acts 13:33; 1 Pet. 3:18.
3. As seeds of humanity, we are becoming sons of God with divinity, being “divinized” in our humanity through the metabolic process of transformation; this metabolic process is the building up of the church as the Body of Christ and the house of God by the building of God into man and of man into God, consummating in the New Jerusalem as a great corporate God-man, the aggregate, the totality, of all the sons of God—Heb. 2:10; Rev. 21:7; Rom. 8:28-29:
   1. The life of the Son of God has been implanted into our spirit; now we, like the seed that is sown into the earth, must pass through the process of death and resurrection—v. 10; John 12:24-26:
      1. Losing our soul-life through death causes the outer man to be consumed, but it enables the inner life to grow, to develop, and ultimately, to blossom; this is resurrection—1 Cor. 15:31, 36; 2 Cor. 4:10-12, 16.
      2. The more we grow in life for our transformation in life, the more we are designated the sons of God to be deified for God’s building—1 Cor. 3:9:
         1. In order to grow, we need to feed on the guileless milk and the solid food of the word—1 Pet. 2:2; Heb. 5:12-14.
         2. In order to grow, we need the watering of the gifted members—1 Cor. 3:6b; John 7:37-39; Prov. 11:25.
         3. Through all the things in our environment and by our failures, our ugly self is torn down, and the Lord has a greater opportunity to work within us—Rom. 8:28-29.
         4. One day this process will be completed, and for eternity we will be the same as Christ, God’s firstborn Son, in our spirit, soul, and body—1 John 3:2; Rom. 8:19, 23; Hymns, #948, stanza 2.
   2. In resurrection Christ in His humanity was designated the Son of God, and by means of such a resurrection we also are in the process of being designated sons of God—Rom. 8:11; cf. Hosea 6:1-3:
      1. The process of our being designated, sonized, deified, is the process of resurrection with four main aspects—sanctification, transformation, conformation, and glorification—Rom. 6:22; 12:2; 8:29-30.
      2. The key to the process of designation is resurrection, which is the indwelling Christ as the rising-up Spirit, the designating Spirit, the power of life in our spirit—John 11:25; Rom. 8:10-11; Acts 2:24; 1 Cor. 15:26; 5:4:
         1. We urgently need to learn how to walk according to the spirit, to enjoy and experience the designating Spirit—Rom. 8:4, 14.
         2. The more we touch the Spirit, the more we are sanctified, transformed, conformed, and glorified to become God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead for the building up of the Body of Christ to consummate the New Jerusalem—1 Cor. 12:3; Rom. 10:12; 8:15-16; Gal. 4:6.
4. As we work for God today, we should participate in God’s building—the constitution of the divine element into the human element and of the human element into the divine element—John 14:20; 15:4a; 1 John 4:15:
   1. We need God in Christ to build Himself into us, making our heart, our intrinsic constitution, His home—Eph. 3:16-19.
   2. We need to practice one thing—to minister the processed and consummated Triune God into others so that He may build Himself into their inner man; we need to pray that the Lord will teach us to work in this way—2 Cor. 13:14; 1 Cor. 3:9a, 10, 12a.
   3. When we build the church with the processed and consummated Triune God, it is not actually we who are building; rather, God is building through us, using us as a means to dispense and transmit Himself into others—Acts 9:15.
   4. This building will consummate in the New Jerusalem for eternity, in which God’s redeemed are the tabernacle for God to dwell in and God Himself is the temple for His redeemed to dwell in—Rev. 21:3, 22.