Knowing the Differences Between God’s Work and Man’s Work Through the Lord Jesus’ Words and Deeds
Now, just how can we distinguish between God’s work and man’s work? Today, as people who experience the work of God in the last days, we can distinguish between God’s work and man’s work because we understand a bit of the truth. First of all, we can see that the work of God has opened up a new age. Mankind has never experienced this kind of work in history before. Also, there is no way that corrupt humanity could perform this work. The things that God says are things that corrupt humanity can never say. In fact, they are things that the corrupt human race has never known or understood. For example, during the Age of Grace, the Lord Jesus said, “Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” At that time, there was nobody who could discern this sentence. Only God was able to say this. Since there is no way that mankind could imagine something like the kingdom of heaven, it was something that fell completely outside our scope of knowledge. Mankind did not even know what kind of kingdom the kingdom of heaven would be. I am afraid that even now, there are many believers who still do not know what the kingdom of heaven is. Furthermore, they do not know under what circumstances the kingdom of heaven will come. Can man say something like “for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”? There is no way that man can say this because man’s knowledge is very limited. At the time of John the Baptist, John was the first to say, “Repent you: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” This was due to the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit. God enlightened him. When the Lord Jesus came and said “Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” the Lord Jesus explained clearly the topic of the kingdom of heaven. Why was the Lord Jesus able to explain this clearly? It was because He was God incarnate. Before the Lord Jesus, nobody could explain the kingdom of heaven clearly. After the Lord Jesus, nobody can explain it clearly either. This indicates that everything that the Lord Jesus said, including all the prophecies that He spoke of, is a direct expression of God’s Spirit. Only the Spirit of God knows about the kingdom of heaven. Only the Spirit of God can know about the affairs of God. That is why when the Lord Jesus came, He talked about a lot of things that were unknown to mankind. He revealed many mysteries and spoke of many prophecies. Not one member of the corrupt human race could say any of the things that the Lord Jesus said. The chief priests during those times could not say it. Moses could not say it. Only the Lord Jesus was able to talk about those things.
The Lord Jesus was able to express the voice of God’s Spirit. He was able to talk about the work of God’s Spirit. Now, wouldn’t you say that the Lord Jesus was God incarnate? How can it be confirmed that the Lord Jesus was God incarnate? It can be confirmed according to the things He said and the work He did. The Lord Jesus did the work of God and He spoke the words of God. Nobody else could do or say these things. This is why the Lord Jesus was God incarnate. The Lord Jesus did say one other thing when He came. He said that He was the truth, the way, and the life. Not one member of the corrupt human race could say this. Even though people can understand the literal meaning of these few words, why is it that man cannot say these kinds of things? It is because, in the few thousand years of existence on earth, the human race basically does not know about the truth, the way, and the life. That is why the human race cannot say who is the truth, the way, and the life. From this word that the Lord Jesus spoke, are you able to see that whoever speaks of these things is definitely Christ, God incarnate? Are you able to confirm this? You can confirm this, right? Now, notice again that the Lord Jesus made many prophecies. He prophesied the arrival of God’s kingdom, the coming of the Millennial Kingdom and the fulfillment of the kingdom of heaven. He prophesied which people would be able to enter the kingdom of heaven and which people would be eliminated. He prophesied God’s work in the last days and the day that God would appear. Whose work was the Lord Jesus talking about? It is the work of God Himself. The Lord Jesus was talking about the things that God would do in the future. Only God can know these things. Is man able to know these things? Man is incapable of this kind of knowledge. Can man speak of things he does not know about? He cannot. That is why the Lord Jesus was able to talk about these things and why He knew of these things. What does the Lord Jesus’ knowledge of these matters confirm? It confirms that the Lord Jesus was Christ and that He was God incarnate. Thus, from the work and the words of the Lord Jesus, we can see that the Lord Jesus was God incarnate and that the work of the Lord Jesus was the work of God. Afterward, we can also see that the Lord Jesus completed the work of the Age of Grace, that is, the work of redeeming mankind. The Lord Jesus was nailed to the cross and He rose from the dead. In the end, He ascended to heaven. What the Lord Jesus did was the work of redemption. Only God can do this work of redemption. No human is able to do this.
