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Scripture Reading: Exo. 3:2-6, 14-15; John 8:24, 28, 58; 1:1, 14; 1 Tim. 3:16; Heb. 2:14a; Col. 2:9; John 19:5-6; Heb. 2:9; Col. 1:20; 2 Cor. 5:21; Rom. 8:3; 1 John 1:7; Heb. 9:12; John 12:24
I. Jehovah God in eternity — the Creator:
А. The self-existing and ever-existing Jehovah — the eternal, great I Am — Exo. 3:14; John 8:24, 28, 58.
B. The Triune God — the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob — Exo. 3:15.
C. The Angel of Jehovah, the Triune God — vv. 2-6.
II. A man of blood and flesh in time — a creature:
А. Being the complete God who became flesh, possessing the complete divine nature — John 1:1, 14; 1 Tim. 3:16.
B. Being a man of blood and flesh who was born of blood and flesh, possessing the perfect human nature — Heb. 2:14a.
C. Being One who is both God and man — a God-man — a mingling of the divine nature with the human nature, without a third nature being produced.
D. Being the embodiment of the fullness of the Godhead of the complete God — Col. 2:9.
III. The sin-bearing God-man in His vicarious death — the Redeemer:
А. As the One who is both God and man, passing through death in His humanity with His divinity — John 19:5-6.
B. As a created man, bearing man’s sins and dying for every created thing — Heb. 2:9; Col. 1:20.
C. As a man of flesh, being made sin on behalf of man and condemning sin in the flesh — 2 Cor. 5:21; Rom. 8:3.
D. The blood that was shed being the blood of Jesus (humanity), the Son of God (divinity), and being the blood of a genuine man with the eternal and unlimited efficacy of God — 1 John 1:7.
E. Being the eternal (unlimited) Redeemer who accomplished an eternal (unlimited) redemption — Heb. 9:12.
F. Being the divine grain that passed through death to bring forth many grains — John 12:24.
We thank and praise the Lord that by His sovereign grace we can have another time together. In this conference we want to see the all-inclusiveness and unlimitedness of Christ.
The center of the Bible is Christ. The universe is a mystery, and God is even more a mystery. According to the biblical revelation, God as a mystery hinges entirely on Christ. Yet, who is Christ? What does Christ involve? This is hard to explain thoroughly with human words. In the sixty-six books of the Bible there are at least three to four hundred ways of depicting the all-inclusiveness and unlimitedness of Christ. What He is, is so much and so limitless. That is why even though the Bible uses sixty-six books to depict Him, it still cannot describe Him fully.
The Bible portrays Christ with different types, figures, representations, stories, and even people, plants, animals, and items in nature. Many readers of the Bible often view it as a religious writing. They think that since religion is a system in which there is an object of worship with a corresponding set of teachings, the Bible must be a book that teaches people according to the One they worship. I dare not say that this concept is altogether absent in the Bible. However, there is only very little of it, and it occupies a very secondary position. What the Bible primarily does is to reveal Christ, that is, to show us and to explain, illustrate, and narrate to us who Christ is and what Christ involves.
We know that in human history no one is more excellent or more mysterious than Christ. He is not only real but also living. He is still living today. In the past two thousand years human history has never been able to separate itself from Christ, for Christ is the turning point in human history. We all are brothers and sisters here. Thank the Lord that we are the blessed ones. We all have been saved and regenerated, and we have a union in life with Him. We have a heart to love Him and also to pursue Him. Every day we pray to Him and have fellowship with Him. Every day we regard His supremacy, and we desire to express Him in our body regardless of our circumstances. Therefore, in the Lord’s recovery today what we need most is to know this Christ. Even though this topic seems old, I believe that every item which we will point out will be as new and fresh as the morning dew. May the Lord give us grace and bring us into such a deep and fresh knowledge of Himself.
