God’s unique intention, His central work, is to work Himself into us and to build Himself into our being, making Himself our inward elements and becoming our life, our nature, and our constitution so that we may become God in life and nature but not in the Godhead. Wow!
This is God’s economy, and only in this way can His economy be fulfilled; it is only when Christ works Himself into us and builds Himself into our being that we can become the same as Christ and can be the one new man to express Him and represent Him.
For His unique intention and central work, He created us in a very special way: all the other creatures were made according to their kind, but man was made according to God’s kind.
God created us in His image and according to His likeness, so that He as life may come into our being, fill our inner being, and be expressed through us to fulfill His purpose.
God’s intention is to come into us and saturate us, permeate us, fill us, and even clothe us with Christ so that we may be one with Christ and we may live Christ.
What God expects from us is not improvement in our behavior or bettering ourselves to “look like Him” and “speak His word” all the time; He expects that we remain open to His divine dispensing so that we may take Him in, be one with Him, and become the same as He is in life and nature so that Christ may live in us and we may live Christ.
Some believers may think that, since we died with Christ, now He has to come in and replace us, so He lives in us and we’re no longer useful and not even there; this is wrong.
It is not an exchanged life that we have but it is a grafted life; His life came into our life, and we were grafted into Him. Now we are supplied with Him as life, we grow in life, and He grows in us; the result is that He lives in us and we live Him.
No longer I but Christ; yet I live, that is, Christ lives in me. Hallelujah! The life we now live is in faith, the faith of the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself up for us.
He clothed us with Himself to become our garment, our very living (Gal. 3:27).
He wants to be formed in us; just as a little baby is being formed in the womb of his mother, so Christ is being formed in us – His head, body, and limbs are being formed in us, and slowly but surely we are conformed to His image and we look like Him, live like Him, speak like Him, and do all things like Him. Amen!
Paul made it in this respect: to him to live was Christ, and he magnified Christ in front of others, making Christ great before others and causing Him to be enlarged to all those around him. Amen, may we be such ones!
God’s Intention is to Work Himself into us, making us One with Him and making Christ be our Everything
When we speak of the matter of the all-inclusive, extensive Christ versus culture, we need to see that God has an intention.
The full revelation of the Bible reveals that God’s intention is to work Himself in Christ into us, His chosen and redeemed people so that He may be everything to us and we would be His corporate expression (Gal. 1:15-16; 2:20; 4:19).
God’s economy is not related to anything outward, superficial; it is altogether about God working Himself into us, for His economy is a subjective matter.
The all-inclusive, extensive Christ who is versus all the culture, this One is working Himself into our being. In His economy, God is working the living, all-inclusive person of Christ into us.
According to the book of Colossians, Christ is the portion of the saints, the Firstborn of all creation, the image of the invisible God, the Head of the Body, the Firstborn from the dead, the One in whom all the fullness is pleased to dwell, the mystery of God, the reality of all positive things, and the constituent of the new man.
Christ is everything to us – He is our life, light, power, might, strength, righteousness, holiness, kindness, joy, and every other divine attribute and human virtue.
He is both all-inclusive and extensive, and God’s intention is to work this One into our being.
The all-inclusive Christ has the highest attainments; He has ascended to the heavens and has been exalted to the highest place in the universe.
He has been enthroned by God, and He has become the Lord and Head over all; right now, He is sitting at the right hand of God on the throne.
Christ has obtained everything, has attained to the highest height, and all things have become His.
Such a One is being wrought into us day by day by God, and the more we enjoy Christ, the more He is being wrought into every part of our being.
He wants to be wrought into us to replace our culture, ethics, morality, religion, philosophy, improvement of behavior, and our seeking to be scriptural, spiritual, holy, and victorious.
He wants to replace our culture with Himself, and only He as the all-inclusive, extensive Christ can truly and really replace our culture with Himself.
God’s central work, His unique work in the universe and throughout the ages and generations, is to work Himself in Christ into His chosen people, making Himself one with them (Eph. 3:17; 1 Cor. 6:17).
We may still live in our culture so much; we may have our own man-made Christian culture, and we may be bothered when we see someone who is a believer and smokes, or when a believer has tattoos.
We may be bothered and want to correct someone who is a believer yet wears something that we think they shouldn’t wear.
Our culture is part of our subconscious living, it is built into us; God’s intention is to thoroughly work Himself in Christ into us, making Himself our inward elements (Eph. 3:11, 16-19).
He has no interest to improve us outwardly; He wants to work Himself into us.
On our side, we may cleanse the outside of the cup, but inwardly we may be full of self-indulgence and pleasures and sins (see Matt. 23:25); the Lord, however, wants to work Himself into us.