At the time, after the Lord Jesus was nailed to the cross, He said, “It is finished.” The meaning of this is that He had successfully completed what He came to do. At that point, His work of redemption had been completed. After the Lord Jesus said that His work was complete, was mankind able to completely understand Him? At that time, was man capable of accepting His work? Man was not. This work started to be accomplished after the arrival of the Holy Spirit during the Pentecost. After two thousand years of witnessing and spreading the gospel, in the end, people around the world accept that the Lord Jesus is the Savior. From this we can see that God’s work has been completely accomplished. God has already obtained His glory. From the work of the Lord Jesus, we can see that His work is God’s work, it is not man’s work. The Lord Jesus’ work of redemption started the Age of Grace and it concluded the Age of Law. The Lord Jesus, as God incarnate, completed the second stage of God’s management plan. That is why God’s work is the work of starting a new age. It is work that is targeted at the entire human race. We can see that the work of the Lord Jesus’ disciples was the work of man. It was not the work of God. What kind of work did His disciples do? They did the work of bearing witness to the fact that the Lord Jesus is the Savior. They bore witness that the Lord Jesus was nailed to the cross and that He shed His blood for the sins of man. They bore witness that, in the end, the Lord Jesus accomplished the work of redemption. They bore witness to how the Lord Jesus suffered in His efforts to save mankind and how He successfully accomplished the work of redemption. From this, we can conclude that the work of the disciples was to bear witness for the Lord Jesus. It can also be said that they fulfilled the duties of God’s created beings. Was the work of the Lord Jesus’ disciples the work of man or the work of God? It was the work of man since what they did was bear witness to the work of the Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus’ work was the work of opening up a new age. One aspect of this work was that He started a new age, the Age of Grace. By doing this, He also concluded the Age of Law. Another aspect of His work was that during the Age of Grace, He expressed a lot of truth. The truth He expressed was God’s truth of redeeming the human race. That is why the work that the Lord Jesus did was the work of God. The things that His disciples did and the work of people that the Holy Spirit used were the work of man.
Now, we can see this clearly. The work of man is the fulfillment of the creation’s duties. Those people fulfilled their duties to cooperate with the work of the Lord Jesus. From the work of the Lord Jesus during the Age of Grace, we can see what the differences are between God’s work and man’s work. At that time, the Lord Jesus asked His disciples, “Who do you say I am?” His disciples did not truly know who the Lord Jesus was. All along, some people called the Lord Jesus a rabbi. Do you know what “rabbi” means? It has the meaning of teacher. Judas, who betrayed the Lord Jesus, called the Lord Jesus rabbi all along. He never addressed the Lord Jesus as Lord. What does this indicate? It indicates that man does not know God. How did the Lord Jesus respond when Peter said that the Lord Jesus was Christ, the Son of the living God? The Lord Jesus replied, “For flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” It was the Holy Spirit that revealed this. Today, we can see that we have a bit of an understanding of God’s work. We have a genuine understanding of the appearance of God Himself. This is all reliant on the work of the Holy Spirit and the grace of God. Without the work of the Holy Spirit, we would not be able to know God.
What is the biggest difference between God’s work and man’s work? God can start a new age. Man is incapable of starting a new age. We can see that in the two thousand years between the Age of Law and the Age of Grace, not one human being was able to start a new age. Isn’t this so? In two thousand years, amongst the human race, there were countless numbers of highly capable people. Amongst the Israelites, there were countless numbers of chief priests and teachers. Who amongst them was able to start a new age? Nobody was able to start a new age. Only when God incarnate came to do His work of starting a new age did the Age of Grace finally emerge. After the Age of Grace emerged, the created human race began to spread the gospel and bear witness of the Lord Jesus based on the foundation of the Lord Jesus’ work. They began to guide believers in eating and drinking the words of the Lord Jesus, praying in the name of the Lord Jesus and repenting. These were the duties man should fulfill. These past two thousand years, believers fulfilled these duties. Not one of the church’s leaders, pastors or elders was able to start the Age of Kingdom. Only when God incarnate of the last days began to speak His words and do His work did God’s chosen people see. They exclaimed, “Wow! The Age of Kingdom has started and the Age of Grace has ended.” God came to start a new age. Aside from God incarnate, no one else is able to start a new age.
As mentioned above, only God can open up new eras, and only God can disclose the mysteries in detail. There’re still many mysteries in the Bible requiring clear explanation till today: the incarnation, the judgment work of the last days, God’s kingdom, God’s plan of saving mankind, the substance of God and so on. Only the returned God of the last days can uncover these for us. Just as what the Lord said in John 16:12–13, “I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will show you things to come.” After reading this passage in the Bible we have understood that we live in the last days and thus we must be watchfully awake and always keep an eye on where God’s new words are. Only those who can recognize God’s voice and keep pace with God’s work in the new age are wise virgins who can welcome the return of God.
You are welcome to leave your questions below in comments.
Source: Grow in Christ — The Second Coming of Christ
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