When speaking about Christ, whether it be in what He is, in what He has accomplished, in His person, in His work, or in any other aspect, the Bible always shows us that He is all-inclusive and infinite. Concerning His all-inclusiveness, He includes God and man, and He includes you and me. He includes eternity past and eternity future. He includes yesterday, today, and even tomorrow. He is truly all-inclusive, and at the same time He is also unlimited. To be unlimited means to be without beginning or end, limitless, boundless. The biblical revelations concerning Christ cannot depart from this point; that is, everything pertaining to Christ is all-inclusive and unlimited. Therefore, in these chapters we will specifically consider the all-inclusiveness and unlimitedness of Christ. Because time is short, there is no way to include everything. We can include only five chapters, but each one will contain many crucial points, every one of which is a mystery. I hope that you will do your “homework” diligently by following the outline and verses with each chapter. I also hope that within the year you will have a thorough understanding of the all-inclusiveness and unlimitedness of Christ and be able to speak it convincingly. When you speak, there should be no need to refer to the notes. Rather, you should be able to open your mouth and speak as a river flowing endlessly to testify wonderfully on behalf of Christ.
From all the revelations in the Scriptures, we can see that there are three great aspects of Christ. These three great aspects are easy to remember. The first aspect is that Christ is God. To be sure, as God, He is all-inclusive and infinite. The second aspect is that Christ is man. Christ is God, yet He is also man. You may ask what is all-inclusive about man. Even a large man may weigh only two hundred and fifty pounds. Even after you have graduated from a university or have obtained a doctorate degree, your stature has not increased by much. Man is neither all-inclusive nor infinite. A man may be strong, but can he work vigorously for twenty-four hours a day? After working vigorously for only four hours, he may collapse. Man is not infinite; rather, man is finite. However, as a man, Christ is infinite. Christ is infinite not only as God but also as a man. Perhaps we never dreamed that there is a man in human history who is both infinite and all-inclusive.
The final aspect is that Christ is the Redeemer. He is God, He is man, and He is our Redeemer. The title Redeemer in Chinese is literally the “saving-redeeming Lord.” Hence, it includes three things: saving, redeeming, and Lord. Never consider that saving and redeeming are the same thing. Saving is one thing, and redeeming is another thing. He saves, He redeems, and He is the Lord. He has saved and redeemed us; consequently, He is truly our Lord.
Christians are familiar with the term Redeemer, but they do not know why this term is used. How can Christ save us, and how can He redeem us? Moreover, why do we need to be saved and redeemed? Many of you are young ones who may have been saved for only three to five years. The church in Taipei has a history of thirty-five years, and I am eighty years old this year. When we first established the church here, the parents of some of you, the younger ones, were not yet married. I am glad to see that in the church today many young brothers and sisters love the Lord very much. In my service to the Lord for over fifty years, I feel that particularly in these last two to three years, both in the West and in the East, the condition of the ones who love the Lord is unprecedented; there are many who love Him. Recently, I stayed for six days in Tokyo, Japan. I saw in the meetings that over eighty percent were young people. I also stayed in Seoul, South Korea, for six days. I saw that almost a thousand people attended the meetings, and the majority were young people. I was very joyful to see so many young people loving the Lord. That is why I have a heavy burden to fellowship with you, without reservation, everything that I have dug out from the Bible and everything that I have enjoyed and experienced in these few decades.
After I seriously prayed and sought the Lord in His presence concerning the general subject and the outlines, the Lord told me that I should speak about His all-inclusiveness and unlimitedness. Therefore, the general subject of these messages is the all-inclusiveness and unlimitedness of Christ. The burden can be summarized by the following five statements: (1) In Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. (2) The riches of Christ are unsearchable. (3) His breadth, length, height, and depth are boundless. (4) He is the One who fills all in all. (5) He gives the Spirit without measure. The Spirit is the realization and transfiguration of Christ. Thus, Christ gives the Spirit, who is Himself, without measure. He is all-inclusive and unlimited, and now He has been transfigured to become the Spirit to reach us and dispense Himself into us without measure.
