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Scripture Reading: John 1:1, 14; 1 Tim. 3:16; Luke 24:19; Acts 2:22; 10:38-39; 1 Pet. 2:24; 3:18; Heb. 2:9; Acts 13:33; 1 Pet. 1:3; 2 Pet. 1:4; 1 Cor. 15:45b; 2 Cor. 3:6b; Acts 2:36; 10, Eph. 1:22; Acts 2:33
I. Being incarnated to bring God into man that divinity and humanity may be mingled as one — John 1:1, 14; 1 Tim. 3:16.
II. Passing through human living to live the human life in His humanity with His divinity — Luke 24:19; Acts 2:22; 10:38-39.
III. Dying for the creation to taste death on behalf of all creation in His humanity with His divinity — 1 Pet. 2:24; 3:18; Heb. 2:9.
IV. Resurrecting from the dead:
А. To bring man into God that humanity may be mingled with divinity — Acts 13:33; 1 Pet. 1:3; 2 Pet. 1:4.
B. To become the life-giving Spirit for the dispensing of God’s life into man — 1 Cor. 15:45b; 2 Cor. 3:6b.
V. Ascending to the heavens:
А. To be made by God both Lord and Christ — Acts 2:36.
B. To be given by God to be Head over all things to the church that all things may be headed up in Him — 10, Eph. 1:22.
C. To pour out on His Body the all-inclusive Spirit promised by God — Acts 2:33.
In the previous chapter we saw that in what He is, in His person, the Lord Jesus is both all-inclusive and unlimited. A great deal is involved with His being God and His being all-inclusive and unlimited. Therefore, the Bible says that He is the mystery of God. The universe is a mystery, and God is even more a mystery, but this mystery has been unfolded in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the mystery of God; outside of Him, no one can find God. Furthermore, all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ bodily. How all-inclusive and boundless He is!
Even His coming to be a man was not simple. He was not a man who had only the human nature. Rather, He was a man who had the divine nature added to His human nature. His human nature was mingled with the divine nature. He was born of a human virgin, but He was conceived of the divine Holy Spirit. Therefore, He was born as a man with both the human nature and the divine nature. Thus, He could be called a God-man, One who was both God and man. When He was on the earth for thirty-three and a half years, very often even the disciples who followed Him were so amazed that they asked who this One was. He was indeed a man. He felt weary, He was hungry, He even wept and shed tears, and He slept. In this way He was the same as any normal human being. He lived as an ordinary man in a carpenter’s home for thirty years. Nevertheless, many times His words and actions were extraordinary. Not only did He perform signs and wonders, but His words were simple yet great. Throughout the ages no philosopher has had the boldness to speak what He spoke. He said, “I am the life,” “I am the light,” and “He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness.” We could not even dream of such words, which are simple yet full of wisdom. Such mysterious, excellent, and deep words indicate that He was the infinite God. Even though He was a man who was finite, in this finite man was divinity. Therefore, as a man He was both all-inclusive and infinite. Moreover, concerning His death, He did not die for Himself because He Himself did not need to die. He died for us, and He did a work for us. Even though He passed through death, He still worked in this death. The work that He carried out in His death also manifested His all-inclusiveness and unlimitedness.
In this chapter we want to go on and look further at how all-inclusive and unlimited He is in His work, that is, in His doings, actions, and moves. Of course, if a man is great, his actions will also be great. Since our Lord is all-inclusive and unlimited, His work surely is also all-inclusive and unlimited.
Concerning Christ, the New Testament mostly speaks of His work, which was simply His living. His living was mingled with His work. He had no office hours or off hours. He lived and He worked twenty-four hours a day. His every word and every move were His living, and His every word and every move were also His work. The Bible, especially the New Testament, uses only very simple words and brief records when referring to His person. However, the Bible speaks about His work, His move, His doings, and His words and deeds, which all constitute His living, in a rich and detailed way in chapter after chapter. From the record in these many chapters, we have extracted five crucial points concerning His actions and work: being incarnated, passing through human living, dying for the creation, resurrecting from the dead, and ascending to the heavens.
