I.　The vision of the New Jerusalem is the vision of the age; to live and serve God according to the vision of the age in the ministry of the age is to live out and work out the New Jerusalem—Acts 26:19; 22:15; Rev. 21:9-11:

A.　"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" (The Practical Points concerning Blending, pp. 25-26).

B.　The New Jerusalem is the total composition of the entire revelation of the Bible and the ultimate goal of God's eternal economy—Eph. 2:10; Rev. 21:2.

C.　Every local church should be a miniature of the New Jerusalem, and every believer should be a "little New Jerusalem"; whatever is ascribed to the New Jerusalem should be both our corporate and personal experience—cf. 22:1-2a.

D.　To live out the New Jerusalem is to become the New Jerusalem; to work out the New Jerusalem is to build the New Jerusalem—19:7; 1 Cor. 3:12a.

II.　To live out and work out the New Jerusalem in our Christian life and church life will consummate in our becoming the New Jerusalem as a rainbow, the reality of the new covenant of grace, for the expression of God's righteousness, holiness, and glory—Rev. 21:18-20; Gal. 4:26-28, 31:

A.　God's covenant with Noah and the rainbow as a sign of His covenant signify that we are the church of the covenant, living in the reality of the new covenant of grace—Gen. 9:8-17.

B.　The rainbow around God's throne signifies that God is the covenanting God, the faithful God, who will keep His covenant while executing His judgment upon the earth—Rev. 4:3; Ezek. 1:26-28.

C.　The three primary colors of the rainbow are blue (the color of the sapphire throne, which signifies God's righteousness—v. 26; Psa. 89:14), red (the color of the sanctifying fire, which signifies God's holiness—Ezek. 1:4, 13, 27; Heb. 12:29), and yellow (the color of the glowing electrum, which signifies God's glory—Ezek. 1:4, 27; Heb. 1:3):

1.　Because man had fallen and become sinful, the way to the tree of life was barred by God's righteousness, holiness, and glory—Gen. 3:24.

2.　Christ died on the cross to satisfy the requirements of God's righteousness, holiness, and glory and was resurrected to be our righteousness, holiness, and glory—1 Cor. 1:30.

3.　Christ Himself, signified by the rainbow of righteousness, holiness, and glory, is the covenant of God given to His people for their "Christification," to make them exactly the same as He is in life, nature, and expression but not in the Godhead—Isa. 42:6; Heb. 8:10-12; Ezek. 36:26-27.

D.　Christ is wisdom to us from God, transmitting Himself into us as righteous-ness (that we might be reborn in our spirit), sanctification (that we might be transformed in our soul), and redemption (that we might be transfigured in our body)—1 Cor. 1:30; Rom. 8:10; 12:2; 8:23; Phil. 3:21:

1.　Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her—this is Christ as our Redeemer to be our righteousness for our justification—Eph. 5:25.

2.　Christ is sanctifying the church, cleansing her by the washing of the water in the word—this is Christ as the life-giving Spirit to be our holiness for our sanctification—v. 26.

3.　Christ will present the church to Himself glorious, not having spot or wrinkle or any such things—this is Christ as our Bridegroom to be our glory for our glorification—v. 27.

4.　The transmission of Christ into our being as the multifarious wisdom of God makes us the organic masterpiece of the Triune God to be the wise exhibition of all that He is, a poem expressing His infinite wisdom and divine design—1 Cor. 1:30; Eph. 2:10; 3:9-11.

E.　In eternity as the New Jerusalem (a city whose foundations have the appearance of a rainbow—Rev. 21:19-20), we will be a rainbow to testify of God's faithfulness to carry out His new covenant in making us exactly the same as He is as righteousness, holiness, and glory—vv. 10-11.

F.　The rainbow is a sign of God's faithfulness in keeping His covenant that there will be no more judgment of death; God is faithful to His Word, and His Word is the testament, the covenant:

1.　We are fallen and deserve to be destroyed, but God has spared us by His faithfulness—Lam. 3:22-23.

2.　We may be assured and at peace in the church life, for there is no more death; in the church we continually enjoy life—John 10:10b; 2 Cor. 5:4.

