There is one major difference between how God relates to man and operates in man, and how Satan relates to man; God asks for man’s cooperation, showing him what will happen if he opens to God and receives God, while Satan deceives man, cheats man, and tempts man, so that he may ruin, usurp, and destroy man.
God requires our willing cooperation, while Satan deceives us into doing what he wants us to do – and most times we don’t know we do this.
God’s economy and intention is related to man; He wants to work Himself into man so that man may be reborn to be a son of God to express Him corporately. In order to accomplish His plan, God Himself became a man to go through the process of incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, and He became the life-giving Spirit to be dispensed into our spirit when we willingly receive Him.
Whenever someone hears the gospel, sees the Lord Jesus, and receives Him into his heart by calling on the name of the Lord, God in Christ as the Spirit enters that person to be his life in his spirit. Every genuine believer has God’s life in his spirit; however, we all need to cooperate with the Lord to allow His life to spread from our spirit into every part of our being.
God’s life is powerful, dynamic, active, and able to do many things, and the law of the Spirit of life is ready to operate; we simply need to cooperate with Him so that the necessary conditions may be created for God’s life to grow in us, spread into all the parts of our inner being, and saturate us.
If we cooperate with the Lord by “switching on the law of life”, the divine life in us will do many wonderful things in us to conform us to the image of Christ, the firstborn Son of God.
Don’t you love the Lord Jesus more when you realize how much He wants and needs our cooperation? He doesn’t force His way in, He doesn’t coerce us into opening to Him, and He doesn’t “trick us” into doing what He wants us to do; He simply waits for our willing cooperation.
Whenever we say, Lord Jesus, I love You! Fill me with Yourself! Grow in me! – the law of life is switched on to operate in our being to fill us with God’s element and conform us to the image of Christ!
Cooperating with the Law of the Spirit of Life by Switching on this Law
In the new covenant God made with us He promises to write His law into our heart and impart them into our mind (Jer. 31:33; Heb. 8:10). Through regeneration we have entered into a new covenant with the Lord, in which He gives us His life, and the law of life operates in us spontaneously and automatically to dispense the divine life into our being for the accomplishment of God’s economy.
The Spirit we have received through regeneration operates in us as a principle, a law, by dispensing life in our being so that our spirit, our soul, and even our body would be full of God’s life and even become life (see Rom. 8:10, 6, 11).
Day by day and little by little the operation of the law of life dispenses God into every part of our being to make us His duplication, His multiplication in life. We need to cooperate with the installed and operating law of the Spirit of life by “switching on” this law (see 1 Thes. 5:16-19; Luke 8:15).
Just as a simple turning on of a switch in a building can turn the lights on because electricity has been properly installed and connected to the power plant, so when we turn to our spirit by calling on the name of the Lord, O Lord Jesus! we activate the law of life and God’s element is dispensed into every part of our inner being to make us His duplication.
We need to be “actively passive” people: in doing things for the Lord out of our natural desire and with our natural strength we need to be passive, but in coming to the Lord by exercising our spirit to contact Him we need to be active.
Just as you don’t need to “call the power plant” to get the lights working in a house but you simply need to turn on the switch, so in our Christian life we need to know how to “switch on” of the law of life so that this life will operate in us.
Whenever we say, Lord Jesus, I love You! Fill me more with Yourself! Grow in me! – we switch on the law of life, and we are connected to the Triune God who has been installed into our being.
On His side God has done everything: He has passed through a long process to become the Spirit who gives life, and He regenerates us to come into us as the law of the Spirit of life who is able to make us the same as He is; on our side, we need to cooperate with the Lord by switching on the law of life (and not merely by accidentally switching it on) so that God would dispense Himself into us and constitute us with Himself.
In His economy God desires to dispense Himself into our being by and as the law of the Spirit of life so that our whole being may be constituted with His being to be one constitution, thus making us God-men shaped into the image of Christ to express God.
There are many ways to switch on the law of life such as: walking according to the spirit, minding the things of the spirit, putting to death the practices of our mortal body, being led by the Spirit of God, crying Abba Father from the depths of our being, witnessing that we are children of God, and groaning one with the Spirit for our growth in life (see Rom. 8).
