The genuine Christian perfection builds up the Body of Christ (Eph. 4:12, 16).
Our Christian perfection is now working to consummate the New Jerusalem as the eternal enlargement and expression of the processed and consummated Triune God (Rev. 21:1-21). We Christians today are building the New Jerusalem. We are consummating the New Jerusalem!
Strictly speaking, the new creation of God does not include the new heaven and the new earth. Only the New Jerusalem will be the new creation. It is the old creation rebuilt with the element of God. The new heaven and new earth are not produced in this way. They have no element of God. The difference between the new creation and the old creation is God's element. Through regeneration God's element has been constituted into His redeemed to make them the new creation.
The new heaven and new earth are called new, but they are not the new creation. The New Jerusalem is also called new, yet it is new with God's element. The new creation is composed only of God's redeemed, who are reconstituted, remade, with God Himself as the element. Second Corinthians 5:17 says that anyone who is in Christ is a new creation. Galatians 6:15 says, "For neither is circumcision anything nor uncircumcision, but a new creation is what matters." We are God's new creation, and the aggregate, the totality, of all God's redeemed people as the new creation is the New Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem is the Triune God mingled with His redeemed people.
The consummating work of the New Jerusalem as His new creation started in Genesis. All of God's redeemed, probably from Adam, the latest from Abel, have been participating in the consummation of the New Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem is built by God with Himself and all His redeemed. Hebrews 11 tells us that Abraham was expecting to enter into that city, the city designed and built by God (vv. 8-10). God builds the New Jerusalem within the four ages of the old creation: the age before the law, the age of law, the age of grace, and the age of the kingdom. Out of the old creation God builds the new creation with Himself plus all His redeemed.
We can see from this fellowship that there is no comparison between the functions of the Christian perfection stressed by James and those of the genuine Christian perfection. The Christian perfection stressed by James is far off.
According to all the marvelous items of the factors, the means, and the functions, as seen above, the Christian perfection (Christian living) should be the issue of the processed and consummated Triune God working Himself, in the all-inclusive Christ as the compounded Spirit, into His redeemed as their life and everything for the expression of Him. This excellent issue is nothing less than the glorious manifestation of the union of the processed divinity with the transformed humanity and the mingling of the Triune God with the tripartite man. This far, far transcends the human cultivation of one's self in developing his "bright virtue," which is merely the creation by God in man and not the God of glory wrought into man as the divine element for His mingling with man, making man God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead.