Due to our natural understanding and our natural desire, we treasure this kind of taste of the miraculous things more than the New Testament blessings. We must differentiate between the New Testament blessings and the miraculous things of the coming age. The first item of the blessings of the New Testament is regeneration (John 3:3, 6; 1 Pet. 1:23). Regeneration is to have a new birth, not merely a restoration or restitution. The second blessing we enjoy in the New Testament is the divine life (1 John 5:11-12) and the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4). We must praise and worship the Lord that we have received the life and nature of God. The indwelling Spirit is another New Testament blessing (Rom. 8:9, 16). The Spirit as the ultimate consummation of the processed Triune God lives in us (Eph. 4:6; 2 Cor. 13:5; Rom. 8:11). Transformation, which is the metabolic change of our being, is the fourth blessing of the New Testament (2 Cor. 3:18). Our natural being is being transformed into a divine being not by outward change, but by an inward, metabolic change by the divine life. Another New Testament blessing is that we human beings can be mingled with God and can join to Him as one. First Corinthians 6:17 says, “He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” Finally, we shall be like God and have the same image as God (1 John 3:2), being changed from glory to glory (2 Cor. 3:18) to enter into God’s glory (1 Pet. 5:10). Regeneration, the divine life and nature, the Triune God living in us, transformation, the mingling of God with man, the image of God and the likeness of God, and the glory of God are the New Testament blessings. All these New Testament blessings are the issues of the marvelous earthly ministry and the excellent heavenly ministry of the all-inclusive Christ for our enjoyment today.
In contrast to the New Testament blessings we can enjoy in this age, there are the works of power of the coming age. The blessings of miracles of the coming age include the casting out of demons, speaking in new tongues, handling the serpents, healing diseases, and overcoming the death poison. We must ask ourselves which category of blessings we prefer today—the New Testament blessings or the blessings of the coming age?
The tragedy today is that many Christians have never received any kind of vision of the marvelous New Testament blessings we can enjoy in this age. They do not have a view of the value of regeneration or of God’s life and nature. They do not know anything about the Triune God living in them, transformation, the mingling of God with man, the image of God, the likeness of God, or the glory of God. When many Christians read Mark 16, however, they get excited. All the outward miracles such as casting out demons, speaking in tongues, picking up serpents, drinking the poison and still being able to live, and healing the diseases, have become the attractive things to many Christians. Many Christians have no realization of the New Testament blessings but are seeking after the miraculous, outward signs. But the Lord would not entrust Himself to the miracle seekers (John 2:23-25). In John 3, however, Nicodemus, who was a man of the Pharisees, came to the Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus did not heal him and did not perform any miracles, but He told him that he needed to be regenerated, to be born again (v. 3). What is more precious—outward, physical healing or the inward regeneration? Which do you treasure? Thousands may be healed, yet never receive any spiritual blessing.
We need a clear vision that the content of God’s New Testament economy is not any kind of “ism,” not any kind of religion, and not any kind of movement. The content of God’s New Testament economy is a Person who is both divine and human, a Person who is both God and man, who has passed through incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension and has consummated in the all-inclusive, processed, compound, life-giving, and indwelling Spirit imparted into us in His resurrection as life to us, and poured out upon us in His ascension as power to us that we may live the divine life to express God and move with the divine power, economically, to carry out God’s economy. Through this Person, we all have been regenerated to receive the divine life and partake of the divine nature. Through Him we even have the processed Triune God as the all-inclusive Spirit living in us to transform us and mingle Himself with us that we may bear His image and participate in His divine glory. What a marvelous blessing! This is much higher than healings, much higher than tongue speaking, and much higher than any kind of miracle. May we be thus blessed!
We must praise the Lord for all the visions we have seen concerning Christ in His incarnation, in His human living, in His crucifixion, in His resurrection, and in His ascension. We must learn how to enjoy Him in the Spirit and how to speak Him with the Spirit. We must speak Him forth to others. We must be those enjoying the New Testament blessings and, if the Lord wills, we will also enjoy the subsidiary blessings which are the works of power of the age to come. We should not, though, focus on the subsidiary blessings which we enjoy as a foretaste of the blessings of the age to come; we should focus on the New Testament blessings, which are the main blessings.