We need to remember these three crucial points: He is God; He is man; and He is the Redeemer, the saving-redeeming Lord. There have been many great people in history, including thinkers, statesmen, philosophers, and others. Although everyone has the boldness to say that he is a man, can you find one who dared to say that he was God? As human beings, we are finite, yet Christ as a man is infinite. Moreover, who throughout history dared to say that he could save and redeem us and that he was the Lord? It is very interesting that when people accept nearly any religion, they almost never say that they believe in the founder of their religion as the Lord. Only the gospel preaching of Christianity tells people that to believe in Christ is to believe in Him as Lord. This is because Christ is Lord. There is no other Lord who saves in this universe; only He is Lord. Let us shout over and over that Christ is God, man, and the saving-redeeming Lord! Is it not wonderful to believe in the Lord? Are you not happy to believe in Him? Have you been deceived, or did you suffer a loss to believe in Him? No, you did not. You must say, “This is a real bargain!” Our believing in Jesus is truly a bargain. If today you spend one dollar to buy a diamond that is worth ten million dollars, is that not a bargain? However, to believe in Jesus is so much more of a bargain than this. Who is Jesus? He is God, man, and the Redeemer. Is it not wonderful that we can receive Him simply by calling on Him? Once you confess your sins and believe in Jesus, you can receive Him. Whom do you receive? You receive Christ as God, man, and the saving-redeeming Lord.
As we have said, the general subject is the all-inclusiveness and unlimitedness of Christ. The first chapter is on what He is, that is, on His person. We have already covered what He is in three aspects — God, man, and the Redeemer. First, we will look at the aspect of Christ’s being God; this is an aspect in eternity. What is eternity? Eternity is eternity past, which cannot be traced in time, a past that is without beginning, without measure, and without limit. Therefore, in eternity, that is, in eternity past, in the infinity before time, Christ was Jehovah God. He was God, whose name was Jehovah. This God is the source of all things in the universe. He is the Creator, and all things were created by Him. When He created, He did not make something out of existing materials. Rather, He created something out of nothing; that is, He created all things out of nothing. Hence, He is the Creator, the source, of all things.
This Creator is God. The Hebrew word for God is Elohim. The word Elohim, a compound noun made up of two words, means “the faithful, mighty One.” He is the mighty One with power. Moreover, He is the mighty One who keeps His promise. Elohim God is the faithful, mighty One, whose name is Jehovah.
The title Jehovah is also a Hebrew word that is basically the same as the verb to be. The name Jehovah simply means “to be.” What does this mean? This means that this faithful, mighty One is the One who is. In the universe, only He is, and all the rest are not. The phrase to be equals to exist. He exists; hence, He is. If He did not exist, He would not be. The name Jehovah is “To be,” and this “To be” is without beginning or ending. Hence, the Chinese version of the Bible renders this name as “He who is self-existing and ever-existing.” To be self-existing is to be without beginning, and to be ever-existing is to be without ending. His being, His existence, is without beginning and without ending. This Creator is self-existing and ever-existing.
A wooden podium exists and has being, but we cannot guarantee that it will be here in forty or fifty years’ time; it will not continue to exist here forever. After fifty years we cannot say where it will be. In other words, soon it will no longer be or exist. Someone may have a lovely cat at home, but it can live at most for a little over ten years; after that, it will not be or exist. Therefore, its name cannot be “To be.” It is the same with us human beings. Our human life span is the limit of our existence. If our life span is one hundred years, then we will exist for one hundred years. We can celebrate the new year only one hundred times, not one hundred and one. After one hundred years we will not exist and be no more. Hence, our name cannot be called “Jehovah”; we can only be called “Not-Jehovah.” The name Jehovah means “To be,” but our name is “Not to be.” Jehovah means “to exist,” but our name is “Non-existence.” The name Jehovah means “to be present,” but our name is “Not present.”
The Chinese version of Revelation 1:4 speaks of Him who exists now, who existed in the past, and who will exist in the future. In Hebrew, Jehovah means “He was, He is, and He is to be.” That is why He is trustworthy. He is not only the faithful, mighty One but also the ever-existing, mighty One. Therefore, the Lord Jesus told the Pharisees in John 8:24, “Unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.” Who can save us? Only “I Am” can save us. Who is “I Am”? “I Am” is Jehovah. In the name Jesus, Je- is the simplified form of Jehovah and -sus means “Savior.” The name Jesus means “Jehovah the Savior.” The One who is self-existing, ever-existing, without beginning, without ending, ever-living, ever-being, and ever-present has come to be our Savior. This is the meaning of the name Jesus.
