In this chapter we want to see the significance of the pearls in the New Jerusalem. Revelation 21:21 tells us that the twelve gates of the New Jerusalem are twelve pearls. A pearl is not created or manufactured but produced by an oyster. A pearl is something produced organically just as a piece of fruit is not something manufactured or created but is the produce of an organic tree. The fact that an oyster produces a pearl is quite significant. Pearls are produced by oysters in the waters of death. When the oyster is wounded by a particle of sand, a little rock, it secretes its life-juice around the sand and makes it a precious pearl.
Since the Bible says that in the New Jerusalem there are twelve gates and that every gate is a pearl, we have to study every aspect of this pearl. Especially, we need to see how the pearl comes into existence. This is the purpose of God’s wisdom in using an allegory. Without such an allegory of the oyster producing a pearl, how could we imagine that the gates as the pearls signify the produce of Christ in His redemptive work with His secreting life for the entry into God’s building? As Christians we have heard repeatedly that Christ died and resurrected for our redemption. Merely by using the words death, resurrection, and redemption, however, our understanding is somewhat limited. In one of Charles Wesley’s hymns he refers to the five bleeding wounds which the Lord bore when He was being crucified on the cross (see Hymns, #300). This, however, is a “physical teaching” concerning the divine truth. This is not an allegorization. Without such an allegory of the oyster producing a pearl, we cannot adequately understand the significance of Christ’s death and resurrection to redeem and transform us.
In this allegory, we need to see the illustration of Christ’s death. The oyster depicts Christ as the living One coming into the death waters, being wounded by us, and secreting His life over us to make us precious pearls for the building of God’s eternal habitation and expression. That the twelve gates of the holy city are twelve pearls signifies that regeneration through the death-overcoming and life-secreting Christ is the entrance into the city.
The oyster’s wound is an inward wound caused by a little rock. This rock can remain in this wound or, we may say, in this death. In like manner, we can remain in Christ’s death. Where are you staying today? You should say, “Praise the Lord! I am staying in Christ’s death. The Lord’s death is my abode, my dwelling.” You are a “little rock” that wounded Christ. After being wounded, He keeps you in His wound. Now you need to stay in His wound, in His death. I have been a Christian for over fifty-nine years and I must testify that His death is my best residence.
Are you not staying in the Lord’s death? If you are not staying in His death, you have nowhere to stay or to remain. We all need to realize that every moment we need to stay in the all-inclusive death of Christ. The reason why we lose our temper is because we move out of the death of Christ. Because you “left home” and did not remain in His death, you lost your temper. As long as you remain and stay in the death of Christ, you will never lose your temper. Where can you get the victory over sin, over your temperament, over the world, and over Satan? Nowhere but in the death of Christ.
You may have been a Christian for many years, and yet you have never been told that you need to remain in the death of Christ. You may have been remaining in your kind of endeavor to behave properly. This means that you have been a wanderer. You have been homeless with no place to stay. However, if you stay in the death of Christ, you do not need to try to be nice. Not many of us realize that the Lord’s all-inclusive death should be our residence, our home, in which we must stay. After the little rock wounds the oyster it stays in the wound, and the oyster will not let it go. It grasps the rock in the very wound it made, so the wound becomes its residence, its home, its dwelling place. In like manner, the very death which Christ accomplished on the cross becomes our dwelling place. We have to stay in the death of Christ.
If we stay away from the wound, we cannot enjoy the secretion of the resurrection life. If the rock stays away from the wound of the oyster, it is not in the position to enjoy the secretion of the life-sap of that oyster. The secretion symbolizes the move of the resurrection life. Because an oyster is living and organic, it immediately reacts to being wounded by a rock by secreting its life-sap around the rock to keep it and even imprison it in its wound. This picture or allegory shows us that we are imprisoned in the death of Christ by His secreting power, and that this secretion is the move of His resurrection life.
The wound signifies the death of Christ in which we sinners who wounded Christ are captured, kept, and imprisoned. The only place that one can be a normal, proper Christian is in the wound, the death, of Christ. We all need to say, “Lord, I have no choice; my unique residence today is Your death.” Hallelujah for the death of Christ! This death is our rest, our residence, our home, and our unique place of protection. As long as I am staying in His wound, His life reacts, and this reaction is a secretion of His resurrection life. The death of Christ and the resurrection of Christ have been taught mostly as objective items which have nothing to do with our daily Christian life. Actually, the death of Christ is not merely objective but very subjective. We have to be conformed to His death (Phil. 3:10). His death has to be our daily dwelling place, and His resurrection should be our daily experience. We should be one with Him all the time in His death and resurrection. Our oneness with Him is in the Spirit. Hence, the secretion of His resurrection is in the Spirit—the reality of His resurrection.
Day by day I enjoy the secretion of Christ’s resurrection life. A kind of secretion is around me all the time because I am always imprisoned in His death. Where death is, resurrection is. Resurrection works in death and through death. This resurrection is the secretion of the life-sap of the resurrected Christ around your entire being in the way that oysters produce pearls.
The oyster is an allegory of the wonderful Christ. He is the unique One that can live in the death waters. As One who is living and organic, He was wounded by us and He reacted by resurrecting to secrete His life-sap around the wounding ones. What a mercy! We wounded Him and He will not let us go. Because of His great love with which He loved us, His wound caused by us became our prison. His desire is to imprison us in His death that we might enjoy His life-secreting resurrection. Even though you may have never heard this before, you should have had some experiences of this. After you believed that the Lord died for you and that He is in resurrection, you enjoyed staying with Him. When you aspired to be in the Lord you were abiding in His death and within you there was a life secretion. Even though you had not heard this fellowship, you did have this kind of experience. Christ makes us pearls by being wounded by us, by keeping us in His wound, and by secreting Himself around us in His death through resurrection in the Spirit, who is His reality.
The pearls are the gates, and this point of the allegory means that the more we are made pearls, the more we are in the New Jerusalem. When we believed in the Lord Jesus, we were regenerated, and this was the initiation of our entering into the New Jerusalem. At that time, though, we were barely in the New Jerusalem in our experience. As we stay in the Lord’s death and enjoy His life-secreting resurrection, there is a further entering into the New Jerusalem. Our experience of the Lord’s death and resurrection becomes our entry into the New Jerusalem. We can enjoy being in the New Jerusalem to a great extent by staying in the death of Christ to enjoy His secretion of Himself as the resurrection life-sap around us. We all need to ask ourselves how much we are in the New Jerusalem and how much we are still outside the gates. The only way for a further entering into the holy city is by a further staying in the death of Christ. The death of Christ is the right place for you to receive and experience the secretion of life by the resurrected Christ. What I am telling you is not an objective teaching concerning the resurrection, but is altogether concerning our daily experience of the subjective, resurrection life of Christ. We need this kind of subjective experience.
I hope that after reading this chapter, all of us would pray, “Lord, imprison me and keep me always in Your death. I do not want to leave Your death, but to make Your death my sweet and wonderful dwelling place. Lord, I want to stay with You in Your death.” His death is the place where He has the position to secrete Himself around you and this is the only place where you can enjoy and experience His resurrection life as a kind of life-sap secreting itself around your being, making you a wonderful piece of pearl. We need to see that the pearls signify the believers produced of Christ in His redemptive work with His secreting life for the entry into God’s building.