From chapter five of The Ministers in the Lord’s Recovery – Genuine Ministers of the New Covenant
Our appreciation of the profundity of the divine revelations received by the ministers in the Lord’s recovery is strengthened when we consider them in contrast to popular yet superficial (or even erroneous) teachings found in traditional Christianity. For instance, a great many preachers hold a narrow view of God’s salvation, seeing it primarily as a deliverance of humankind from God’s wrath and punishment. In contrast, the ministry in the Lord’s recovery presents the full scriptural revelation concerning God’s complete salvation. Such a salvation indisputably includes the precious and foundational matter of judicial redemption accomplished through the vicarious death of Christ, in which the believers in Christ are saved from God’s condemnation (Rom. 3:24-25; 5:8-9; Gal. 3:13), yet the ministry goes on, as Paul does in the book of Romans, to stress “much more” God’s organic salvation, in which the believers are brought into the enjoyment of the divine life by being regenerated, sanctified, renewed, transformed, conformed, and glorified (John 3:16; Eph. 4:23; Rom. 5:10; 6:4, 22; 8:2, 17, 29-30; 12:2). By receiving this comprehensive and balanced view of God’s full salvation, we have learned not only to appreciate Christ’s eternally efficacious redemption as the unique basis for our justification before God but also to enjoy the continual operation of His divine life within us so that we attain the lofty goal of His salvation in becoming the same as He is in life, nature, element, and expression, but not in the Godhead (Col. 3:4; John 3:6; 2 Pet. 1:4; 2 Cor. 3:18; Phil. 3:21; 1 John 3:2).
The subject of eternal life provides another area of contrast between biblical revelation in the Lord’s recovery and the common teachings in traditional Christianity. Eternal life is erroneously understood by many popular preachers to merely mean everlasting human life untouched by death—thus relegating the believers’ experience of the eternal life to the distant future. The ministry in the Lord’s recovery, on the other hand, offers a fully scriptural and deeply spiritual understanding of eternal life that not only transcends all physical conceptions of the blessings in eternity future but also unlocks the believers’ present enjoyment of God’s gift of life in His Son (Rom. 6:23; John 1:4). Eternal life is nothing less than the divine, uncreated, indestructible, and incorruptible life of God (John 3:16; Eph. 4:18; Heb. 7:16); it is God Himself embodied in the Son, realized as the life-giving Spirit, and imparted into the believers’ tripartite being to become their life, saving them and enabling them to reign over all things (Col. 2:9; 1 Cor. 15:45; Col. 3:4; Rom. 5:10, 17; 8:6, 10-11). Under the shining of such a rich and experiential understanding of eternal life released by the ministry in the Lord’s recovery, many saints have been saved from a purposeless Christian life spent in passive expectation of a blissful afterlife to come. Instead, they have been perfected to partake of the Triune God as eternal life in the present age and to receive the dispensing of this life into their spirit, soul, and body that they may “have life” and “have it abundantly” and thus be saved in life and reign in life over Satan, sin, and death (John 10:10; 5:40; Rom. 8:2; 16:20).
Such superficial views of salvation and eternal life described above are matched by the erroneous yet pervasive concept of “going to heaven,” according to which many preachers mistakenly portray the New Jerusalem as a literal, physical city replete with earthly pleasures designed to satisfy the believers’ soulish longings. In contrast, the ministry in the recovery unveils the intrinsic significance of the holy city as a symbolic vision of the fulfillment of the desire of God’s heart and the ultimate issue of God’s work with and within humanity: a consummate union, mingling, and incorporation of God and man; an eternal mutual abode of the redeeming God and His redeemed people; a universal couple—the Spirit and the bride—composed of Christ the Lamb and the believers as His wife; and an eternal, corporate enlargement, expansion, and expression of the processed and consummated Triune God in His chosen, redeemed, regenerated, transformed, and glorified tripartite people (Rev. 21:2, 9-11, 22; 22:17). It is under such a heavenly vision of the New Jerusalem that, instead of harboring false hopes of one day inheriting a heavenly mansion, we aspire to abide in the Triune God and enjoy His abiding in us in order to be increasingly mingled with Him today so that we may become the New Jerusalem as His corporate dwelling place, beloved counterpart, and organic increase and expression (1 John 4:12-16; John 3:29-30; 14:2, 23; 15:4-5; Eph. 1:23; 3:19; 5:25-27). The weight and preciousness of these scriptural revelations given in the Lord’s recovery are in such contrast with common Christian teachings that we can only thank the Lord for His mercy that we could see them, while also remembering the great price paid by Brother Nee and Brother Lee to release them in the face of opposition.
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