In Colossians 3:10 are the creation of the new man and his renewal. The creation was completed on the cross, but the renewal needs to go on. We need to have our mind renewed for the existence of the new man. God has created the new man, but the new man has not fully come into existence because of our unrenewed mind. Our mind is the problem. By God’s sovereignty I have been in many countries and have seen many different ordinances, many different ways of living. For people from different races and cultures to get saved is much easier than being renewed concerning their way of living. The ordinances in Japan are absolutely different from the ordinances in the United States. Everywhere I traveled I had to adjust to the particular ordinances of the people I visited. These different ordinances usually create a problem for us because our mind needs more renewing.

We all have to realize that God created one corporate man. God needed that man to fulfill His heart’s desire, but man fell and became divided and scattered. By being divided and scattered, man became useless in the hands of God. Look at today’s situation. The whole world is a divided and scattered world. In nearly every session of the United Nations, there is debating and even fighting. The real situation of the world is that the nations of this earth are not united but divided. In every level of society there is division. Today on this earth division is everywhere.

Romans 12:2 exhorts us not to be conformed to this age. This does not only mean that we should not be worldly in our dress and our way of living. To not be conformed to this age means even more that we should not follow the way of divisions. Romans 12:2 and Ephesians 4:23 are concerning the matter of renewing, and both verses are for the Body life. Romans 12:2 says, “Be transformed by the renewing of the mind, that you may prove by testing what the will of God is.” If you look into the context of Romans 12, you can see that the will of God is to have the Body. The renewing of the mind is for the Body life. The problems in the Body life are related to the different ordinances.

Paul was all-inclusive when he listed the types of natural persons for which there is no room in the new man. Greeks are for philosophical wisdom; the Jews, for miraculous signs (1 Cor. 1:22). Circumcision refers to the observers of the Jewish religious rituals; uncircumcision to those who do not care for the Jewish religion. A barbarian is an uncultured person. Scythians were considered the most barbarous. A slave was one who had been sold into slavery, and a freeman was one who was free from slavery. Christians today have been divided by race, by nationality, by language, and also by religious matters. Some Christians are for baptism by immersion, while others are for sprinkling. This is no different than being for circumcision or uncircumcision. Religious matters can divide Christians. Others have divided over the way a Christian meeting should be held. Religious opinions always divide the members of the Body.

We need to be renewed in our natural mind, which means that our mind needs to be filled up and saturated with the Spirit. The Spirit needs to permeate every fiber of our mentality. According to our natural concept, the worship of God should be very quiet and solemn. Even the Moslems and the Hindus will agree with this concept. But when the Lord was entering into Jerusalem, “all the multitude of the disciples began, as they were rejoicing, to praise God with a loud voice for all the works of power which they had seen, saying, Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” (Luke 19:37-38). When some of the Pharisees heard the disciples praising the Lord with a loud voice in such a way, they asked the Lord to rebuke them (v. 39). The Lord responded to them, “I tell you, if these shall be silent, the stones will cry out!” (v. 40). The worship from the disciples in this particular passage was not something quiet and solemn but loud and rejoicing.

One day Brother Watchman Nee and I went to a Pentecostal meeting where the people were jumping, rolling, laughing, crying, and shouting. This meeting was too wild. All Brother Nee said to me concerning the meeting was that in the New Testament we are not told the way to meet. Brother Nee was not for such a wild meeting, but he was even the more against the deadness evidenced in many other Christian meetings.
Home | First | Prev | Next