«　WEEK 3　DAY 3　»

　　Rom. 12:1-2 …Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, well pleasing to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be fashioned according to this age…

　　1 Cor. 1:2 To the church of God which is in Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, the called saints, with all those who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place…

　　We all were born in the human history, but we have been reborn, regenerated, in the divine history. Now we need to ask ourselves this question: Are we living in the divine history, or are we living merely in the human history? If our living is in the world, we are living in the human history. But if we are living in the church, we are living in the divine history. In the church life God’s history is our history. Now two parties—God and we—have one history, the divine history. This is the church life.

　　With the divine history there is the new creation—the new man with a new heart, a new spirit, a new life, a new nature, a new history, and a new consummation. We praise the Lord that we are in the divine history, experiencing and enjoying the mysterious, divine things. (Life-study of Joel, p. 36)

　　We are living in an age, the continuation of the preceding ages, in which our God is still moving. He is working among the Jews and by the nations to perform His economy in the building up of the organism of the Body of Christ.

　　We need to see that today we, the believers in Christ, are in the Body of Christ. We all are members of the Body of Christ, which is the organism of the Triune God. As members of the Body, we should aspire to be overcomers, the mighty ones (Joel 3:11) who will return with Christ to deal with Antichrist at the battle of Armageddon and who will be His co-kings in the millennium.

　　Furthermore, we should be clear concerning our goal as members of the Body. Our goal is to enlarge the manifestation of Christ intrinsically….We desire to see the intrinsic enlargement of the manifestation of Christ in the Spirit of the processed Triune God and by the life of our Father, the eternal, almighty divine Being.

　　Christ is now on the throne in the heavens, waiting for us to be perfected and matured. Eventually the time will be ripe for Him to come back to deal with the nations, to save the remnant of Israel, and to complete God’s economy with us. Then the age of restoration will be ushered in. That age will consummate in the New Jerusalem as the ultimate consummation of God’s expression in Christ. (Life- study of Joel, pp. 26-27)

　　God’s blessing us in eternity past with the spiritual blessings in the heavenlies was according to the good pleasure of His will (Eph. 1:5b) to the praise of the glory of His grace, with which He graced us in Christ, His Beloved (v. 6).

　　This is God’s history in eternity past and this involves us. In eternity past God made an economy to produce the church for His manifestation and to head up all things, including us, in Christ. He also held a council to determine that the second of the Divine Trinity should come to die for us to carry out His economy. Then in eternity past He chose us to have His nature and to have His divine life so that we could be holy as He is and be His sons as His children to express Him. This is God’s history in eternity past, and this history is our history. The Christian life began from God’s choosing us and predestinating us in eternity past before the foundation of the world.

　　We need to know God in such a way from a deeper angle. Our God has a marvelous history, which includes us. Actually, whatever He has done, whatever He is doing, and whatever He will do in His history are all for our Christian life. His history builds up our Christian life. (CWWL, 1991-1992, vol. 4, “The History of God in His Union with Man,” p. 26)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1991-1992, vol. 4, “The History of God in His Union with Man,” ch. 1