The New Jerusalem is also the eternal expansion and expression of the processed and consummated Triune God in the regenerated, transformed, and glorified humanity. It is the spreading of the Triune God through His glorified saints as His increase for His eternal purpose. This spreading is illustrated by the vine with its branches in John 15. The branching out of the vine is the spreading of the vine. This is an illustration of the New Jerusalem as the expansion, the spreading, of the Triune God through His glorified saints.
In addition to knowing the six foregoing matters, we need to know the self.
In Romans 6:6 the old man refers to the natural life in our soul. The old man is our very being, which was created by God but became fallen through sin. It is the same as the "I" in Galatians 2:20. Our old man was crucified with Christ on the cross (Rom. 6:6; Gal. 2:20) and buried with Christ in baptism (Rom. 6:4). It is not the soul itself but the life of the soul which has been counted by God as hopeless and has been put on the cross and crucified with Christ.
The self needs to be denied, condemned, and rejected all the time. In Matthew 16:24 the Lord Jesus said, "If anyone wants to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me." We, the believers in Christ, were crucified with Him, and now we need to bear the cross. For us to bear the cross means that we remain under the killing of the death of Christ for the terminating of our self, our natural life, and our old man. In so doing we deny our self that we may follow the Lord.
In this message we have covered, as an extract of the basic revelation in the Holy Scriptures, seven main matters in our theology: the Triune God, the all-inclusive Christ, the consummated Spirit, the church, the Body, the ultimate consummation (the New Jerusalem), and the self. We need to spend much time to study all these matters.