A PICTURE SHOWING THAT WE ARE NOTHING
AND THAT CHRIST IS EVERYTHING TO US
The picture portrayed by Jeremiah concerning Israel is a picture of us as believers in Christ today. This means that we are the same as Israel. Like Israel, we once had a "bridal day" (Jer. 2:2), a time when we pledged our love to the Lord and told Him that we loved Him to the uttermost. However, many believers have left their first love (Rev. 2:4) and have become degraded according to the pattern presented in Revelation 2 and 3. We may be disappointed with such a situation, but God is not disappointed. He knows that there will be a time of restoration and that sooner or later we will be willing to be subdued.
Eventually we will all be submissive to the Lord and recognize that we are evil; we will confess that we are a totality of sin. When we realize this, we will say, "Lord, I am nothing, but You are my everything. I am sin, but You are my righteousness. I am dead, but You are my life." Moreover, we will realize that along with the divine life with its sense, law, and capacity, we also have the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4). We will see that day by day we are being sanctified, renewed, and transformed, and that the time is coming when we will be conformed to the image of Christ and be glorified. Whereas God will always be God with the unique Godhead and whereas there will always be a distinction between us and God, we will nevertheless be constituted with God and be one with Him in life, nature, element, essence, image, and appearance so that we may be His corporate expression for eternity.
Some may find it hard to believe that this revelation concerning God’s economy with His dispensing can be found in the book of Jeremiah. We should be reminded that Jeremiah speaks of God’s being the fountain of living waters and of Christ’s being our righteousness. The book also speaks of the new covenant with all its blessings. After Israel’s failure, God came in to say, "This is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares Jehovah: I will put My law within them and write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they will be My people" (Jer. 31:33). In Hebrews 8 Paul quotes this portion of Jeremiah and applies it to us, the New Testament believers. This means that the new covenant with its privileges and blessings is for us to enjoy today. Israel will have this enjoyment later, after the Lord’s coming back.
Jeremiah truly is an abstract of the Bible. As such an abstract, this book is a picture showing us that we are nothing and that Christ is everything to us. If we see that we are nothing, we will not expect anything of ourselves. Rather, according to God’s economy with His dispensing, we will take Christ as our life, our life supply, and our everything.
(Life-Study of Jeremiah and Lamentations, Chapter 12, by Witness Lee)