Let us now consider these five crucial points. Being incarnated does not sound like proper Chinese or any foreign language; this is truly the heavenly language. Passing through human living is somewhat ordinary, for we all must pass through human living. However, the next item, dying for the creation, is very extraordinary because this dying is not only for man but for everything that was created. Who can die for others? One may die for a companion out of kindness, righteousness, or love, but no one can die for the creation, that is, for the heavens, the earth, everyone, and everything. This is not only great but also all-inclusive. When a man dies, he himself dies. However, the death of Jesus Christ was an exceptional death, a death in which the heavens and the earth died with Him, all things were baptized with Him, and you and I were terminated with Him. Paul says, “I am crucified with Christ” (Gal. 2:20). Christ’s crucifixion included you and me. Paul also says, “Our old man has been crucified with Him” (Rom. 6:6). When Christ died on the cross, it was not only one single Nazarene, Jesus, who died there. His death included the heavens, the earth, and everything so that you and I, we all, died together with Him.
Humanly speaking, when someone dies, he is finished because to die is to be ended. The biographies of great men always conclude with their death or burial. When Jesus died, the Jews may have shouted with joy, thinking that they had eliminated Him. When they were accusing the Lord Jesus, they shouted, “Take this man away! Crucify Him!” Eventually, they achieved their purpose — they crucified Him on the cross and did away with Him. Little did they know that less than seventy-two hours later, this Jesus would walk out of death with vigorous steps. Strictly speaking, He did not go to die. He went to have a tour of the domain of death, and after He had accomplished great things in Hades, He walked out from there and resurrected. This is called His resurrection from the dead. All this was His work.
After His resurrection He stayed with the disciples for forty days to train them to experience His invisible presence. The three and a half years of His presence with the disciples was visible, which they truly enjoyed. After His crucifixion that presence suddenly disappeared, and they became despondent to the uttermost. However, in less than seventy-two hours, He suddenly came back. In His resurrection He was transfigured into the all-inclusive Spirit to be with them for eternity. This kind of presence, which was invisible and in spirit, was hard for the disciples to adjust to. Therefore, in those forty days He sometimes appeared to the disciples and sometimes disappeared in front of them. In this way He trained them to experience His invisible presence.
Forty days after His resurrection He ascended to the heavens. His ascension was also His work. On the one hand, He is resting in the heavens because He is sitting down on His throne. However, on the other hand, the Bible tells us that today in the heavens He is our High Priest, our Mediator, the King of kings, and the Lord of lords. He is the Administrator in the universe today. If we know world history, we can see that in the past twenty centuries, from Christ’s ascension up to this day, everything on this earth has been under the ruling authority of Jesus Christ. The Gregorian calendar used by the whole world today is Jesus Christ’s calendar. According to world history, the calendar we use means that we belong to that one. Today on earth even those nations that oppose Christ use the calendar of our Lord. This proves that Jesus Christ is the real Lord. He is the King of kings and the Lord of lords. Today He sits on the throne, exercising His authority to rule over all the situations on earth so that He may produce what He has desired to obtain throughout the generations, which is the Body, the church, planned by God in eternity.
Today, because of the convenience in transportation and the developments in communication, the globe seems to be much smaller. I can testify to this. Fifty-two years ago, when I first began to serve the Lord, I took a boat from my hometown of Chefoo in the province of Shantung to Shanghai. Such a short distance took me forty-eight hours. Since the boat was small and the waves were high, I became very sick. However, today it takes only twelve and a half hours to come to Taiwan by airplane from Los Angeles, and it takes only one and a half days to make a round trip. It is very convenient. In addition, twenty years ago I often spent a great amount of time writing and answering letters. Sometimes I spent half a day without finishing even two or three letters. Today, however, there is no need to go to all that trouble. All I need to do is to pick up the phone. In just one phone call I can have a clear discussion of a certain matter and get an answer in five minutes. Sometimes I have called Brazil, Stuttgart, and Taipei; within an hour a certain matter related to South America, Europe, and Asia was settled. People in the world claim that all these conveniences are for the advancement of civilization and the elevation of human living, but we have to say that these conveniences are for the spreading of the gospel.
