“He who believes into the Son has eternal life” (John 3:36a). When we believe, we receive eternal life. This is to be born again. John 3:6 says, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” Our second birth, of the Spirit, is the beginning of our journey to New Jerusalem.
Because we have had two births, we are both natural, fallen men, men of flesh, and redeemed, regenerated men, men with God living in us. God wants to spread in us; to live in, with, and through us; to be formed in us. God’s goal is that we no longer be natural, fallen men but “be conformed to the image of His Son” (Rom. 8:29).
We all need, experientially, to have Christ incarnated into us. Then He must bring us through death and resurrection into God. The more we pass through the cross and into the resurrection, the more we will be in God. God is in us today, but we are not very much in God. This is why God is doing His work of building on this earth today.*
God seeks our cooperation with His building work. On one side our cooperation is to deny our self, our soul-life, as spoken by the Lord in Matthew 16 and Luke 9. On the other side our cooperation is to live and walk in spirit as in Galatians 5:16, 25. This cooperation allows God a way to build Himself into us and to build us with Him into New Jerusalem.
* Excerpt from The Vision of God’s Building by Witness Lee, chapter 17