Following transformation, we want to see the building up in the organic aspect of God’s salvation.
The transformation of the believers in the divine life causes them to be joined and knit together with other believers as fellow members of Christ because of their growth in the divine life. This joining and knitting together becomes the building of the God-men with other God-men in the divine life.
This building in the divine life is the building of the jasper wall of the holy city, the New Jerusalem, which is not the result of piling a piece of jasper upon another piece of jasper, but the issue of the joining of all the jasper stones by the transforming Spirit. This building is also the building referred to in Ephesians 4:15-16 as the issue of the believers’ growing into the Head, Christ, in all things, that is, “all the Body, being joined together and being knit together through every joint of the rich supply and through the operation in the measure of each one part, causes the growth of the Body unto the building up of itself in love.”
The building up of the Body of Christ mentioned in the New Testament is the building up by being joined and knit together in the divine life. This kind of building which is first carried out in the Body of Christ will consummate the building of the holy city, the New Jerusalem. This kind of building is a testimony and a great manifestation of the function of the divine life, that is, the manifestation of the glorious jasper-like image of God (Rev. 4:3a).
Concerning God’s building on earth today, the New Testament contains sufficient revelation, teaching, instruction, and warning. Now let us mention them briefly.
First, in Matthew 16 after the Lord had led us to know Him as the Christ, the Son of the living God, He immediately told us that upon this foundation of our knowledge of Him, He would build His church for resisting the gates of Hades (vv. 13-18).
Second, in John 1:51 the Lord told us in an implied way that for God’s wandering people on earth, there is the need for a builded house of God on earth to serve as the base for His heavenly ladder on earth to bring heaven to earth and join earth to heaven. In chapter two He declared that this house of God is built by Him in resurrection with His resurrection life and power (vv. 16-22). Then in 14:23 He told His close disciples that He and His Father would go to His lovers to make an abode with them (cf. 14:2).
Third, in Romans 12 the apostle exhorted us that we should think so as to be sober-minded concerning ourselves, as God has apportioned to each a measure of faith, that we may be coordinated with all the members as one Body, that is, the building of God (vv. 3-5).
Fourth, in 1 Corinthians 1 the apostle condemned sectarianism and urged us to keep the oneness in the one Christ (vv. 10-13). In chapter three he said that we are God’s cultivated land, God’s building. We need to grow Christ as wheat and be transformed into gold, silver, and precious stones, the element of the Divine Trinity, and thereby build the church of God on the foundation that has been laid, which is Jesus Christ. On the contrary, if we participate in God’s building by the flesh (wood), according to man’s will (grass), and according to the worldly people’s practices (stubble), our work will be consumed by the Lord and we will suffer loss (vv. 9-15).
(The Organic Aspect of God's Salvation, Chapter 4, by Witness Lee)