The Ministry of the Word, Vol. 21, No 10

The Mending Ministry of John (2)

This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains the final nine messages given during the spring 2017 term of the full-time training in Anaheim, California. The general subject of this series of messages is "The Mending Ministry of John." The overall subject of John's writings, which include his Gospel, his Epistles, and Revelation, is that the Triune God wants to dispense Himself into His chosen people as their life and life supply to make them divine so that they may express Him in full and for eternity. In Revelation John presents the consummate vision in the Bible and the ultimate fulfillment of God's eternal economy--the New Jerusalem. The mending ministry of John, carried out in the divine and mystical realm of the consummated Spirit, is for the living out and the working out of the New Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem is lived out by the believers becoming the New Jerusalem, and the New Jerusalem is worked out by the believers building the New Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem is the ultimate answer to the Lord's prayer in John 17 for the glorification of the Triune God through the oneness of the believers built into the Triune God. This city is the City of Jehovah, the city of life, the holy city, and the city of glory. Even in the Old Testament the prophets describe this city as a person that is one with Jehovah. Isaiah says, "They will call you the City of Jehovah" (60:14), and Ezekiel concludes his prophecy by declaring that "the name of the city from that day shall be, Jehovah Is There" (48:35). The City of Jehovah means that Jehovah is in His redeemed, regenerated, transformed, and glorified tripartite people and that they are in Him. Jehovah Is There refers to the presence of Jehovah Himself who will be united, mingled, and incorporated with His people to be one entity--the great, corporate God-man. The New Jerusalem is also the city of life. The Christ ministered by John is for the dispensing of the Triune God as life into man's tripartite being. Out of such a ministered Christ, the children of God are brought forth by receiving the eternal life. They then partake of the fellowship of the eternal life by abiding in the Lord and walking in the light. They are taught by the anointing to enjoy the virtues of the divine birth with the divine seed. As a result, they become the testimony of Jesus--the lampstands as the expression of the Triune God--to be the firstfruits and the harvest as the expression of life and the bride of the Lamb as His increase and satisfaction. Moreover, the New Jerusalem is the holy city. God's living word--His breathing out as the divine breath into the believers--works within them to separate them from the world and to saturate them with the divine nature to make them a holy city, the corporate and ultimate Holy of Holies as the reality of Zion. To live out and work out the New Jerusalem, the believers partake of the divine nature of the Father by exercising their spirit to enjoy God as Spirit (the nature of God's person) and by remaining in the divine fellowship to enjoy God as love (the nature of God's essence) and as light (the nature of God's expression). Furthermore, the New Jerusalem is the city of glory. The Lord wants to occupy every room in our being, and He desires that we would be filled with His riches unto the fullness of God so that there would be glory to God in the church. The Father will be glorified when His many sons are thus filled with the Triune God. To be filled with the Triune God of glory for His corporate expression, the believers must cooperate with the Spirit, who is daily operating in them, by their allowing the Spirit to infuse and transmit all the riches of the Triune God into them. All believers need to be open to this Spirit to allow the Triune God to fill them, to flow through them, and to overflow out of them so that there would be the full expression of the Triune God in the church as the reality of the Body of Christ. This Body will in turn consummate in the New Jerusalem as the ultimate expression of the consummated Triune God in and through man. The New Jerusalem is the church as the reality of the Body of Christ in its ultimate state and consummation. To live out the New Jerusalem is to grow up into Christ, the Head, by the mingling of God with man, and to work out the New Jerusalem is to function out from the Head for the building up of the Body of Christ. Only the Body of Christ will remain forever as the unique mutual abode of God and man so that God as the Spirit and man as the bride, becoming a married couple, are mingled and incorporated together to be one entity--a great, corporate God-man. Thus, the issue of John's mending ministry is the accomplishing of the goal of God's economy, which is to obtain the enlarged, universal, divine-human incorporation of the consummated Triune God with the regenerated believers--the New Jerusalem in eternity.