I love this allegory of the New Jerusalem because it speaks about or depicts our experiences of Christ. There is not another type or allegory in the Scriptures which speaks so much about Christ according to our Christian experience. In this chapter we will see the second aspect of the application of the New Jerusalem to us—the triune constitution.
We partook of the triune constitution at the very beginning of our Christian life. Our faith in Christ, our baptism into Christ (Gal. 3:27) or into the Triune God, (Matt. 28:19), and our regeneration in the Spirit (John 3:6b) were the very initiation, the very beginning, of our Christian life and of our spiritual constitution. Regeneration made us another kind of being. By being born of Adam, we were born into the old creation, but we had a second birth, a new birth, a birth from on high, a birth of, in, and with the Spirit. Through this birth, we became another kind of being. In one sense, all of us have “two faces.” We have the face of our old being and the face of our new being. According to the New Testament revelation, we believers have two lives—the Adamic life and God’s life, the divine life. Regretfully, many of us also have two kinds of living. Our coming to the church meetings, pray-reading the Word, fellowshipping with the saints, and meeting in the homes is a heavenly, spiritual, and divine living. Many times, however, when the sisters go shopping, this is another living which is something different in nature from God’s nature.
As believers we do have the realization that, on the one hand, we possess the divine nature and that, on the other hand, we have a nature that is rotten and full of corruption—our natural, human nature. The Adamic nature can easily be seen even in our children. We may have the feeling that our children are loving and innocent, but at times we all have to admit that our children are “ugly.” The reason why they are ugly is because all of us human beings have an ugly nature which we inherited from Adam. Our natural nature is ugly, but thank the Lord that through the second birth, regeneration, we received another nature, the divine nature. We have an excellent nature, which is the very nature of God Himself.
Since we were regenerated, a constituting work began to take place in our being. When I was a young believer, I frequently heard the word edification. I was told that all the believers needed to be edified. As a young Christian, the word edification became a very popular and strong word to me. Actually, the New Testament speaks about edification, but this word denotes the building. The natural understanding concerning edification is that we need to be educated or taught. The very Greek word for edification in the New Testament (King James Version) is the very word for building up. Many Christians feel that they need to be edified, which to them means that they need to be taught, trained, disciplined, regulated, adjusted, improved, and educated. Not many understand this word in the New Testament in the sense of being built up. The New Testament denotation, however, is mainly on the aspect of being built up, and to build up is to constitute. We all need to be constituted, to be built up. To be educated is altogether a matter of knowledge in the mentality and not a matter of being built up with some element. To be built up is to receive more and more of the divine element which becomes your constituent to constitute you.
Today’s Christianity is mostly a religion of knowledge, theology, biblical teaching, regulation, adjustment, and character improvement. Because of this, the basic thought in the Holy Word of constitution has been altogether lost. Not many Christians have the thought that they need to be constituted with the Triune God and not merely taught. All the mothers know that they have to teach their children, but the main thing that they do is feed their children. If a mother would merely teach her children day and night for two weeks without feeding them, the children would not be able to live. Mere teaching does not constitute a child, but feeding does. Mothers are not so bothered by their child being naughty, but they are really bothered when their child does not eat. Eating is not to receive knowledge but to receive some nourishing, constituting element to enable one to grow.
When we look at the New Jerusalem we cannot see any doctrine or anything concerning the theology of the Trinity. What we see is gold, pearls, and precious stones. These elements signify the Triune God, but they do not indicate a theology of the Trinity. Gold, pearls, and precious stones are not doctrines but elements.
The triune constitution is with the Triune God wrought into the believers as their intrinsic elements. Intrinsic means something that is inward and hidden. Even our physical body receives some nourishing element into it every day, which eventually becomes our body’s intrinsic element. For example, every morning I eat a big breakfast and this breakfast becomes my intrinsic element. As this food is assimilated within me, it supports, sustains, and strengthens me to live. My strength comes from this intrinsic element. The food is taken into my being and becomes the intrinsic element in my physical body.
The allegory of the New Jerusalem is quite marvelous because it shows us what we could not see outwardly— the intrinsic elements. The city is not organized but constituted with gold, pearls, and precious stones. The city is not only constituted with these three elements, but also its constitution becomes a building. The constitution is the building up. Also, we need to remember that this city is a composition of God blended with all His redeemed people. This composition is arrived at by constitution. When we receive the Triune God into us, the Father is given to us as the gold, the Son is secreting over us to produce the pearls, and the Spirit is transforming us to make us precious stones. These three elements are in our being working in us, and they are the very intrinsic elements which constitute our spiritual being. In a corporate sense, our spiritual being is the church today and the New Jerusalem in the coming ages.