May we learn to open to the Lord and allow Him to work Himself into us in prayer, again and again,
Lord Jesus, we open to You. Work Yourself into us a little more today. We take You as our life and as our everything. You are the reality of all the positive things, and You are being wrought into us little by little and day by day. Amen, Lord, we come to enjoy You as the portion of all the saints, the Firstborn from among the dead, the One in whom all the fullness is pleased to dwell, the mystery of God’s economy, the reality of all positive things, and the constituent of the new man. Oh Lord, You are our everything – You are our life, light, power, might, strength, righteousness, holiness, kindness, joy, and all the other divine attributes and human virtues. We open to You, dear Lord: work Yourself into us a little more today!
For the Fulfillment of God’s Eternal Economy, God is Building Himself in Christ into our Being to make us the Same as He is
Day by day, as we enjoy the Lord Jesus in His word and in our daily living, as we apply Him and take Him as the reality of all the positive things, He is working Himself into us little by little.
The result is that He makes His home in our heart; the things He doesn’t want in our heart, He moves away, and all that He is with His riches, He moves in.
Even more, for the fulfillment of God’s eternal economy, God is building Himself in Christ into our being; God is building Himself in Christ into us as our life, our nature, and our constitution to make us God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead (see 2 Sam. 7:12-14a; Rom. 1:3-4; Eph. 3:17a; John 14:23; Col. 3:10-11).
There is no other way for God to fulfill His economy but to build Himself into our being. It’s one thing for God to work Himself into us, and it’s another thing for this working to go further and deeper to become a building work.
For someone to come into our house and arrange the furniture is one thing, but for someone to come and somehow build himself into our building is another thing.
On one hand, Christ is working Himself into us, and on the other, He is building Himself in our being.
God’s ultimate goal is to gain a building – the New Jerusalem; therefore, He does a building work by building Himself into us and building us into Himself so that we would become an integral part of God Himself.
God is being built into us and we are built into God so that God and we, we and God, would become a mutual dwelling, the New Jerusalem.
At the end of the Bible, we see a builded God – the New Jerusalem; in this city, we see how God is built with His people, for the entire city has God within and His people as the wall and foundations.
For the fulfillment of God’s eternal economy, God needs to build Himself in Christ into our being, building Himself in Christ into us as our life, our nature, and our constitution, to make us God in life and nature but not in the Godhead. Wow!
Our need today is to open to the Lord and allow HIm to build Himself in Christ into our intrinsic constitution so that our entire being would be reconstituted with Christ.
Christ builds the church by first coming into our spirit, and then by spreading from our spirit into our mind, emotion, and will, so that He may occupy our entire soul (Matt. 16:18; Eph. 3:17).
We appreciate Christ working inside of us, for He is within us; however, the ultimate work of His working Himself into us for Him to build Himself into our being and build us into Himself.
For this to take place, however, there’s the need for the tearing down of the old man, the old way of living, and anything that is incompatible with God’s building.
Job had to be first torn down and stripped of his integrity, uprightness, self-righteousness, and perfection, and then God could replace it with Himself.
If we are to participate in God’s building work, we need to allow God to tear us down; He has to tear down our self-righteousness, our self-integrity, and our own perfection.
When He has a way to replace the things we build up in ourselves as a substitute for God, He can build Himself into our being. We all need to be remade, reconstituted.
May we learn to open to the Lord and allow Him to not only work Himself into us but also build Himself into our being so that He may become our very constitution, our very element, and we would be built into God, even as He is built into us.
Lord Jesus, we open to Your building work: build Yourself into our being so that our entire being would be reconstituted with Christ. Amen, Lord, have a way to build Yourself into our very intrinsic constitution so that we may be restructured, remodeled, and reconstituted with Christ. May the church be built up by Christ spreading Himself from our spirit into all the inward parts of our being. Have Your way in us, Lord. We open to You all the rooms and areas of our inward being; work Yourself into us and build Yourself into our being for the church as the Body of Christ consummating in the New Jerusalem! Amen, Lord, gain what You are after, the building of God with man and in man!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by James Lee for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Colossians, pp. 324-326 (Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The All-Inclusive, Extensive Christ Replacing Culture for the One New Man (2020 Thanksgiving Conference), week 2, Living the All-inclusive, Extensive Christ instead of Our Culture.
- Hymns on this topic:
– Spreading outward from our spirit / Doth the Lord transform our soul, / By the inward parts renewing, / Till within His full control. (Hymns #750)
– God’s economy and goal / According to His heart’s desire / Are to build Himself into our being / And to build us into His being / In order to mingle His divinity with our humanity / Into one entity (one entity)— / The Body of Christ, / Which consummates the New Jerusalem. (Song on, God’s economy is His plan to dispense Himself)
– In us all the fulness of God dwells in Him; / As Spirit He brings God Himself thus within, / Revealing and making God real unto us, / God one with us building in life glorious. (Hymns #536)
About aGodMan