3.　We must live under the new covenant and not believe in any failure, weakness, darkness, or negative thing; we are the covenanted people, and we have a verse of promise to meet every situation—cf. Rom. 8:1; 2 Cor. 12:9; 2 Tim. 1:10; 2:1; Jude 24; 1 John 1:9; 1 Cor. 1:9; 2 Pet. 1:4.

G.　The spiritual reality of this rainbow should be manifest in the church today— we need to allow God to fill us with His righteous presence by giving Him the full opportunity to work in us as the sanctifying fire for His radiant expression through our coordination as the corporate Christ—Ezek. 1:5-14, 26-28.

III.　In every church there must be the base of God's righteousness (God's procedure), the process of God's holiness (God's nature), and the goal of God's glory (God's expression) to bring us into the heart of God to have the reality of the Body of Christ through the local churches—this is the revelation of the book of Romans which we must live out to become the New Jerusalem and work out to build the New Jerusalem:

A.　Christ's death is for God's righteousness, His resurrection is for God's holiness, and His ascension is for God's glory; when Christ comes back, the glorification of His saints will be consummated—cf. 2 Cor. 3:3, 6, 8-9.

B.　Christ died on the cross for us as our Substitute to fulfill God's righteous requirements for our justification so that He could dispense Himself as life into us—John 19:34; Rom. 1:17; 3:23-25; 5:18; Rev. 22:14:

1.　The New Jerusalem is the embodiment of God's complete salvation, a composition of God's righteousness as the base and God's life as the consummation—Psa. 89:14; Rom. 5:18.

2.　A proper Christian is one who has died with Christ and who conducts himself daily according to this fact; if a believer lives in a natural way, he will be unrighteous, but if he experiences the death of the cross, he will be righteous in everything, with everyone, and in every way—Gal. 2:20.

3.　Only the death of Christ and our death with Christ fulfill the requirements of God's righteousness and give God the ground to righteously dispense Himself as the divine life into our entire being so that we are swallowed up by life to be the city of life—Rom. 8:10, 6, 11; 2 Cor. 5:4.

4.　To live and serve as a minister of the new covenant is to take the way of righteousness by recognizing that we do not have any qualification to be a servant of God, that as a man in the flesh we are good for nothing except death and burial—Matt. 3:13-17; 21:32.

C.　Sanctification is the subjective activity of holiness; it is holiness in action:

1.　Sanctification is the resurrected Christ as "the Spirit, the Holy," the sanctifying Spirit in our spirit, working Himself as God's holy nature into our being to make us the holy city—1 Thes. 1:5-6; 5:23; Rom. 6:19, 22; 15:16; 8:4.

2.　The divine sanctification for the divine sonship is the center of the divine economy and the central thought of the revelation in the New Testament— Heb. 2:10-11; Eph. 1:4-5.

3.　The divine sanctification is the holding line in the carrying out of the divine economy, the process of God's organic salvation as God's move to deify man, making man God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead— vv. 4-5; Rev. 21:2.

4.　To live and serve as a minister of the new covenant is to walk in newness of life and serve in newness of spirit as a laboring priest of the gospel of God to present the saved sinners to God as an acceptable offering sanctified in the Holy Spirit—Rom. 6:4; 7:6; 15:16.

D.　The ultimate goal of the dispensing of the Triune God is that God would be expressed through the Body of Christ for His glory in the church—Eph. 3:20-21; Rom. 8:19, 21, 28-30; 16:27:

1.　The oneness in John 17 is the church; when the oneness is realized in a thorough way, the Son glorifies the Father in the church—vv. 1, 21-23.

2.　This indicates that wherever there is the proper church life, there is the glorification of the Father, for the church life expresses the Father.

3.　To live and serve as a minister of the new covenant is to do all to the glory of God for the exaltation of Christ—1 Cor. 10:31; Phil. 1:20; 2 Cor. 4:5.

E.　The dispensing of the Triune God according to His righteousness, through His holiness, and unto His glory is for us to become the New Jerusalem with Christ as our solid foundation of righteousness, our pure constituent of holiness, and our radiant expression of glory—Rev. 21:2, 9-11.

F.　Thus, the Spirit as the processed and consummated God and the bride as the processed and consummated church are joined to become a loving pair of one entity for eternity—22:17a; cf. 1 Cor. 6:17.