In His heavenly ministry the ascended Christ as the Head of His Body sent out the apostles and disciples to preach the gospel and establish the churches. When He poured out the Spirit upon His believers, that produced gifted persons. These ones are sent out to preach the gospel, to save sinners, and to raise up the churches.
In His heavenly ministry the ascended Christ as the Head of His Body builds up His Body by the transforming Spirit through the gifted ones among the believers. On the one hand, He is the Head of the Body in the heavens. On the other hand, at the same time, He is the transforming Spirit to transform all the believers into the new creation.
The consummation of the earthly ministry of Christ is to have the consummated Triune God wrought into the believers that they may become a people of God who have the organic union with the processed and consummated Triune God as the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit in their regenerated spirits.
Christians today altogether mix up the earthly and heavenly ministries of Christ and the different works of these two ministries. Therefore, their teaching is not so clear. We have to learn to teach these two ministries clearly.
The consummation of the heavenly ministry of Christ is to build the believers, who have the organic union with the processed and consummated Triune God, into His organic Body through the churches, which are composed of the believers, who have the organic union with the Triune God. This building up of the Body of Christ produces the overcomers whom Christ will marry, and they as the bride of Christ will become the army of Christ for Christ to carry out His upcoming kingdom ministry. This building up of the Body of Christ also consummates the ultimate consummation of God’s eternal economy-the New Jerusalem as God’s expansion and expression in eternity.
The building up of the Body of Christ produces the overcomers. In the seven epistles to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3, the Lord calls for the overcomers seven times. This indicates that His building up of the Body is to produce the overcomers. These overcomers will be awarded at Christ’s judgment seat with the kingdom, and they will be married to Christ as His bride to match Him and to fight with Him. We have to see that the building up of the Body of Christ accomplishes two things. First, it produces the overcomers to bring in the kingdom. Second, it consummates the New Jerusalem in the new heaven and new earth. So the upcoming kingdom and the upcoming New Jerusalem both depend upon the overcomers produced by the building up of the Body of Christ. This is why we pay so much attention to the building up of the Body of Christ.
In His kingdom ministry, Christ will defeat all of God’s opposers and clear up the negative things on earth. The overcomers, after being married to Christ to be His bride, become His army to fight against all the opposers of God. The kingdom ministry depends upon the earthly ministry and the heavenly ministry. The earthly ministry is to produce a people joined to God organically. In the heavenly ministry, Christ builds up the Body of Christ. Today we should not remain in the earthly ministry of Christ without going forward into His ministry in the heavens to have the Body of Christ built up with His heavenly unsearchable riches.
All the facts of the New Testament show us Christ’s three ministries: His earthly ministry, His heavenly ministry, and His kingdom ministry to clear up the whole earth and to make the earth the kingdom of God for one thousand years. Then the new heaven and new earth with the New Jerusalem will come into being. This is the crystallization-study of the entire New Testament.
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