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The Triune God in Revelation is the building and builded God—21:18- 19a, 21:
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The Bible consummates in the New Jerusalem, which is the very God who was in the beginning—Gen. 1:1; Rev. 21:10:
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The unique God is eventually enlarged and expanded into a city for His eternal expression.
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In His economy God has become the New Jerusalem—v. 10.
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In the New Jerusalem the Triune God is wrought into His chosen and redeemed people—vv. 18-19a, 21a.
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The God who has become the New Jerusalem is the building and builded God—2 Sam. 7:12, 14a; Matt. 16:18; Eph. 3:17:
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The processed and consummated Triune God as the source, the element, and the essence is building the church by building Himself into our being—v. 17.
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God is fulfilling His desire to build Himself in Christ into our being and to build us into His being; eventually, the outcome of this building will be the New Jerusalem—Rev. 21:2, 10.
Morning Nourishment
Rev. 21:10 And he carried me away in spirit onto a great and high mountain and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.Matt. 16:18 …I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
Eph. 3:17 That Christ may make His home in your hearts through faith…
The New Jerusalem is a composition of divinity and humanity blended and mingled together as one entity. All the components have the same life, nature, and constitution and thus are a corporate person. This is a matter of God becoming man and man becoming God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead. These two, God and man, man and God, are built up together by being blended and mingled together. This is the completion, the consummation, of God’s building. We all need to see this vision. (Life-study of 1 & 2 Samuel, 2nd ed., p. 201)
Today’s Reading
The vision of God’s building will affect our work today. If we see God’s building, we will not try to help others to be more humble or gentle…I would ask you to consider the case of Job, a person who had the highest attainment in building up himself in integrity, uprightness, and perfection. Eventually, God stripped Job of all his attainments in order to show him that his only need was God Himself.David, a man according to God’s heart, had a great failure. This indicates that…one may be according to God’s heart but still be empty, not having God wrought into his heart. In 2 Samuel 7 God seemed to be saying, “David, you are a man according to My heart, but you need Me to be wrought into your heart. You need Me to be built into your being to make you Me in life and in nature…
You must be able to say, ’‘To me, to live is God.’” If David had been such a person, he would not have fallen.
The fall of David illustrates the fact that even if we are a person according to God, if we do not have God wrought into us, we are no better than others… If we realize that God desires to work Himself into His chosen people and if we realize that this is what we all need, then the goal of our work will be to minister Christ to others so that the Triune God may build Himself into their being.
Yes, we need to save sinners and to feed the saints and perfect them. The crucial matter, however, is that we minister God to others. The God whom we minister is not just the building God—He is also the builded God. If we fail to minister God in this way, our work will be wood, grass, and stubble (1 Cor. 3:12).
If we are sincere and genuine, we will humble ourselves and confess that not very much of the Triune God has been wrought into the ones we have brought to God…We need to practice one thing—to minister the processed Triune God into others so that He may build Himself into their inner man. In every aspect of our work—preaching the gospel, feeding the believers, perfecting the saints—the intrinsic element must be that we minister the building and builded God to others. I would urge you to pray that the Lord would teach you to work in this way.
The processed Triune God is embodied in Christ and realized as the consummated Spirit. This is the God whom we worship, preach, and minister to others. Today He is building Himself into His redeemed people in order to produce a house with Himself as the element and also with something from their redeemed and uplifted humanity. This house is the church, the Body of Christ. This house is the enlargement, the expansion, of Christ, the embodiment of the Triune God realized as the Spirit. As we carry out the God-ordained way in the four steps of begetting, nourishing, perfecting, and building, our work must be based upon the processed Triune God, who is building Himself into His chosen people. (Life-study of 1 & 2 Samuel, 2nd ed., pp. 202-203)
Further Reading: Life-study of 1 & 2 Samuel, msg. 30; CWWL, 1979, vol. 2, “The Genuine Ground of Oneness,” ch. 6