I

When the Lord Jesus began His work,

He’d left behind the “shackles” of the Age of Law,

and had broken through the regulations and principles of that age.

In Him, there was no trace of anything related to the law;

He’d cast it off entirely and no longer observed it;

He no longer required man to observe it.

So the Lord Jesus went through the corn fields on the Sabbath,

and the Lord did not rest;

He was outside working, and not resting.

This action of His was a shock to people’s notions

and it communicated to them that He no longer lived under the law.

He’d left the confines of the Sabbath

and appeared before man and in their midst in a new image,

with a new way of working.

II

The Lord Jesus’ action told people that He had brought new work;

this work began with emerging from the law,

and departing from the Sabbath.

When God carried out His new work,

He no longer clung to the past,

and He was no longer concerned about the regulations of the Age of Law.

Neither was He affected by His work in the previous age,

but instead worked on the Sabbath just as He did on every other day.

When His disciples were hungry on the Sabbath,

they could pick ears of corn to eat.

This was all very normal in God’s eyes.

For God, it is permissible to have a new beginning

for much of the work He wants to do and the words He wants to say.

When He begins something new,

He neither mentions His previous work nor continues to carry it out.

III

God has principles in His work,

so when He wants to begin new work,

it’s when He wants to bring man into a new stage of His work,

and when His work will enter a higher phase.

If man continues to hold fast to the old sayings or regulations,

God won’t remember or approve that.

This is because He has brought new work,

and has entered a new phase of His work.

When God initiates new work,

He appears to mankind with a completely new image,

from a completely new angle, and in a completely new way

so that people can see different aspects

of His disposition and what He has and is.

This is one of His goals in His new work.

from The Word, Vol. 2. On Knowing God. God’s Work, God’s Disposition, and God Himself III