Moreover, no one ever imagined that today’s American English would become a language that is commonly used throughout the whole earth. Similarly, before the Lord Jesus was born, the Roman Empire ruled over the world surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. The Lord arranged the environment so that He might be born in Bethlehem to fulfill the prophecy in Micah 5:2 in the Old Testament. At that time Greek was commonly used within the Roman Empire, and the transportation by land or by sea could take people wherever they wanted to go. Therefore, after the Lord’s death and resurrection the disciples traveled throughout the world, and they preached the gospel wherever they went. We thank and praise the Lord that even though there are all manner of oppositions on the earth, history has proved that all the situations on the earth are for the facilitation of the preaching of the gospel. Who did this? This was done by the ascended Jesus. These five major steps — being incarnated, passing through human living, dying for the creation, resurrecting from the dead, and ascending to the heavens — are concerned with the accomplishments and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
In the previous chapter, we saw the meaning of the name Jesus. Je- stands for Jehovah, and -sus means “Savior.” Therefore, Jesus means “Jehovah the Savior.” The meaning of Christ in Greek is “the anointed One.” Anointed is a biblical term; the common expression is to be commissioned, to be sent, or to receive a charge. Jesus Christ is the complete God becoming a perfect man to carry out God’s commission. The carrying out of His commission is His work, which is also His move.
His initial work was to create the heavens and the earth. John 1:3 says, “Apart from Him not one thing came into being which has come into being.” Therefore, the first step of His work was creation. Perhaps some may ask why, since the first step of God’s work was creation, I did not include this point in the outline of this chapter concerning His work. This is because the creation of all things was His preliminary work. Even though we regard the heavens and the earth as being very vast and all the creation as consisting of many items, they are not very important in God’s economy. The creation of all things was just the preliminary work to gain a group of people, that the Triune God may work Himself into them so that they can have the same life and nature that He has. This does not mean that since we have been saved and have God’s life and nature, we become God with His Godhead to be worshipped by men. This is a great heresy, and it is blasphemous and offensive to God. However, if we say that as the saved ones, we have been born of God to be His children and that we possess His Spirit and His life but not His nature, this is also a wrong teaching because 2 Peter 1:4 tells us clearly that God has made us partakers of His divine nature. This is an extraordinary matter. What does it mean to be saved? To be saved is to have God come into us so that His life becomes our life, and His nature becomes our nature, because we have been born of God. If we are born of man, but we say that we do not have man’s life and nature, are we not talking nonsense? We partake of the life and nature of whatever we were born of. Since our natural, physical man was born of human parents, of course, we have man’s life and nature. When we were saved by believing in the Lord, we were regenerated. This is to be born not of man but of God. Since we were born of God, how can we not have God’s life and nature? Hallelujah, we have God’s life, and we also have God’s nature! The creation of all things was not God’s primary work but His preliminary work. Today God’s main work is to work Himself into man.
Where then did this work begin? This work began with the Lord Jesus becoming flesh, which is called His incarnation. Therefore, incarnation was a great step in His work and a great initiation of the divine work. God entered into the womb of a human virgin and was conceived by being mingled with humanity. He stayed in the human womb for as long as nine months, and then He was born. Such a man not only possessed humanity, but in His humanity there was also divinity.
Brothers and sisters, we need to see that the Lord’s incarnation was truly a great matter. It was much greater than the creation of the heavens and the earth. In the creation of the heavens and the earth, “He spoke, and it was; / He commanded, and it stood” (Psa. 33:9). When God said, “Let there be light,” light came (Gen. 1:3). However, it was not as simple for God to work Himself into man. He Himself had to go into a human womb and stay there for nine months. To speak and command things into being could only be used in the creation of the heavens and the earth; it could not be used in the matter of God working Himself into man. This required the complete God to enter personally into a human womb to stay there for nine months and then be born. What a pity that today, when people celebrate Christmas, not merely the unbelievers but even those in Christianity, they are too superficial! They do not enter into the depths to see the mystery of God’s incarnation.
