You can all prophesy one by one… —1 Cor. 12:31

2024 TGC Message Three

Living a Christian Life and Church Life
Under the Government of God
for the Economy of God

Message Three

Life and Building in Peter’s Epistles

OPENING WORD OF THE PROPHESYING MEETING

Reading the verses in each day.

Reading the main points in the outlines.

Pray-reading the verses:

2 Pet. 1:3-4 Seeing that His divine power has granted to us all things which relate to life and godliness, through the full knowledge of Him who has called us by His own glory and virtue, through which He has granted to us precious and exceedingly great promises that through these you might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption which is in the world by lust.

1 Pet. 2:5 You yourselves also…are being built up as a spiritual house into a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Word of Appetizer

The central thought of Peter’s Epistles and of the entire Scripture is life and building; what is life? what is building?

Life is the Triune God embodied in Christ and realized as the Spirit dispensing Himself into us for our enjoyment, and building is the church, the Body of Christ, God’s spiritual house, as the enlargement and expansion of God for the corporate expression of God.

Christ as the seed of life is the power of life within us that has granted to us all things which relate to life and godliness for the building up of the church as the rich surplus of life and the expression of life through the growth and development of life.

Spiritual Burden

God’s goal is to have a spiritual house built up with living stones; as life to us, Christ is the incorruptible seed; for God’s building, He is the living stone.

We, the believers in Christ, are living stones as the duplication of Christ through regeneration and transformation; we were created of clay (Rom. 9:21), but at regeneration we received the seed of the divine life, which by its growing in us transforms us into living stones.

Concluding Word of the Prophesying Meeting

The Revelation of the Truth

The central thought of Peter’s Epistles and of the entire Scripture is life and building.

God’s goal is to have a spiritual house built up with living stones.

Since God’s building is living, it is growing; the actual building up of the church as the house of God is by the believers’ growth in life.

The holy priesthood, the coordinated body of priests, is the built-up spiritual house; God wants a spiritual house for His dwelling and a priestly body, a corporate priesthood, for His service.

The Experience of Life

If we want Christ’s life to be unhindered in us, we must experience the breaking of the cross, the killing death of Christ in the all-inclusive Spirit of Christ as the Spirit of glory, so that the obstacles within us can be dealt with and removed.

All our priestly service to the Lord must originate from Him as “the God of measure” and not from ourselves; all our priestly service must be according to His leading and His limitation, as we allow His death to operate in us, so that His resurrection life can be imparted through us into others.

Practice and Application

In order to grow in life for God’s building, we must love the Lord, take heed to our spirit, and guard our heart with all vigilance to stay on the pathway of life.

In order to grow in life for God’s building, we must put away “all malice and all guile and hypocrisies and envyings and all evil speakings”.

In order to grow in life for God’s building, we must be nourished with the guileless milk of God’s word.