Outline
Ⅰ
Among God's elect there has always been an aspiration to be revived—Hab. 3:2; Hosea 6:2; Rom. 8:20-22; Psa. 119:25, 50, 107, 154; John 6:57, 63; 2 Cor. 3:3, 6.
Ⅱ
We can enter into a new revival by arriving at the highest peak of the divine revelation given to us by God—the revelation of the eternal economy of God (1 Tim. 1:3-4; 1 Cor. 9:17; Acts 26:19, 22); this is the great answer to the great question concerning God's purpose in His creation of man and in His dealing with His chosen people (Gen. 1:26; Job 10:13; cf. Eph. 3:9):
A
The mystery hidden in God's heart is God's eternal economy (1:10; 3:9; 1 Tim. 1:4), which is God's eternal intention with His heart's desire to dispense Himself in His Divine Trinity as the Father in the Son by the Spirit into His chosen people to be their life and nature that they may be the same as He is as His duplication (Rom. 8:29; 1 John 3:2) to become an organism, the Body of Christ as the new man (Eph. 2:15-16), for God's fullness, God's expression (1:22-23; 3:19), which will consummate in the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:2—22:5).
B
God becoming man that man might become God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead for the producing and building up of the Body of Christ to consummate the New Jerusalem is the essence of the entire Bible, the "diamond" in the "box" of the Bible, the eternal economy of God—Gen. 1:26; John 12:24; Rom. 8:29:
１
God became man through incarnation by participating in man's humanity; man becomes God in life and nature but not in the Godhead through transformation by participating in God's divinity—John 1:14; 2 Cor. 3:18; Col. 3:4; 2 Pet. 1:4; Phil. 2:5; Rom. 8:29; Heb. 2:10; Eph. 1:5; Rom. 8:19; 1 John 3:2; John 1:12-13.
２
This divine-human romance is the subject of the entire Bible, the content of God's economy, and the secret of the entire universe—S. S. 1:1; 6:13; cf. Hab. 1:1; 2:4; Rom. 1:17:
ａ
Christ is divine and human, and His transformed lover is human and divine; they are the same in life and nature, perfectly matching each other.
ｂ
The Triune God consummated to be the Husband and the tripartite man transformed to be the bride are to be one couple, a corporate, great God-man—Rev. 21:2, 9; 22:17a.
Morning Nourishment
Hab. 3:2 …O Jehovah, revive Your work in the midst of the years…Hosea 6:2 He will enliven us after two days; on the third day He will raise us up…
[The] matter of revival is the “kernel” within the “shell” of the books of the Minor Prophets…Habakkuk 3:2a speaks of revival…Among God’s elect there has always been an aspiration to be revived…Although we may not realize it, such an aspiration has been within us through all the years of our Christian life…Habakkuk’s prayer for revival…represents the whole. God always considers His elect as a corporate Body…Thus, when Habakkuk prayed for revival, we also prayed…Such a prayer is an everlasting prayer. (Life-study of Malachi, p. 19)
Today’s Reading
The main contents of the New Testament are that the Triune God has an eternal economy according to His good pleasure to dispense Himself into His chosen and redeemed people in His life and in His nature, to make all of them the same as He is in life and nature, to make them His duplication that they may express Him. This corporate expression will consummate in the New Jerusalem. Thus, the New Jerusalem is simply the enlarged, the increased, incarnation consummated in full, that is, the fullness of the Triune God for Him to express Himself in His divinity mingled with humanity. (Life-study of Job, p. 62)In [2 Samuel 7:12] God spoke of David’s seed, and in verse 14a He said, “I will be his Father, and he will be My son.” Here we have something of very great significance—the seed of David becoming the Son of God. These verses clearly unveil that a seed of man, that is, a son of a man, can become the Son of God. This implies that God’s intention is to make Himself man in order to make man God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead. Such an implication is exceedingly great. Eventually, the whole Bible consummates with this matter. The New Jerusalem, the ultimate consummation of the Bible, involves God becoming man and man becoming God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead, and God and man being mingled together to be one entity. (Life-study of 1 & 2 Samuel, pp. 205-206)
In God’s romance He desires to be one with man. He carried this out by becoming the same as man. God, because of His heart’s desire, became a man in incarnation, and He contacted man by the way of a romance. Before God opened up in the New Testament what was on His heart, both angels and men did not know what God was doing (Eph. 3:9). They did not realize that their God was becoming a Husband to marry a wife. This Husband was divine, and the wife He was going to marry was human.
Although God became a lowly man,…His intention was to bring His humanity up to the level of His divinity. Through the divine power in the Spirit of holiness, Jesus’ humanity was uplifted into the divine sonship, into divinity [Rom. 1:3-4]. By this He was born of God not as God’s only begotten Son but as God’s firstborn Son (8:29), which indicates that many sons would follow. Today our Christ is God in the divine sense and man in the human sense. He is a God-man.
This God-man is the Bridegroom in the divine, universal romance (John 3:29), but His counterpart, being merely human, still does not match Him. A human without a divine source cannot be the counterpart of the God-man. Therefore, God regenerated His human elect. Regeneration is to put divinity into humanity, to uplift humanity to the standard of divinity. However, regeneration does not complete the process…In order to uplift our entire being, God first has to regenerate our spirit and then transform our soul. The transformation of our soul takes time.
Christ is divine and human, and His transformed lover is human and divine. They are the same in life and nature, perfectly matching each other. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 3, “Crystallization-study of Song of Songs,” pp. 325-326)
Further Reading: Life-study of Malachi, msg. 4; Life-study of 1 & 2 Samuel, msg. 31