I.　We need to experience and enjoy Christ (to gain Christ—Phil. 3:8) in His full ministry in His three divine and mystical stages so that we may work together with Him (2 Cor. 6:1a) to do a work of three sections—incar-nation to produce redeemed people, inclusion to produce and establish the churches, and intensification to produce the overcomers (John 1:14; 1 Cor. 15:45b; Rev. 1:4; 2:7; 3:1; 4:5; 5:6):

A.　To work the work of the Lord is not a movement in work but an activity in life—1 Cor. 16:10; Matt. 4:18-22; Acts 13:1-3; Mark 6:7.

B.　The Lord has chosen us to go forth and bear fruit; fruit-bearing requires the maturity and freshness in life—John 15:4-5, 16; cf. Acts 24:5.

C.　The work of the Lord to minister and dispense Christ as life into others requires continuous consecration, prayer, and the dealing of the cross—Matt. 10:38; 2 Cor. 4:10-11; 1 Cor. 4:15; 15:58; Gal. 4:19.

II.　All of our service must be according to the example of Moses, whom God instructed: "See…that you make all things according to the pattern that was shown to you in the mountain"—Heb. 8:5:

A.　The greatest blessing that a servant of Christ can possibly have is to receive God's instruction on the mountain, to know the kind of work that God has assigned for him, and to know the prescribed pattern for the work—Acts 20:24; 1 Cor. 9:26.

B.　The most important thing for a servant of Christ is to know what God wants from him; God will not lend His strength to any work that is not done accord-ing to His will—12:18; cf. Acts 22:10; S. S. 7:11-12.

C.　The lesson of Nadab and Abihu is that the zeal (the fire) of our service must come from the altar of the cross; the cross is the place where the self is put to death and the place where we allow the Lord to live—Lev. 10:1-11; Gal. 2:20:

1.　Anything that is not from the altar of the cross of self-denial is strange fire; offering up strange fire is employing the self 's methods and wisdom and insisting on the self 's proposals in the work of God.

2.　God wants us to serve Him according to His instructions, not according to what we think or presume—1 Sam. 13:8-14; 2 Sam. 6:1-7.

D.　What God requires today is for us to hold fast to this fact: we should do only what God commands us to do and not do what He has not commanded us to do; we have to maintain this stand—Psa. 19:13; 2 Chron. 26:16-21:

1.　Our only concern should be whether or not our work is within the bounds of God's measurement for us—2 Cor. 10:13-15.

2.　The most glorious thing for a child of God is to fulfill what God wants him to do within the bounds of God's assignment; God has a preassigned course for every believer to take—2 Tim. 4:7; Acts 20:24; 13:36.

III.　We need to follow the pattern of the apostle Paul to experience, enjoy, and proclaim Christ as the reality of the jubilee of grace according to the heavenly vision of God's eternal economy—26:18-19; Luke 4:18-21:

A.　Paul was allied with God and realized God's assistance in this alliance in order to open people's eyes, to turn them from darkness to light and from the authority of Satan to God so that they might receive forgiveness of sins and enjoy the Triune God as their inheritance with all He has, all He has done, and all He will do for His redeemed people—Acts 26:18, 22.

B.　We must pray desperately to the Lord that we would experience, enjoy, and proclaim the full, complete, perfect, and thorough gospel of Christ as the jubilee of grace revealed in Acts 26:18.

IV.　We must proclaim the forgiveness of sins as the base of all the blessings of the New Testament jubilee (Luke 24:47); this is to "proclaim liberty through-out the land to all its inhabitants" (Lev. 25:10):

A.　We must proclaim the meaning of forgiveness:

1.　Since the Lord Jesus died and shed His blood to fulfill God's righteous requirement, God, according to His righteousness, can and must forgive us of our sins, blot out our sinful record, and spare us from His judgment— John 3:18; 5:24; Heb. 9:22.

2.　Forgiveness means that God causes the sins we have committed to depart from us and sends them away—Matt. 12:31a; Rom. 4:7; 1 John 1:9; Acts 5:31; 13:38; Eph. 1:7; John 1:29; Isa. 53:6; 1 Pet. 2:24; Lev. 16:7-10, 15-17, 20-22; cf. Psa. 103:12.

3.　God's forgiveness of our sins results in His forgetting our sins—Jer. 31:34; Heb. 8:12; Isa. 43:25.

B.　We must proclaim the authority and position of forgiveness—only God, the Lord Jesus, who was incarnated as the Son of Man, has the authority and posi-tion to forgive sins—Luke 5:21, 24.

C.　We must proclaim the basis of forgiveness:

1.　"Without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness"—Heb. 9:22.

2.　"My blood…poured out for many for forgiveness of sins"—Matt. 26:28.

3.　"In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of offen-ses"—Eph. 1:7.

D.　We must proclaim the way for a sinner to obtain forgiveness:

1.　For a sinner to be forgiven by God, he must repent, that is, change his mind to turn back to God—Luke 24:47; Acts 5:31; Isa. 55:6-7.

2.　In order for a sinner to be forgiven by God, he must believe into Christ— Acts 10:43; 26:18.

E.　We must proclaim the way for a believer to obtain forgiveness—by confessing his sins—1 John 1:9; Psa. 32:5.

F.　We must proclaim the sphere of forgiveness:

1.　"Every sin…will be forgiven"—Matt. 12:31a.

2.　"Having forgiven us all our offenses"—Col. 2:13.

G.　We must proclaim the result of forgiveness:

1.　"With You there is forgiveness, / That You would be feared"—Psa. 130:4.

2.　"Her sins which are many are forgiven, because she loved much; but to whom little is forgiven, he loves little"—Luke 7:47, 42-43.

H.　We must proclaim the different kinds of forgiveness:

1.　There is God's eternal forgiveness, which concerns the eternal salvation of man and is granted to sinners in this age; His eternal forgiveness is given to sinners because of the blood that Christ shed on the cross (Eph. 1:7; Heb. 9:22; Matt. 26:28) and because of the sinner's faith (Acts 26:18; 10:43).

2.　There is the forgiveness through which God restores fellowship with the believer in this age; this is granted because of the Lord's blood through the confession of sins—1 John 1:7, 9.

3.　There is God's disciplinary forgiveness through chastisement in this age— James 5:14-15; 2 Sam. 12:9-15; cf. Gal. 6:7-8; 2 Sam. 22:26-27; 1 Pet. 5:5-6.

4.　There is the forgiveness in the kingdom, which is through God's punishment in the coming age—Matt. 18:21-35; 12:32.

5.　There is the forgiveness exercised by the church in receiving newly saved believers or sinful but repenting believers (16:19; 18:15-18); this for-giveness is by the power of the Holy Spirit (John 20:22-23) and the confirmation of love (2 Cor. 2:1-2, 5-11).

6.　There is the personal forgiveness of the believers in our forgiving of others today that we ourselves may be forgiven in order to escape future punish-ment in the millennial kingdom—Matt. 6:12, 14-15; 18:21-35; Mark 11:25-26; Luke 6:37; Eph. 4:32; Col. 3:13.

I.　The Lord Jesus is our Emancipator, the One who is qualified to forgive sins and who is able to set us free from the slavery of sin that we might enjoy Him as the reality of the New Testament jubilee; His forgiving our sins and libera-ting us from the slavery of sin issue in His being our eternal portion and our glorious freedom for the fulfillment of His eternal economy—John 8:32, 36; 2 Cor. 3:17; Rom. 8:2; Col. 1:12.