Then we may ask Him, “Lord, You said that You are, but what are You?” The Lord would say, “I am whatever you want, and I am whatever you lack. What do you want? Do you want life? Good, I am life.” We may say, “Lord, I want salvation,” and He would say, “That is right. I am salvation.” A brother may say, “Lord, I cannot love my wife.” The Lord would say, “That is wonderful! I am love.” Then the sisters may say, “Not only can the husbands not love, but we, the wives, also cannot submit. Lord, Your Word tells us to submit. What shall we do? Therefore, we want submission.” The Lord would say, “I am submission.” The young people may say, “It is such a hardship for us students to study. I want to pass the entrance examination into a good school. Therefore, I need wisdom.” The Lord would say, “That is wonderful! My name is Jehovah. I am your wisdom and intelligence.”
We thank the Lord that He is! In John 8 the Lord mentioned three times that He is “I Am” (vv. 24, 28, 58). In verse 24 He said, “Unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins,” and in verse 28 He said, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am.” The Lord seemed to be saying, “The day that you lift Me up on the cross to kill Me, you will be happy because you will think that you have won the victory by terminating Me. Little do you know that I always am; I can never be terminated! When you kill Me, apparently I will be dead, but actually I will be alive. By killing Me, you give Me an opportunity to live. Eventually, I will live and come out of Hades and the grave.” This is what the Lord meant when He spoke this word in John 8. On the day that the Jews crucified the Lord Jesus, they would know that this Jesus is Jehovah, the I Am who is self-existing and ever-existing.
Among the Jews, at least Saul of Tarsus was one who was like this. The Jews had already killed the Lord Jesus, yet Saul still continued to destroy the church and persecute the believers of Jesus. However, on his way to Damascus, the Jesus whom he persecuted appeared to him from heaven and said to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” (Acts 9:4). Saul was shocked, and he must have thought, “I persecuted Stephen, but when did I persecute someone who is from heaven?” Therefore, he asked, “Who are You, Lord?” The Lord said, “I am Jesus, whom you persecute” (v. 5). Only then did Saul realize that this Jesus was Jehovah, the I Am whom his fathers worshipped. That is why, in effect, the Lord said, “After you have crucified Me, you will know that I am. If you do not kill Me, you will not know that I am the I Am. I cannot be killed. The more you kill Me, the more I live. Your killing Me will instead result in My coming to live in you.” In the end we can only bow our head in worship and say, “Lord Jesus, now I know that You are. You really are.” We thank and praise the Lord for this.
Furthermore, this God is of three aspects. He is the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. This title clearly shows us God in His three aspects. The God of Abraham is God the Father, the God of Isaac is God the Son, and the God of Jacob is God the Spirit. Jacob was a hard case, but God the Spirit came specifically to deal with such hard cases. Throughout his entire life Jacob was under the transforming work of God the Spirit, and eventually, he became Israel, the prince of God.
The Triune God is just one God. God is one, yet He has the aspect of three: the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The Father is the Planner, the Designer, and the One who purposed. The Son is the Accomplisher and the Finisher, and the Spirit is the Executor. The Father is the source, the Son is the course, and the Spirit is the flow. The Father came forth in the Son to accomplish what He had planned, and the Son, after accomplishing everything, came into us as the life-giving Spirit. Therefore, God is triune so that He may enter into us to be our enjoyment. This One whom we enjoy as the Triune God is all-inclusive and unlimited. When we enjoy Him, we enjoy both His all-inclusiveness and unlimitedness. We all have to know Him to such an extent.
This Jehovah who is self-existing and ever-existing, the Triune God, also came to be an Angel, a sent One. He Himself came to be His own sent One. This Angel of Jehovah, this One who was sent by Jehovah, was the Triune God Himself. We have to understand that this One is our Lord Jesus. On the one hand, Exodus 3 is very simple with only a few verses concerning Him, but on the other hand, these verses are all-inclusive. He is self-existing and ever-existing, He is the I Am, and He is God. He is also the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob — the Triune God. Finally, He is His own Angel. These are the aspects of Christ as God.
