The Transparency of New Jerusalem
Revelation 21:12-21 is a portion describing New Jerusalem, including the wall, the foundations of the wall, the gates, the street, and the city as a whole. This portion ends, “the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass.”
How much of our situation today is not transparent! But in the future, in God’s presence, we will all be transparent. Even so, today we should not have many hiding places and many veils. We should not pretend to be godly before men in order to win their praise…. When our actual condition is not so good and we pretend to be good, we are not transparent. Many times our words and our actions are quite unnatural….This is not being transparent. All artificiality and imitation are not transparent.
New Jerusalem’s street is “pure gold, like transparent glass.” The pure gold symbolizes the divine nature. Only this nature is transparent. In our natural being we are cloudy, vague, obscure. We should take two actions. First:
We need to confess many things. Among the brothers and sisters we need to learn to confess to each other and not to cover our sin. Whenever we have sinned against others, we should not try to rationalize it away, but confess it.*
To confess our sins is to “walk in the light.” In God’s light (not our own “light”) the blood of Jesus cleanses us and we have fellowship with one another (1 John 1:7). Second, we need the divine life supply to transform us, to renew us from our old cloudy nature to God’s transparent nature. We need the renewing of the Spirit to transform us with the nature of New Jerusalem.
* From chapter 5 of The Glorious Church by Watchman Nee, published and © by Living Stream Ministry, available at www.ministrybooks.org/ and www.livingstream.com/en/the-church/8012401-glorious-church-the.html.
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Posted by Don on July 27, 2022