Brothers and sisters, I hope that all of us can see that the first major step in this divine, great, eternal, all-inclusive, and unlimited work was God’s incarnation. The incarnation of God was the entering of God into man, divinity being mingled with humanity. Soon after Adam was created, he fell and missed the goal of God. God’s goal was for him as a vessel to contain God, signified by the tree of life. However, Adam was tempted, he ate of the wrong tree, and he was poisoned. When God came to the garden, both Adam and Eve were so frightened that they hid themselves; they were afraid to see God. Thank God that He still had the grace of redemption! He gave Eve a promise that the seed of the woman would bruise the serpent’s head, although the serpent would also bruise the heel of the seed of the woman. We all know that this was fulfilled in the Lord Jesus. He was the seed born of a woman, and He bruised Satan’s head on the cross. Thus, His first step was to advance with a great stride to enter into the womb of a virgin in a humble way, to stay there for nine months, and to be born a God-man, who was Jesus Christ, Jehovah the Savior, for the accomplishment of God’s commission.
After His birth He lived in a poor carpenter’s home. Even at the time when He went out for His work, people asked, “Is not this the carpenter?” or, “Is not this the carpenter’s son?” (Mark 6:3; Matt. 13:55). Dear brothers and sisters, I am afraid that it may never have occurred to you that our God, our Savior, spent nine months in the womb of a virgin and lived in the house of a poor carpenter, not thirty days or thirty months but thirty years. This is something very mysterious that is hard for us to comprehend. Where was God in those thirty years? Was He in the tall and great temple in Jerusalem, or was He in the house of that carpenter in Nazareth? For all those thirty years God was in the house of that poor carpenter in Nazareth. Therefore, in those thirty years those who wanted to worship God had to go to the house of that poor carpenter in Nazareth and not to the temple in Jerusalem. In the house of that poor carpenter the Lord Jesus passed through human living a small step at a time. When the thirty years were fulfilled, He went out to preach. Before He began His ministry, He was baptized, indicating to the universe that He forsook Himself and lived absolutely by God. When He came out of the water, the heavens opened, and the Holy Spirit descended like a dove upon Him. In studying the Bible we have a problem here. Since the Lord Jesus was conceived of the Holy Spirit, did He not have the Holy Spirit already within Him? Why was it that at the time of His baptism the Holy Spirit came again from the heavens? Were there two Holy Spirits? When I was young, I did not understand this matter. Gradually, after I gained some experience in my study of the Bible and through the use of Bible expositions written throughout the centuries, I finally understood that the Holy Spirit of whom Jesus was conceived was the essential Spirit for His living, and the Holy Spirit who descended upon Jesus after His baptism was the economical Spirit for His work.
What the lowly Jesus did on the earth was to carry out God’s economy. What then is God’s economy? The economy of God is to redeem His created yet fallen men back to their original situation and then to put Himself into them, His redeemed ones. Through His death and the shedding of His blood on the cross, He redeemed fallen men. After this work was done, He resurrected, and in His resurrection He became the life-giving Spirit. When we call on the name of the Lord Jesus, this life-giving Spirit comes into us. This is God coming into us. The Lord Jesus came to the earth to accomplish this very thing. In the first thirty years He lived in a carpenter’s house. In the last three and a half years He went out to do the work of preaching. He cast out demons, healed the sick, performed miracles, prophesied, and spoke words of wisdom, testifying that He was the all-inclusive and unlimited God. One day He was in a home in Bethany where there was a love feast. People loved Him, and one poured ointment on His head. I would ask again, when He was attending that love feast and was being anointed in that home in Bethany, would you say that God was in that small house in Bethany or in the holy temple in Jerusalem? Now we are clear, and we have the boldness to say that God was in Bethany and not in Jerusalem. He was in that small house and not in the holy temple. In the holy temple the priests considered God as the One who was high above them and who could only be revered but could not be approached. Yet in the small house of Bethany, not only was God revered, but He was also approachable and lovable. He was so approachable that John could recline on His bosom. We thank and praise the Lord that sinners can be saved to such an extent as to enter into God’s embrace.
