The Man God Has Ordained

God is not concerned in the first place, or in any very important way, with doctrine, with teaching, with Christian work, with our many-sided activities. These all may follow and have a place, but they are all very subordinate. They have a far smaller place with God than they have with us. With God they are only related things, they are side-issues. With Him, the one all-important and all-inclusive thing is His own likeness. What matters to Him about all our teaching, about all our gatherings, about all our works and activities, is the measure in which His likeness appears as the result. Nothing else counts. We do not gather together for teaching, doctrine, “conference meetings”. Let this be established at the outset. We gather together, if we are in line with the divine desire, in order that there may be in us more likeness to God, as He judges everything in the Man whom He has ordained — IN the Man, not by the Man; in the Man, in what that Man is.