3 KINDS OF MINISTRY
By Charles Weller
In the Scriptures we find that there were three kinds of ministry: the prophets, Jesus and the New Testament church. In the Old Testament God worked through many men. Some he used even though they were rebellious against Him (Balaam). Others were open to allow Him to minister through them, but did not comprehend the depth of what they spoke (Isaiah, Ezekiel etc.). These were men of faith, as Hebrews 11 states.
The difference between the Old Testament prophet and Jesus is that the prophet was revelatory and Jesus was revelation personified. The times changed with Jesus. Instead of God using men, obedient or disobedient, God now became manifest in the flesh. In the incarnation of Jesus we see the Logos of God manifested. We see God made visible in a person; whereas, in the Old Testament the person administered God without necessarily being fully possessed of God. Jesus was God. 100% God. No Adam nature involved at all. In the Old Testament it was 100% man overpowered by God.
In the New Testament, after Jesus, we find it is now possible for the saints to be 100% God and 100% man. Not the Adamic man, but the new creation man revealing a union with God. Jesus was God flesh. He did not have the same flesh as we. Read Romans 8:3 and Philippians 2:7, preferably in various translations other than the KJV. We manifest God in the new creation flesh, which has nothing to do with literal flesh but rather is a spiritual house.
God is not seeking to destroy the personality of the individual, which is good and God created, but He is infusing Himself in the personality, a union of your Logos with His Logos to express a divine image, an incorruptible image, fashioned, conformed to the Image of His Son. The quest of the New Testament saint is to reveal the Logos in the flesh of the new creation man, which is different than the ministry of the prophets or the ministry of Jesus.
Jesus never had an adamic nature in Him. He overcame the adamic temptations for us because He was God. Tried, He did not fail but rose above the lower fallen level of Adam. He, the Logos, places Himself in us through a salvation experience to enable a union (He male, we female) of His Logos with the breath of life in us to create a new creation man. This God/man union is to empower us.
The New Testament saint is to be the revelation of the Word, as we accept trials and overcome temptations. In Jesus the word became flesh. The Logos existed first and then was encompassed about by the flesh. The New Testament saint must have the flesh transformed to fit around the Logos! Therein is the difference.
Men did not accept Jesus because He was God. The world will accept you, and thereby Jesus as Saviour, because they will see transformed flesh and a transformed nature. The testimony of the New Testament saint is the revelation of the transformation, the metamorphisis. The Logos of God is seeking to unite with man's word. What a thought!
The presence of human (human in contrast to adamic nature) feeling does not ruin God's Word, but it can if the vessel is not adequately dead to Adam. The Logos of God is to be released through men, but the man must be transformed, his flesh changed to reveal the very nature of God. This transformation takes trials and discipline. If one cannot accept the pruning of His tree, then the Logos is impeded and cannot be expressed clearly through the vessel. BUT if the man has been pruned and if the man has become disciplined in the Lord, then God will allow man to be unified with His Logos in expression. Any defect in us will defile the Logos. Thus, continuous pruning is a pattern of success, which leads to the full revelation of God in us - Emmanuel!
The Logos unites with man's (new creation man) word to express in the flesh the manifestation of God. The world can accept an ethereal god, a non-involved god, and the world accepts the concept that they are gods, captains of their own lives. But they cannot accept that God incarnates man because this would disprove their two beliefs that are central to their lifestyle. If God can be involved intimately with His creation, then their premise of God is wrong. If God can incarnate a man and transform him into God's likeness, then man is not god, he is dethroned - thus ruining their lifestyle. The New Testament Logos man antagonizes the adamic nature, the unregenerate man.
The Bible is the story of the growth of God in men. First God made men. Then He spoke through them, with or without their knowledge. Then God became man in Jesus. Now, God is beginning the depth and height of His manifestation through the new creation man. This new creation man is the ultimate manifestation of God in the flesh - a greater work than Jesus, even as Jesus stated.
An excerpt from THE LOGOS, THE LIGHT, THE LIFE