The believers are the believing ones in Christ, who are the household of faith (Gal. 6:10). In the universe there are many houses with many households. But there is one particular house with millions of members. That is the house of faith. We belong to this house. This is a big family, and the family name is faith. This is the home of faith. We may say that a certain home is the Smith home or the Lee home. Now we are all members of the “faith home.”
We are believers, who do not believe nonsensical things. We believe in the word, and the word has three stages: the written word, the living word, and the applied word. Over two thousand years ago, there was only the written word, not the living word, because Christ was not here yet. Today we have the living word. Without Christ as the living word, it was very hard for God’s word to become the applied word as the Spirit. This is because before Christ came, the Spirit was mostly objective; He was not yet within God’s people. Before Christ, the Spirit of God was upon God’s people. But today we have the Triune God embodied in Christ and realized as the all-inclusive, compound, life-giving Spirit indwelling us all the time. Thus, when we touch the Bible, right away the Bible can become living and applied.
We are the members of the family, the household, of faith. This faith house is a house that believes in God through His word. Hebrews 1 says that God has spoken (v. 2). This word becomes the living word, Christ, and this living word is applied by the Spirit. Then we have the Triune God as the word in us.
The believers’ faith in Christ brings them into the life union with Christ (John 3:15, 36). This is my point in this message.
In just thirty-three and a half years, from Christ’s incarnation to His resurrection, great things were accomplished in the universe. The worldly people do not see these things, but thank God for His mercy to mankind. Whatever took place in these thirty-three and a half years as great things has been written in the New Testament. Today when we read the New Testament, we have to see all these great things.
The New Testament begins with a genealogy. Matthew 1:1 says, “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” This is Christ’s incarnation. The first great thing that was accomplished in the whole universe was God’s incarnation, God’s becoming a man. Then there was His living for thirty-three and a half years, recorded in the four Gospels. How great this was! Then He entered into death, passed through death, came out of death, and entered into resurrection. In the Lord’s recovery, we have published thousands of messages on these things.
Three results came out of His resurrection. First, He, the only begotten Son of God, became the firstborn Son of God (Rom. 8:29), indicating many sons of God are following. So the second thing is that millions of us, the believers, were born with Him (1 Pet. 1:3). He was born as the firstborn Son of God, and we were born as the many sons of God. We are His “twins.” Third, this One, who was the Only Begotten becoming the Firstborn with many twins, became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b), and this life-giving Spirit is the consummation and aggregate of the processed Triune God. Out of this consummation of the Triune God, the church came into being, and the church as the house of God is the Body of Christ. This Body of Christ is the organism of the Triune God which consummates in the New Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem will remain in the new heaven and new earth as a city expressing God for eternity in divinity mingled with humanity. This is our New Testament.
When we read the New Testament, we read these things. The more we read, the more we contact the written word of the New Testament. Then we have Christ as the living word and the Spirit as the applied word. The word of God is embodied in Christ and realized in the Spirit to be our faith. This faith brings us into the life union with Christ, who is the embodiment of God realized as the all-inclusive Spirit. Faith links us with the Triune God.