Message Five

Being Saved in Life and Reigning in Life for the Body Life

Scripture Reading: Rom. 5:10, 17, 21

1. Through God’s divine dispensing in us and His divine union with us, we can experience and enjoy the saving in Christ’s life in God’s full salvation, as conveyed to us in Romans, in the following aspects—5:10:
   1. By the abundance of grace (God Himself) and of the gift of righteousness (Christ Himself) which we received, we are able to reign in Christ’s divine life over sin, death, the old man, the flesh, Satan, the world, and all persons, matters, and things that do not submit to God—v. 17.
   2. God’s holy nature sanctifies our worldly disposition; God sanctifies us dispositionally out of His divine life and unto His divine life that we may enjoy more of His divine life—6:19, 22; 15:16.
   3. The indwelling law of the Spirit of life, that is, the automatic and spontaneous working of the Triune God as life in us, frees us from the law of sin and of death, the slavery and bondage of sin; the operation of this law comes out of God’s divine life, and it also causes the increase of the divine life in us—8:2, 11.
   4. The Divine Trinity’s divine dispensing in our spirit, soul, and body causes these three parts to be saturated with the processed divine life, with the result that our entire being is completely united with the processed Triune God and mingled with Him as one—vv. 5-11.
   5. The renewing of our mind by the Spirit results in the transformation of our soul, which saves us from being conformed to the modern style of the world and issues in all the virtues and the overcoming, mentioned in chapters 12 through 16, as our daily life, a life of the highest standard, and as our church life, a life that is all-overcoming—12:2.
   6. By the renewing of our mind and the transformation of our soul, we become members one of another with all believers in the Body of Christ and are built up together as the Body of Christ and thereby have the service of the Body; this is the crystallization of our experience of the saving in Christ’s life—vv. 1, 3-8.
   7. Based on the revelation and teaching in chapters 14 through 16, we live the life of the local church in different localities as the appearance of the Body of Christ, the universal church, in different localities.
   8. By becoming the built-up church, a church against which the gates of Hades cannot prevail, in different localities, we afford God the opportunity to crush Satan under our feet that we may enjoy Christ as our rich grace and the God of peace as our surpassing peace—16:20.
   9. In our experience of the various aspects of the saving in the divine life, as mentioned above, we are being conformed to the image of the firstborn Son of God through the “all things” arranged under God’s sovereignty, so that we have His divine attributes and His human virtues and thereby express the glory and beauty of Him, the God-man—8:28-29.
   10. In the process of our experience of the saving in the divine life, the splendor of the divine life gradually saturates us until it saturates our body, issuing in the redemption of our body, that our spirit, soul, and body may all enter into the glory of God; this glorification is the peak attained in us by the saving in the divine life, and it is the climax of God’s full salvation—vv. 23, 30, 17.
2. Romans reveals that the believers need to reign in life with grace over all things for the Body life—5:10, 17, 21:
   1. God’s complete salvation is for us to reign in life by the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness:
      1. The gift of righteousness is for God’s judicial redemption; grace is for us to experience God’s organic salvation.
      2. Reigning in life is the full experience of the organic salvation of God.
   2. We have been regenerated with a divine, spiritual, heavenly, kingly, and royal life—Mark 4:26; 1 John 3:9.
   3. Reigning in life in Romans 5 is the key to everything in Romans 6—16:
      1. We need to see everything in chapters 6 through 16 in this light.
      2. If we reign in life, we are in all the matters presented in these chapters.
   4. In experience, to reign in life means to be under the ruling of the divine life:
      1. Christ is a pattern of reigning in life by being under the ruling of the divine life of the Father—Matt. 8:9.
      2. Paul is an example of one who, in his life and ministry, was under the ruling of the divine life to live to the Lord for the Body—2 Cor. 2:12-14; 5:14; Rom. 14:7-9.
      3. There is the need for all the believers who have received the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness to practice the restriction and limitation in the divine life.
   5. The issue of our reigning in life, living under the ruling of the divine life, is the real and practical Body life expressed in the church life.
   6. Each item of the living of the Body life in Romans 12—13 requires us to be ruled by the divine life to live to the Lord:
      1. We need to be captivated by the compassions of God—12:1a.
      2. We must present our bodies as a living sacrifice—v. 1b.
      3. We should not be fashioned according to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind—v. 2.
      4. We should not think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think, but think so as to be sober-minded, as God has apportioned to each a measure of faith—v. 3.
      5. We should consider that in the Body of Christ we have many members, and all the members do not have the same function—vv. 4-5.
   7. We need to live a life of the highest virtues for the Body life by reigning in life:
      1. We should love without hypocrisy and love one another warmly in brotherly love—vv. 9a, 10a.
      2. We should not be slothful in zeal, but burning in spirit, serving the Lord—v. 11.
      3. We should endure in tribulation—v. 12b.
      4. We should rejoice with those who rejoice, and we should weep with those who weep—v. 15.
      5. If possible, as far as it depends on us, we should live in peace with all men—v. 18.
   8. Reigning in life is “unto eternal life”—5:21:
      1. Unto eternal life is a particular expression.
      2. John 4:14b says, “The water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into eternal life”:
         1. Into (unto in Romans 5:21) speaks of destination and also means “to become” or “to be.”
         2. The eternal life will eventually be the New Jerusalem.
         3. Into eternal life means “into the New Jerusalem.”
      3. The New Jerusalem is the totality of the divine life, the totality of the life of God.
      4. The issue and goal of our reigning in life are for us to become the New Jerusalem, the universal incorporation of the union and mingling of divinity with humanity.