Another aspect of what Christ is, is that He is man. As God, He is related to us not directly but indirectly. Two thousand years after He created man, He came to tell Abraham, “Abraham, I will cause you to have a seed who will be a blessing to the nations.” Who was this seed? Paul tells us that this seed was Jesus Christ. Matthew 1:1 says, “Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” This son of Abraham is Christ. After the promise was given, another two thousand years passed, and when human history fully reached four thousand years, He came. How did He come? It is marvelous that He is the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, and the Spirit is for reaching man; when He reached man, He came as the Spirit. The Holy Spirit came upon an unmarried woman, a pure virgin named Mary. He entered into the womb of this virgin and was conceived there. This almighty God, the Triune God, the Lord who is self-existing and ever-existing, the eternal Lord, entered into the womb of a little virgin for His conception, and He remained in the womb for nine months. He was there fully abiding by the natural laws that He had ordained in creation. According to the natural laws set up by Him, human conception must take nine months, so He waited there for nine months. Then He was born of the virgin to become a man of blood and flesh. This man had a nose, eyes, skin, flesh, bones, and blood. To be sure, He was a man, but this man possessed not only the human nature but also the divine nature. The conception of Christ was a mingling of two natures, divinity and humanity. Therefore, the elements within Him were divinity mingled with humanity. For this reason Isaiah 9:6 says that the child born in the manger was the mighty God. This One was the God-man, who was both God and man and who was God yet man.
This God who was conceived in humanity is not a partial God but the complete God, the Triune God — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. We Christians often have a wrong natural concept, thinking that the Lord Jesus became flesh as the Son of God only. You must know that there is no such statement in the entire New Testament. The New Testament says that in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God, and the Word became flesh. Thus, the Word is not a partial God but the complete God. He was not God the Son only; rather, He was God the complete Triune God — God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. Therefore, He possessed the complete divine nature. This is why Paul says in Romans 9:5 that Christ is God over all, blessed forever. Our Lord Jesus is not the Son of God only. He is God, even the complete God.
This Christ is the complete God according to His divine nature and the perfect man according to His human nature. He is the complete God mingled with the perfect man.
Therefore, He is One who is both God and man; He is a God-man. This God-man was a mingling of the divine nature with the human nature, without a third nature being produced. This may be likened to soaking tea leaves in water to produce tea. Neither the nature of the tea nor the nature of the water is lost. Both natures still exist and are mingled together, without a third nature being produced. Some people misunderstand us and say that concerning the God-man, we teach that the divine nature disappeared, the human nature was changed, and a third nature was produced. This is a heresy, which we have never taught. This is not what we have seen from the Bible. The Lord Jesus is the mingling of two natures as one entity, without a third nature being produced. He is One who is both God and man.
I hope that you will apply the effort to study so that you may know how the Lord Jesus as God is all-inclusive and unlimited and how He as a man is also all-inclusive and unlimited. If He was merely a man and not the God-man, He could neither be all-inclusive nor unlimited since, as we all know, man is neither all-inclusive nor unlimited. However, because as the God-man the Lord Jesus was God mingled with man, and since God is all-inclusive and unlimited, the Lord Jesus as such a man was also all-inclusive and unlimited. This may be likened to a glass of plain water, which is without any flavor, but when tea is added, the flavor gets into the water. Man is finite, but when he has God mingled with him, he becomes infinite. Man is not all-inclusive, but when he has God mingled with him, he becomes all-inclusive.
Finally, Christ is the Redeemer. We all know that Jesus is the Redeemer, but what we know is too general, too vague, and too superficial. We must study in depth the statuses in which He came to be our Redeemer.
Who was the One who was crucified on the cross? Was He God? Some may not dare to answer this question. Can God be crucified? No one believes that man can nail God on the cross. God cannot be crucified. Who, then, was put to death on the cross? We should say that the One who was both God and man was crucified. On the cross He was crucified in His humanity with His divinity. Strictly speaking, He did not die there, but He passed through death. Dying is one thing, and passing through death is another thing. When we humans die, we truly die. However, instead of dying, He passed through death. Even His death was His work; He did a great deal of work at the time of His death. What work did He do? He did a saving and redeeming work. His saving and His redeeming were accomplished through His death. Human death cannot accomplish anything, but the Lord Jesus’ death on the cross was His great work.
