God’s Complete Salvation: refs. include Watchman Nee and Witness Lee

The two aspects of God’s complete salvation

The eight items of God’s organic salvation

Shepherding

Key verse: John 10:11
“I am the good Shepherd; the good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.”

God’s organic salvation begins with regeneration and continues with the crucial phase of shepherding. Shepherding is the nurturing and nourishing of God’s life within the regenerated believers that they may grow in the divine life and thus manifest its function in them. The Lord is the divine life (John 14:6), and the Lord is also the good Shepherd (John 10:14) who came that we might have life and have it more abundantly (John 10:10). By His shepherding, the Lord accomplishes a significant aspect of God’s organic salvation. That is, under the Lord’s shepherding we partake of God’s life and are nourished and grow unto maturity in it (Eph. 4:13), manifesting the particular function and expression of God’s life within each of us for the accomplishment of God’s eternal economy. All believers, regardless of their stage of spiritual growth, need shepherding. Shepherding includes a great deal of feeding, just as the nursing mother feeds her baby so that it may grow. This feeding is an ongoing process which will continue all the way from regeneration to glorification.