Life Study Of Galatians

The book of Galatians reveals that in God's economy, Christ replaces the law, and it is religion versus tradition. The churches in Galatia had begun well, receiving the Spirit through faith, but were now striving to be perfected by the flesh through the law (3:3). The Judaizers had bewitched the Galatians so that they considered the ordinances of the law above the Son of the living God. Paul responds by telling the distracted Galatians that Christ "gave Himself for our sins, that He might rescue us out of the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father" (1:4). In this book, the current evil age is not the secular world but the religious world in its present manifestation which distracts God's people from the living person of the Son of God. This book exposes the inability both of the law and of circumcision, showing that the law cannot impart life to regenerate us and that circumcision cannot energize us to live a new creation. But the Son of God who has been revealed in us can enliven us to make us a new creation, and the Christ who lives in us can afford us the riches of His life to live the new creation. The desire of God’s heart is not that we would keep the law but that His Son would be revealed in us, operate in us, live in us, and be formed in us that we may know Him, receive Him as our life, and become the sons of God individually and the household of the faith corporately. The book of Galatians unveils that the crucified Christ, not the law with its ordinances, is the center of God's economy.

In this series of messages we want to study the prophecy of the four 'sevens' in the Bible. If we are going to know the prophecy concerning the consummation of this present age, we need to know the truth concerning these four 'sevens.' In [the first] message we want to see the prophecy of the first 'seven,' which is the last seven years of this age spoken of as the last week of the seventy weeks in Daniel 9. The three other sets of 'sevens' are in the book of Revelation. They are the seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven bowls. Revelation may be considered as a book of prophecy constituted with these three sets of 'sevens.' The first 'seven' in Daniel 9 is related to these three sets of 'sevens' in Revelation. The prophecy of these four 'sevens' is related to the Messiah (Christ), the nation of Israel, the New Testament believers, and the church.

In the Lord’s recovery during the past five hundred years the church’s knowledge of the Lord and His truth has been continually progressing. This monumental and classical work by Brother Witness Lee builds upon and is a further development of all that the Lord has revealed to His church in the past centuries. It is filled with the revelation concerning the processed Triune God, the living Christ, the life-giving Spirit, the experience of life, and the definition and practice of the church. In this set Brother Lee has kept three basic principles that should rule and govern every believer in their interpretation, development, and expounding of the truths contained in the Scriptures. The first principle is that of the Triune God dispensing Himself into His chosen and redeemed people; the second principle is that we should interpret, develop, and expound the truths contained in the Bible with Christ for the church; and the third governing principle is Christ, the Spirit, life, and the church. No other study or exposition of the New Testament conveys the life nourishment or ushers the reader into the divine revelation of God’s holy Word according to His New Testament economy as this one does.

Ephesians reveals three great items in the New Testament: the Body of Christ, the Spirit, and the new man. Each of these items is uniquely one and ultimately related to Christ. The Body of Christ is the fullness of Christ, the One who fills all in all. The Spirit imparts the divine life, which contains the elements of Christ's divinity, humanity, death and resurrection, into the members of His Body, and this impartation of life produces a corporate expression of Christ that is displayed in and through the one new man. In One Body, One Spirit, and One New Man Witness Lee shows how the Body of Christ becomes His fullness through the believers' enjoyment of Christ. As we experience His boundless and immeasurable riches through the Spirit, we are reconstituted as members of His body, and as we take Him as our life and our person, the one new man in the universe comes into being in a practical way.