Lord Jesus, we want to learn to switch on the law of the Spirit of life so that Your life may operate in us to constitute us with God and shape us in the image of Christ. Lord Jesus, we love You! We open to You. Keep us walking according to the spirit and putting to death the practices of the Body. We want to mind the things of the Spirit and be led by the Spirit to be sons of God. Lord, keep us calling on Your name and opening to You from within so that the law of life may be constantly operating in us day by day!
The Law of Life “Sonizes” us for the Building up of the Body of Christ
In Jer. 31:33 and Heb. 8:10 God promises to impart His law (or laws) into our inward parts (our mind, emotion, and will) and to inscribe His law (or laws) upon our heart. What this means is that the Lord doesn’t want to merely remain in our spirit, where He came in through regeneration, but He will spread from our spirit into our mind (the leading part of our being), emotion, and will.
When the law of life (which is in our spirit) spreads into our inner parts (our mind, emotion, and will) it becomes several laws – the laws regulating and imparting life to our mind, emotion, and will (see 2 Cor. 3:3).
The spreading of Christ as life from our spirit into our inner parts is the imparting, and the imparting is the inscribing. As we activate the law of life by turning to the Lord and walking according to the spirit, we are being conformed to the image of the firstborn Son of God by this inward operating of the law of life – we are being “sonized”, that is, made sons of God in full.
As we open and cooperate with Christ to work out our own salvation – even as God operates in us both the willing and the working – the law of life operates in us to sonize us and fill us with the life of God.
The firstborn Son is the prototype, and the many brothers are the mass production. This model today is a living person, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the totality of the divine sonship. When this living person comes into us, we have the sonship and become a son of God. Now we are the sons of God, and the Lord Jesus as the model is working and moving in us.
Although we are brothers of God’s firstborn Son, we do not resemble Him very much. We may not look much like Him today, but we are in the process of being conformed to His image. How much the sonship is completed in us depends on how willing we are to be conformed to the image of Christ. This is not a question of outward doing but of whether or not we are willing to be conformed to the image of the Firstborn. (Witness Lee, Life-study of Hebrews, pp. 725-726)
Christ is the indwelling living prototype, and we are being conformed to His image; when we cooperate with the Lord and open up to Him, He spreads more from our spirit into our soul. All we need to do is cooperate with Him by opening to Him, and the Lord will spread into our mind, emotion, and will.
The Lord is working desperately among us to make us the same as Christ, His firstborn Son; when He obtains a group of such God-men, He can end this age and bring in the age of the kingdom.
We need to cooperate with the inward operation of the law of life so that God would operate in us to make us the same as Christ in life, nature, and expression (but not in the Godhead), and so that we may be functioning members of the Body to build up the Body.
The Body of Christ as the new man is the corporate reproduction of the standard model, the firstborn Son of God. May we cooperate with the Lord so that the law of the Spirit of life would make us sons of God in full for the building up of the Body of Christ so that God would have a corporate expression on the earth!
Lord Jesus, we want to cooperate with Your inward operation so that we may be sonized by the law of life for the building up of the Body of Christ! Lord, it is Your desire and burden to gain many sons, so we pray: sonize us! Work Yourself into us! We give You permission to spread from our spirit into every inward part of our mind, emotion, and will! Lord, impart Your laws into our inward parts and inscribe Your laws on our heart. May the law of the Spirit of life constantly operate in our being to sonize us for the building up of the Body of Christ!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, brother James Lee’s sharing in the message for this week, and Life-study of Hebrews, msgs. 38, 64-65 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on,Crystallization-Study of Exodus (2) week 7 / msg 7, The Covenanting God and His Covenants (2) – The Contents of the New Covenant.
- All Bible verses are taken from, Holy Bible Recovery Version.
- Hymns on this topic to strengthen this burden:
# If in spirit Him I touch, / With His riches filled I’ll be; / Life and light and love and grace / As a stream will flow thru me. / Touching deeply, richly I / Of Himself experience, / Thus the law of life I touch / And His clear anointing sense. (Hymns #769)
# Lord, You’re building / Your expression; / Lord, by mingling / All that You are in me. / I’m responding, / Cooperating, / Consecrating / Myself to You totally. (Song on Cooperating with the Lord)
# We’re being sonized now; / The life within will do / The deep transforming work / Of making us anew. / In ages past, the work was done— / Now prayer is over—praise the Son! (Hymns #1187)
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