Page 9 - The Christian Life and the Church Life_Government of God

8

Message 1
The Universal Government of God

By the will of God and by His sovereign authority, with His grace, He
gives me the privilege and the blessing to be with you again to seek the Lord
together, to learn whatever He has in His heart for us during this time. It
has been a few years since I had been here; but the Philippines, with all the
churches and all the saints, have always remained deep in my heart. The Lord
has assigned to us the general subject of the training, “The Christian Life
and the Church Life under the Government of God.” This is a very particular
emphasis and a very particular way of viewing our Christian life and our
church life. As we will go on to see, we are viewing this and considering
this from the perspective of the government of God in the universe. In this
opening word, I want to try my best to lay the foundation in truth so that we
are clear based upon the divine revelation concerning what the government
of God is.
We start with eleven points I wrote down for myself; and I hope you could
take them in. Writing down will help you understand something which is, for
almost all of us, something quite new. In the universe created by God, God
Himself has two systems. The first is what we call the system of grace; we
have properly been experiencing this, enjoying this, receiving blessing from
this since the moment we were saved. The system of grace is God’s complete
arrangement for us to be redeemed from the fall, to be saved judicially and
organically, to be reconciled to God, to have our sins forgiven and forgotten,
to be born of God to be His children in life and nature, to be a new creation
in Christ. Everything related to the Christian life from the moment we are
regenerated until we are mature and ready to be raptured is altogether a matter
of God’s grace. But there is another system. It is separate from the system of
grace but they work together, and that is God’s government.