We have already pointed out that the New Jerusalem is the greatest allegory in the Bible since it is the ultimate consummation of the divine revelation in the entire Scripture. In order to interpret the significance of this allegory, we need the proper understanding of the spiritual revelation in the entire Bible and also the experience of all the crucial points of God’s revelation in the New and Old Testaments. We all need to see how the allegory of the New Jerusalem is applied to us. The New Jerusalem is not merely objective, nor is it merely something for the future, but it should be subjective in our daily experience.
In these final six chapters we will cover the six aspects of the application of the New Jerusalem to the believers. The first application is the triune entry. We are using “entry” in the denotation of entering in, not in the denotation of an entrance or a door. The entering into the New Jerusalem is triune because it is an entry through the divine Trinity, through the Son, with the Father, and by the Spirit.
After we enter into the Triune God, we experience Him as the triune constitution, the second application. We are now being constituted with the Father’s divine nature, the gold; with the Son’s produce in His redemptive work, the pearl; and with the Spirit’s produce in His transforming work, the precious stones. The New Jerusalem is built with these three basic materials, which are the three basic elements for our spiritual constitution.
Through the entering in we have the constitution, and in the constitution we have the triune existence. Our spiritual existence is totally dependent upon the Triune God. Second Corinthians 13:14 says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” Such a “benediction” does not only bear a sense of enjoyment but also denotes the way we Christians are existing today. We are existing by the grace of Christ, by the love of God, and by the fellowship, the flow, of the Spirit. In other words, we are existing by what the Triune God is. He is grace and love to us, and this grace with love is carried on within us in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. We exist spiritually by and with the very Triune God.
The way that we exist is the way that we live, so the fourth aspect of the application is the Triune God as our living. We are living by, with, and in the Triune God. We are living by the Son, with the Father, through the Spirit. We live in the same way that we entered into the Triune God. We live by the Triune God, with the Triune God, and in the Triune God. This living is on the highest plane. How marvelous it is that human beings could live in such a way! We do not live by ourselves, with ourselves, and in ourselves. Rather, we admit the accomplished fact of what Christ has done for us on the cross, and we admit that we ourselves have been crucified with Him. “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). We live by Christ (John 6:57), and we even live Christ (Phil. 1:21a). Since Christ is the very embodiment of the Father and realized in the Spirit, when we live by Christ, we live by the Triune God, and when we live Christ, we live the Triune God.
The fifth application is the triune enjoyment. Everything related to our spiritual life is triune. The word triune is a good adjective to describe our spiritual condition, situation, existence, living, and enjoyment. We are those who are enjoying the Triune God. We enjoy the Son’s grace, the Father’s love, and the Spirit’s fellowship. Christ is grace, God is love, and the Holy Spirit is fellowship. Therefore, we enjoy a triune blessing—the blessing of the Son as grace, the blessing of the Father as love, and the blessing of the Spirit as the fellowship. This is our threefold enjoyment; our enjoyment is triune.
Finally, the New Jerusalem expresses the Triune God so its expression is triune. All of us individually should express the Triune God. People should be able to see God’s golden nature in us and that we are the pearls. We are not rocky, but we are “pearly.” The rock wounded the oyster, stayed in this wound, and the oyster secreted its life-juice around the rock making it a pearl. Thus, we were changed from being rocky, and we became pearly. Not only the sisters but also the brothers are pearls. We must be found by others in Christ (Phil. 3:9). Paul was pursuing Christ to be found in Christ. He did not want others to find him as Saul of Tarsus, a natural, “rocky” man, but he wanted others to find him in Christ. He desired to be wrapped up with the secretion of Christ’s resurrection life in order that others could see him as a pearl, full of Christ’s life.
Also, we express the sevenfold Spirit. The lampstand has seven lamps which are the seven Spirits of God shining to express all that the Triune God is. We must be persons who are expressing God by shining with the sevenfold intensified Spirit. This is the triune expression. Thus, the six applications of the New Jerusalem to the believers are its triune entry, triune constitution, triune existence, triune living, triune enjoyment, and triune expression.