Salvation

Books:

• God’s Salvation in Life covers four major milestones in God’s inward salvation of the believers by being life to them—regeneration, transformation, conformation, and glorification.
• Lesson Book, Level 1: Salvation—God’s Full Salvation contains a series of lessons on major truths related to God’s full salvation, including His creation of man; man’s fall; the source and basis of God’s salvation; Christ’s redemption; the forgiveness, cleansing, justification, and reconciliation of the believers judicially; and the regeneration, sanctification, transformation, and conformation of the believers in life.
• The Organic Aspect of God’s Salvation opens up the two aspects of God’s complete salvation—the judicial aspect as the procedure of God’s salvation through the redemption of Christ for God’s salvation to fully meet the righteous requirement of His law, and the organic aspect as the fulfillment of God’s salvation through the life of Christ for the believers to be transformed and to grow and mature in the life of God.

Affirmation & Critique (A&C):

Affirmation & Critique (A&C) has published many issues dealing with various aspects of God’s complete salvation. The July 1996 issue of A&C (I:3) is dedicated to the subject of “Union with the Triune God.” The following two articles are from that issue:

• “The Believers’ Union with the Triune God in His Organic Salvation,” by Ed Marks, presents God’s organic salvation in the steps of regeneration, organic shepherding, dispositional sanctification, renewing, transformation, building, conformation, and glorification.
• “‘…that we might be made God’,” by Kerry S. Robichaux, affirms that the early church understood the deification of man to be the goal and result of God’s salvation. It emphasizes the distinction between God’s incommunicable and communicable aspects and defines the proper use and limits of the term deification.

Radio Broadcasts:

Concerning judicial redemption through the death of Christ (Rom. 5:10a):

• In “Justification in God’s Way” (Romans, program 6) Witness Lee describes how God justifies the believers in Christ through their faith in Christ’s redemptive work.
  
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• “Righteousness—The Power of the Gospel (1)” (Romans, program 57) is the first of two programs in which Witness Lee expounds Romans 1:16-17, showing that God’s salvation is unshakeable because it is based on God’s righteous judgment of Christ on our behalf.
  
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Concerning God’s salvation in life (Rom. 5:10b):

• “Salvation in Life from Sin and Worldliness” (Romans, program 41) is the first in a series of programs in which Witness Lee shows how God saves the believers in the life of Christ from many negative things.
  
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• In “The Life of the Triune God Dispensed into the Tripartite Man” (Romans, program 63) Witness Lee shows how God in His salvation dispenses Himself as life into man’s spirit, soul, and body (Rom. 8:10, 6, 11).
  
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• In “Grace, Salvation, the Spirit and Christ” (Philippians, program 32) Witness Lee shows that God’s salvation is not limited to eternal salvation but has an aspect for the believers’ experience today that results in Christ being magnified through them (Phil. 1:7, 19-21).
  
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Ministry Excerpts

• The Complete Salvation of God Having Two Aspects–the Judicial Aspect and the Organic Aspect: The salvation of God has both a judicial aspect and an organic aspect. Based upon the righteousness of judicial salvation, God is free to bring anyone He desires, and anyone who desires Him, into an organic salvation in full.
• The Way to Receive the Living Water: God’s salvation comes to us as living water. Who can receive this living water? Only those who ask for it. Many times, like the woman in John 4, we may feel that the well is deep and that we have nothing with which to draw the water. Yet, the Lord says, “the Word is near you,” and that “if you confess with your mouth… Jesus as Lord… you will be saved.” This is the way to draw the living water!
• Deification Becoming God in Life and in Nature but not In the Godhead: As we are brought on to full salvation, more of the nature of Christ is wrought into our being. We are told in the New Testament that we are “partakers of the divine nature” and that “we will be like Him.” This means that we are becoming God in life and nature.

NEW: EPS/ETS Paper: “In Life and Nature but Not in the Godhead: Witness Lee’s Contribution to a Biblical Understanding of Theosis”

This paper includes a brief survey of the orthodox teaching of theosis through the centuries and focuses on Witness Lee’s understanding of deification as a process that is carried out by the operation of the divine life in the believers. Further, the paper demonstrates that Witness Lee affirmed the limits of theosis, as encapsulated by his statement that believers become God “in life and nature but not in the Godhead,” a refinement of Athanasius’s famous aphorism on the goal of God’s salvation. (This paper was prepared by the Defense & Confirmation Project and was presented at the 2016 joint conference of the Evangelical Theological Society and the Evangelical Philosophical Society in San Antonio, Texas.)

Videos: