John (Program #51) – Life in Resurrection (2)

We should treasure the way the Lord has ordained to be present with us now. May the Lord really open our eyes: that what is precious to God, that is the invisible, indwelling, pneumatic Christ, would also become precious to us.

In John 20 as in the Gospel of John as a whole, we see the Trinity both in His essence and in His economy. The Divine Trinity is a trinity of essence eternally that is the Father, Son, and Spirit coexist and co-inhere in the Godhead eternally. This is the Trinity in essence. But in order to have the fulfillment of God’s economy, the essential Trinity must function as the economical Trinity to pass through the process in order to, on the one hand, enter into God’s people, and on the other to bring God’s people, now redeemed and regenerated, into God. By the time we reach chapter 20, we have at least the initial completion of this process in which the very God who became a man and died for our redemption, in resurrection became the Spirit, so that, economically speaking, the Father, Son, and Spirit may indwell us.

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Mark (Program #59) – A Life Fully According To and For God’s New Testament Economy (19)

During the last few months we have been given a memorable and wonderfully clear picture of “A Life Fully According To and For God’s New Testament Economy” as it is portrayed through the gospel of Mark.

This life embodied in our precious Lord Jesus in the gospels is developed through out the entire New Testament, ultimately a peak is reached in the book of Revelation, as we see the final consummation of God’s economy in the New Jerusalem. That final consummation is no longer just a picture of God or Christ alone, but we also as His redeemed and regenerated people are included. What a transformation from our pitiful fallen condition at the time we first received His saving grace to the glorious outcome that awaits all of us to participate in for eternity.

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Proverbs (Program #7) – Coming to Proverbs to Cultivate Our Regenerated New Man

Paul, the apostle tells us that the Bible has the potential to affect us when we read it in two very different ways. In 2 Corinthians 3:6 he says “Who has made us sufficient as ministers of a new covenant, ministers not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” Do we have this realization when we come to the word of God?  The same words can either become Spirit and life to us or they can become dead letters to us. It all depends on how we come to the Bible and what kind of persons we are that will determine what we receive. We’re all fallen creatures with an old fallen nature and an old life the Bible calls the old man. When this old man comes to the Bible in order to find help to improve itself before God, the result will be predictable, the result of death.

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1 Peter (Program #11) -Growth in Life and Its Results (1)

What is it to grow spiritually?  Well, many think that to grow as a Christian is simply to acquire more Scriptural knowledge through diligent study of the Bible.  But genuine spiritual growth as apostle Peter indicates in his first epistle, is to take the word of God not merely as doctrinal knowledge but rather, as food as nourishment.  In fact he likens nourishment in the Word to milk, nourishing a growing infant.  This picture in 1 Peter confirms the genuine growth in the Christian life is organic and not academic.

We have been regenerated with a divine life of God.  And just as new born babe, our first requirement is to take the real nourishing supply so this divine life can grow within us.

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1 Peter (Program #9) -The Full Salvation of the Triune God and Its Issues (7)

In chapter one of his epistle Peter contrasts our former way of living or literally our manner of life which was vain with our present manner of life, we should be holy. Vain of course means empty, without meaning.

Well, all of us must surely confess that our life before we were regenerated were categorized by sin. But Peter points out that even more our life were vain, empty and without purpose. Yet we had been called to a holy manner of life.

14: “..Do not be fashioned,” Peter writes, “according to the former lusts in your ignorance;”

15 “But according to the Holy One who called you, you yourselves also be holy in all your manner of life;”

How can we have such a living, such a manner of life that becomes holy? Peter’s further word in this chapter becomes a very great help to us.

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1 Peter (Program #8) -The Full Salvation of the Triune God and Its Issues (6)

All genuine Christian experience is based on truth. The truth or reality convey in Scripture forms the base or foundation of all our real spiritual experience. Peter’s first epistle in the New Testament very much illustrates this point. The first twelve verses in chapter one lay out some of the great truth of the whole Bible.  Such as our being chosen according to the foreknowledge of God and our being regenerated unto a living hope and unto an incorruptible, undefiled and unfading inheritance, an inheritance that Peter shows us should be our portion, not just in eternity but also today. The in verse thirteen Peter goes on to tell us that based upon all these rich divine truths, we should gird up the loins of our mind and soberly set our hope on the grace that is ours at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

If we take Peter’s way, if we give ourselves to the word in this way, we will find that our own love and experience of the Lord as well as our love for one another will be greatly enriched and strengthened as well.

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Colossians(Program #38) – In Christ and According to Christ

What does it mean to be “in Christ”? Many places in the New Testament, especially in the letters of Paul the Apostle, use this term. Well, the easiest answer is to say that according to the facts, whatever is true of Him is true of us. For example, we died in Him and we were made alive in Him. As I said, these are the facts. But, what about our experience?  If we’re regenerated, born again. Then without doubt, we have these divine facts as our spiritual history, but we may not have a corresponding experience: being in Him and living according to Him.

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