PARENTHOOD
a divine stewardship
Volume 2 Issue 2
February 1997
To be a parent is one of the highest privileges and at the same time one of the most frightening responsibilities of a human being. God, in His wisdom created us with the capacity to produce, nurture, and bring to maturity our own offspring. But our children have the capacity to bring out in us both the highest, most noble humanity and the lowest expression of human degradation. In order to fully carry out our role as parents, we need to experience the Spirit of God living and working within us to make us righteous, a condition in which everything is in proper order.
The condition of being righteous comes from the infusion of God into our being through the ministry of the New Testament. By means of this new covenant ministry, the life-giving Spirit, Who indwells the believers in Christ, dispenses Christ into us to make us one with Him. The result is righteousness, a state in which you are living, acting and having your being in the Triune God.
If you are infused and saturated by the life-giving Spirit, your inner being will become transparent. Then you will know what is in the Lord's mind. You will also understand what the will of the Lord is. Spontaneously, you will be in His will and do His will. As a result, you become right with Him. Moreover, you will realize how you should act toward others and even how you should deal with your material possessions. Then you will become a righteous person, one who is right in small things as well as in great things, one who is right with God, with others, and with himself. This is a person who expresses God, for his righteousness is the image of God, God expressed. (Witness Lee, Life-Study of 2 Corinthians #27, pp. 242-243)
In this issue of Parenthood, we consider the condition of righteousness dispensed into us by the Spirit through the new covenant ministry and its issue in our family life. By the divine operation of the life-giving Spirit in us, we can become those who are able to care for our children in peace even in the most difficult circumstances. When everything is in good order, our family living will be the expression of God.
Righteousness and the Kingdom
Romans 14:17 says, "For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." In this verse Paul gives us another aspect of righteousness. In Romans 8 we have righteousness related to the Spirit of life and issuing in the image of the Son of God. But in Romans 14:17 righteousness is related to the kingdom of God. In this chapter the kingdom of God denotes the church life. The meetings of the church are an exhibition of the kingdom of God. In the church life we have a condition and a situation that shows others what the kingdom of God is. The church life is the kingdom of God, and the kingdom of God is righteousness.
| When a husband and wife are not happy with each other and the situation at home is not pleasant, there is no righteousness, no image of the Son, in their family life. |
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