Message Twelve

God’s Goal—the Divine Sonship
for God’s Corporate Expression as
the Household of the Faith, the New Creation,
and the Israel of God

Scripture Reading: Gal. 3:26; 6:10, 15-16, 18

1. The household of the faith is composed of all who are sons of God through faith in Christ—Gal. 3:26; 6:10:
   1. This universal household is a great family, and the name of this family is faith; we are all members of the faith-home, the household of believers:
      1. The believers walk by faith, which is “the substantiation of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen”—Heb. 11:1; 2 Cor. 4:13, 18; 5:7.
      2. The believers receive the Spirit by the hearing of faith; faith comes out of the hearing of the word—Gal. 3:2; Rom. 10:17:
         1. The written word of God is the Bible—John 5:39; 2 Tim. 3:15-17.
         2. The living word of God is Christ—John 1:1; Rev. 19:13.
         3. The applied word of God is the Spirit—Eph. 6:17; John 6:63.
         4. God in His written word is contacted as the living word and applied into us as the word of the Spirit so that we can gain the Triune God, who is able to give life to the dead and call the things not being as being (Rom. 4:17); thus, God embodied in Christ and realized as the Spirit is faith.
         5. The more that God is gained by us in this way, the more He becomes our faith; faith is the subjective God applied to our being.
   2. Nothing is impossible to faith—Matt. 17:20b; 19:26; Hymns, #535.
2. The new creation is a corporate, divine sonship (Gal. 3:26; 4:5, 7) brought forth through Christ’s redemption, the Spirit’s regeneration, and God’s dispensing of Himself into us, and through our entering collectively as the new man into an organic union with the Triune God (6:15; 3:27-29):
   1. The new creation is the masterpiece of life with the divine nature—2 Cor. 5:17:
      1. The old creation does not have the divine life and nature, but the new creation, constituted of the believers, who are born again of God, does—John 1:13; 3:15; 2 Pet. 1:4.
      2. The new creation is the one new man, where there is no room for our natural being, our natural disposition, and our natural character—Gal. 3:27-29; Col. 3:10-11.
   2. “A new creation is what matters”—Gal. 6:15b:
      1. The main issue in Galatians is that we are the new creation and that we should live by the new creation through an organic union with the Triune God; the new creation fulfills God’s eternal purpose, which to express Himself in His sonship—4:5; Heb. 2:10; Rom. 8:29.
      2. We need to “walk by this rule,” by the rule of being a new creation; to walk by this rule is to walk by the Spirit—Gal. 6:15-16; 5:25:
         1. To live a new creation as sons of God is to walk by the divine life and divine nature as a governing, elementary principle; in this way we shall be a vast, universal, corporate expression of the Triune God as the consummation of the divine sonship.
         2. We need to walk by the same rule of the new creation, that is, we must pursue Christ as the goal that we may gain Christ to the fullest extent as the prize for the upward calling of God—Phil. 3:13-16.
   3. Christ, the Spirit, the new creation, and our spirit are the four basic things revealed in the book of Galatians as the underlying thought of God’s economy:
      1. Christ is the center of God’s economy, and the Spirit is the reality of Christ; when Christ is realized through the Spirit in our spirit, we become the new creation—Gal. 1:16; 2:20; 4:19; 3:2-3, 14; 5:16, 25; 6:15, 18.
      2. Hence, our spirit is vital for us to live the life of the new creation for the fulfilling of God’s purpose—v. 18.
3. The Israel of God (v. 16) is the real Israel (Rom. 9:6b; 2:28-29; Phil. 3:3), including all the Gentile and Jewish believers in Christ, who are the true sons of Abraham (Gal. 3:7, 29), who are the household of the faith (6:10), and who are those in the new creation (v. 15):
   1. The real Israel, the spiritual Israel, is the church; there is the need for the Lord to recover the real Israel of God—v. 16; 3:7, 29.
   2. Peace rains upon the real Israel of God, upon those who walk by the rule of living a new creation by sowing unto the Spirit—6:7-10, 15-16.
   3. Those who are included in the real Israel walk by “this rule” (v. 16), express God’s image, and execute God’s authority; they are typified by Jacob, who was transformed into Israel, a prince of God and a victor (Gen. 32:27-28):
      1. In Jacob we see God the Father who loves man and chooses man—Mal. 1:2; Rom. 9:10-13.
      2. In Jacob we see our being destined to live a struggling life all our days through the discipline of the Spirit for the Spirit’s transforming work within us—Gen. 32:24-32; Heb. 12:6-11; 2 Cor. 3:18.
      3. In Jacob we see God the Spirit who works in all things for the good of His lovers, transforms man, and makes man mature in the divine life that man may be able to bless all the people, to rule over all the earth, and to satisfy all the people with God the Son as the life supply—Gen. 27:41; 28:1—35:10; chs. 37, 39—49; Rom. 8:28-29.
   4. By living the mingled life of the new creation, we shall be the Israel of God on earth today, His princes and victors executing His authority and representing His government—cf. Rev. 2:26-27.
      1. Our destiny is not only to be sons of God; it is to be kings reigning in the kingdom of God; Paul’s word about the Israel of God implies that we need to live in a kingly way with a kingly walk—Rom. 5:17, 21.
      2. To be proper sons of God it is sufficient to have the fruit of the Spirit, but to be kings, the Israel of God, we need another kind of living, a particular kind of walk by the Spirit; we need both the living of the sons of God and that of the Israel of God—Gal. 5:16, 25.
   5. This kingly, overcoming living builds up the Body of Christ to issue in the ultimate consummation of the Israel of God, the New Jerusalem—Rev. 21:2.