We need to see that there is something on this earth structured as a kind of organic constitution which is called the Body of Christ, and this Body of Christ is the organism of the unseen God. Dear saints, this is the consummation of everything. Many things are mentioned in the Bible, but eventually, at the end of the Bible, there is only one consummation, and this consummation is the New Jerusalem. In this consummation, we can see God (the Father, the Son, and the Spirit) and God’s redeemed humanity. We can see Israel because the New Jerusalem bears the names of the twelve tribes representing saved Israel (Rev. 21:12). We can see the believers because the holy city bears the names of the twelve apostles representing all the New Testament believers (v. 14). The New Jerusalem is the consummation of God and man. God has constituted Himself into our humanity and our humanity also has been constructed into His divinity. Now divinity and humanity are joined, united, mingled, and blended together.
Do we need to wait until the New Jerusalem comes before we blend? There is not such a thing. The New Jerusalem comes into existence by the blending of God with His elect, His chosen people. Even the Old Testament people such as Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, and all the prophets were blended together. They were not just individual saints. They were considered by God on this earth as a nation, a corporate entity. This corporate entity was not only incorporated with men but also incorporated with God.
Then in the New Testament we also see a marvelous blending. The Lord Jesus blended all the seven churches in Asia together by sending them one aggregate epistle. Paul blended the churches in Colossae and Laodicea by writing one epistle to each of the two churches respectively and asking them to read the two epistles reciprocally (Col. 4:16). This indicates that in the eyes of Paul those two churches were one. They both should know the same thing.
Eventually, the coming out of the divine revelation is a city, the New Jerusalem. That is the consummation of God, of Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, Peter, John, Paul, Darby, Watchman Nee, you, and me. The New Jerusalem is the ultimate consummation of God’s eternal economy.
The Lord has opened up to us the truth of God’s economy with God’s dispensing. First Timothy 1:4, Ephesians 1:10, and Ephesians 3:9 all use the word economy, a translation of the Greek word oikonomia. This economy with God’s dispensing will consummate in one city. When we composed our hymnal thirty years ago in 1964, I wrote a number of hymns on the New Jerusalem (Hymns, #971-972, 975-976, 978-980). Since 1984 I have given many messages on the New Jerusalem. The last nineteen chapters of the book entitled God’s New Testament Economy are concerning the New Jerusalem. After my study of the Bible for the past sixty-nine years, what have I seen? I would say that I have seen the New Jerusalem. This is my vision, this is my revelation, and this is my ministry. I have been in the United States for thirty-two years, and I have published approximately four thousand messages. I have stressed the Triune God, Christ, life, and the Spirit, and the church, the Body, and ultimately, the New Jerusalem.
What is the significance of our blending? It is not an organization of any nature. The first stanza of Hymns, #541 says, “Not the law of letters,/But the Christ of life.” Then stanza 4 says, “Not religion, even/Christianity,/Can fulfill God’s purpose/Or economy.” Our blending has nothing to do with the dead letter, any religion, or anything of Christianity. The significance of our blending is the reality of the Body of Christ. This reality is nothing but the group of God’s redeemed who have all been made God, the God-men, by God. They live a life not by themselves but by another life which is within them. This other life is the Triune God processed and consummated to enter into them and to take them as His abode, His dwelling place.
Ephesians 3:17 tells us that Christ is now making His home in our hearts. In John 14:23 the Lord said, “If anyone loves Me…My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make an abode with him.” This word make is not a small word. To make is to build. The only way to make a home is by building. This building is not by anything physical but by the spiritual element and spiritual essence of the Divine Trinity. This building actually is a kind of organic constitution. The reality of the Body of Christ is a living by all the God-men united, joined, and constituted together with God by mingling humanity with divinity and divinity with humanity.
Now that you realize this, what should you do? Every day remember that you are a God-man. You have God living in you, making His home in you. You and He, He and you, are mingled together as one. You should not live a life by your natural life, your natural man. You and I, the old man, the natural man, have been terminated on the cross, crucified by the Lord in His death (Gal. 2:20a). We must leave our natural man on the cross. This is what it means to bear the cross. By leaving your old man on the cross, you will be conformed to the death of Christ (Phil. 3:10).
The death of Christ means that when Christ lived on this earth, He was always rejecting Himself. He told us that He never did anything by Himself, but He did everything by the Father (John 6:57; 5:19; 4:34; 17:4; 14:10, 24; 5:30; 7:18). He had a very holy, pure human life, but He did not live that life. He put that life aside, put that life to death, and lived by the Father’s life. That was a model to us. We should be the mass production of that model, the God-men who have both the human life uplifted in Christ’s resurrection and the divine life. Even our human life has been uplifted in Christ’s resurrection, but we should not live by that, by ourselves.
Paul said, “I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20a). This is not an exchange, because Paul went on to say, “And the life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith in the Son of God…” (v. 20b). Paul was a person living not by himself but by the pneumatic Christ, and this pneumatic Christ is the all-inclusive Spirit, who is the consummation of the processed and consummated Triune God. All of this is in resurrection. When you do not live by your natural life, but live by the divine life within you, you are in resurrection. The issue of this is the Body of Christ. The reality of the divine life within us is the resurrection, which is the pneumatic Christ, the all-inclusive Spirit, and the processed and consummated Triune God. I hope that this brief fellowship will help us to know the significance of the blending.
(Practical Points Concerning Blending, Chapter 3, by Witness Lee)