Scripture Reading: Gal. 3:26-28; 4:4-7, 19; 6:15; 2 Cor. 5:17
Ⅰ
God's eternal economy is the dispensing of Himself into His chosen people to make them His sons for His corporate expression; sonship is the focal point of God's economy—Gal. 3:26; 4:4-7:
A
God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy by predestinating us unto sonship—Eph. 1:4-5:
１
The choosing of God's people to be holy is for the purpose of their being made sons of God, participating in the divine sonship.
２
To be made holy—to be sanctified by God by His putting Himself into us and then mingling His nature with us—is the process, the procedure, whereas to be sons of God is the aim, the goal, and is a matter of our being joined to the Son of God and conformed to the image of the firstborn Son of God—Rom. 8:29; Col. 1:15.
３
Sanctification is for sonship; God's sanctifying us is His "sonizing" our entire being to make us His sons in a full way—Heb. 2:10-11; 1 Thes. 5:23.
B
Christ's judicial redemption is to bring us out of the custody of the law into the sonship of God that we may enjoy His organic salvation, His divine "sonizing"; the goal of Christ's redemption is sonship—Gal. 4:4-6; Rom. 5:10.
C
Paul's preaching was to bring forth Christ, the Son of the living God, in the believers; he was travailing that Christ might be formed in them for their full sonship—Gal. 4:19; cf. 1:15-16; 2:20:
１
To have Christ formed in us is to allow the all-inclusive Spirit to occupy our inner being that we may mature in the divine sonship— 3:14; Col. 2:19; Eph. 4:15-16; Heb. 6:1a.
２
Christ's being formed in us is for the building up of the Body of Christ to consummate the New Jerusalem as the aggregate of the divine sonship for the corporate expression of the Triune God—2:10; Rev. 21:7, 10-11.
Ⅱ
As believers in Christ, we have been made a new creation—Gal. 6:15:
A
The most crucial matter in God's full, all-inclusive salvation is His making us a new creation in Christ—2 Cor. 5:17:
１
Like the old creation, the new creation is corporate; in the new creation we all are parts of the new man, the church, composed of the many sons of God—Eph. 2:15; 1:5; Heb. 2:10-12.
２
God's eternal purpose is not just to redeem, to repossess, the fallen old creation but to regenerate man to make him the new creation— John 3:3; 1:12-13; 2 Cor. 5:17.
３
We are a new creation through our organic union with Christ—v. 17:
ａ
To be in Christ is to be one with Him in life and nature; this is of God through our faith in Christ—1 Cor. 1:30; Gal. 3:26-28.
ｂ
Apart from this organic union, we remain in the old creation, but by the organic union with the Triune God in Christ, we are in the new creation.
４
The new creation is a person regenerated with the life of God and living in the inner man, not in the outer man—John 3:3, 5-6, 15; 2 Cor. 4:16.
５
The old creation does not have the divine life and nature, but the new creation has God within it as its life, nature, appearance, and expres-sion.
６
God's goal is to produce the new creation out of the old creation; the new creation is the old creation transformed by the divine life—3:18.
７
The new creation—the mingling of God with man—takes place when the Triune God in Christ as the Spirit is wrought into our being; this is the mingling of divinity with humanity—1 Cor. 6:17; Eph. 3:16-17a.
B
Christ dealt with the problem of the old creation through His crucifixion, His all-inclusive death on the cross—Luke 23:44-46; Col. 1:15; Heb. 10:20.
C
The new creation comes into being by resurrection; the germinating ele-ment of the new creation is the resurrected Christ as the life-giving Spirit—2 Cor. 5:17; 1 Cor. 15:20, 23, 45b.
D
We are made a new creation by being regenerated—1 Pet. 1:3; John 3:6.
E
In our experience we are in the process of becoming a new creation by being broken and renewed—2 Cor. 5:17; 4:10-12, 16; Eph. 4:23-24:
１
To be renewed is to have God's ever-new essence dispensed into us to replace and discharge our old element—2 Cor. 4:16; Rom. 12:2; Titus 3:5.
２
Through the process of renewing, we are transferred from the realm of the old creation into the realm of the new creation to become the New Jerusalem—Col. 3:10; Rev. 21:2.