At that time the One whom the Jews arrested was not merely God but a man, yet that man had God inside of Him. Likewise, the One whom they crucified was not merely God but also a man, yet that man had God in Him. Therefore, the One who died on the cross was both God and man, and His death was a death in humanity with divinity. Furthermore, He did not die there, strictly speaking; rather, He passed through death. The Jews thought that when they killed Him, everything would be over. However, this was not the case. On the contrary, His crucifixion offered Him the best opportunity to be exceedingly active and to do a great amount of work in His death. Therefore, He did not merely die but passed through death.
Second, He died on the cross as a created man. Since He had blood and flesh, He was truly a man, and since He was a man, He was a creature. Today some Christians oppose this truth, but Paul says that Christ is the Firstborn of all creation. He bore the sins of the world as a created man. If He were not a man, how could He have borne our sins and died for us? He tasted death on behalf of every created thing; that is, He died for everything. Since He was a created man, as such, He bore all our wrongdoings, trespasses, and sinful acts and died on the cross for us. When He died there, He died on behalf of every created thing. When man sinned, he defiled every created thing. Hence, all created things needed Christ to taste death on their behalf.
Third, as a man who was flesh, He was made sin on behalf of man. This is so mysterious that we cannot explain it thoroughly. The Bible says clearly in 2 Corinthians 5:21 that Him who did not know sin God made sin on our behalf. God not only caused Him to bear our sins but even made Him sin on our behalf. When He was crucified on the cross, in God’s eyes, sin was crucified there. When He bore our sins, He dealt with our sins, our sinful acts, but when He was made sin, He dealt with our sin, our sinful nature.
In theology, sin is divided into two categories. One category is our own sins, the sins committed by us; these are our sinful acts. Another category is the original sin that came from Adam; that is our sinful nature. That is why the Lord Jesus had various statuses on the cross. As a created man, He bore our sinful acts, our own sins. Furthermore, He was in the likeness of the flesh of sin, and as such a One, He was made sin on our behalf. In this way He dealt with our sinful nature so that God could condemn the sinful nature that we inherited from Adam.
Fourth, the blood shed by Him was the blood of Jesus, the Son of God. In the Son of God was divinity, and in Jesus was humanity. Hence, His blood was the blood of both God and man. In Acts 20:28 Paul charged the elders in Ephesus to “shepherd the church of God, which He obtained through His own blood.” This verse speaks of God’s own blood. Perhaps you have never thought that the blood shed by Jesus on the cross was God’s own blood and that, at the same time, it was also man’s blood because He was a man. For the redemption of man’s sins, genuine human blood must be shed. The blood of calves and goats cannot redeem man from his sins. Only man’s own blood can do this. However, because man is limited, the efficacy of man’s blood is also limited. Nevertheless, the Lord Jesus was also God, and the blood that He shed was the blood of the Son of God. The Son of God is infinite; hence, the efficacy of His blood is boundless and eternal. This explains why He alone could die for millions of people. If He was only a perfect man, He could die only for one person but not for millions of people. However, He was a God-man. His being a man denotes that the nature of His blood is genuine human blood, while His being God denotes that the efficacy of His blood is eternal and limitless. It is unlimited both in time and in space. Thus, His blood can wash away the sins of millions of people in all places and at all times. This is what it means to be both all-inclusive and unlimited.
Therefore, the redemption that He accomplished by the shedding of His blood is an eternal redemption. Eternal means unlimited. He accomplished an eternal, unlimited redemption. His blood is unlimited, His redemption is unlimited, and therefore, He as the Redeemer is also unlimited. This is His all-inclusiveness, and this is also His unlimitedness.
Finally, in His death He had another status — He was the divine grain of wheat. All the previous statuses were for bearing and taking away our sins so that our sinful acts and sinful nature could be dealt with. They were for solving our problems on the negative side. Now on the positive side, He was the divine grain that fell into the ground to die to bring forth innumerable grains, including you and me. Do not forget that the grains are so many that they are truly innumerable. From the first century to His second coming, how many grains do you believe He will have? He is multiplying all the time. He is unlimited and all-inclusive. We truly have seen that our Lord is both all-inclusive and unlimited in what He is.