Not only so, but once He passed through human living, He went one great step further to die for the creation. Apparently, the Lord was crucified because He was betrayed by Judas, arrested by the servants of the high priest, and condemned to death by Pilate. Actually, it was He Himself who helped to materialize His crucifixion. If you study the Bible carefully, you can see that when the Lord Jesus was in Galilee, He went hurriedly to Jerusalem because the Passover was approaching. Why did He do this? It was because that year was the time for the completion of the sixty-ninth week of the seventy weeks mentioned in Daniel 9:24-26. It is very clearly mentioned there that during the sixty-ninth week, the Messiah, who was Christ, would be cut off, that is, killed. He knew that at the Passover of that year He would be crucified. He also knew that He had to die in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where Abraham had offered Isaac and which was later called Mount Zion. Furthermore, according to the type of the passover, He had to die on the fourteenth day of the first month. Therefore, He went quickly from Galilee to Jerusalem.
Six days before the Passover He entered Jerusalem, giving the Jews four days to examine Him. This was also for the fulfillment of the type in the Bible. According to Exodus 12:3-6, the passover lamb, which was to be without blemish, had to be prepared in the four days preceding the passover. Therefore, in those four days He placed Himself in the temple under the meticulous examination of the Sadducees, Pharisees, chief priests, scribes, and elders. After examining Him for four days, they found no fault in Him. Then they arrested Him and delivered Him up to be examined by a Gentile official. Yet Pilate said three times, “I find no fault in this man.” Jesus was truly the sinless Lamb, the Lamb without any defects or blemishes. Hence, He was worthy to die on our behalf. By this we can see that in actuality He was not arrested by men; rather, He delivered Himself up. He walked into death Himself. However, He did not go merely to die; instead, He passed through death to do His work. A certain portion of His work had to be done in death. If He did not enter into death, He could not have done that work. He went into death to accomplish a great work.
As we have pointed out in the past, the Lord Jesus died on the cross in seven statuses. First, He was the Lamb of God; second, He was a man in the flesh; third, He was the One signified by the bronze serpent; fourth, He was the last Adam; fifth, He was the Firstborn of all creation; sixth, He was the Peacemaker and the peace; and seventh, He was a grain of wheat. When He died on the cross, He died in these seven statuses.
In other words, His death included at least seven aspects. First, He was the Lamb of God who took away the sin of the world. Second, He was a man in the flesh who was considered sin by God; He did not know sin but was made sin by God, and in His flesh God condemned our sinful nature. Third, He was the bronze serpent with the serpent’s form but without the serpent’s poison. As such, when He was judged on the cross, He destroyed Satan, the ancient serpent. Fourth, He was the last Adam, the last old man. Therefore, when He died, He crucified the old man and ended the human race. Thus, Romans 6:6 says that our old man has been crucified with Him. Fifth, He was the Firstborn of all creation, and He died as a creature, representing all the creation. This may be compared to the veil in the temple in the Old Testament. The veil signified His flesh, and on the veil were embroidered cherubim, the four living creatures. When the veil was rent, the four living creatures were also rent. This meant that when Christ died, all the creation died and was terminated with Him. Sixth, when He died on the cross, He abolished all the ordinances. The Judaic ordinances made it impossible for the Jews to be one with the Gentiles. Every people has its own ordinances, and every place has its own customs and habits. All these resulted in dividing the peoples on the earth into nations. He abolished all these ordinances on the cross.
Last, He died on the cross as a grain of wheat sown into the ground. On the positive side, He released the divine life that was within Him to produce many grains, which are the tens of millions who believe in Him. All these grains are made into one bread, which is one Body, the church. How all-inclusive and unlimited His death is! Why is it unlimited? It is because He was crucified in His humanity with His divinity. We can illustrate this by a grain of wheat sown into the soil. On the one hand, the grain dies because its shell decays. At the same time, however, the life within the grain begins to operate and grow. Therefore, 1 Peter 3:18 says that when Christ was on the cross, He was put to death in the flesh but made alive in the Spirit. This is just like the grain of wheat. According to its outer shell, it is decaying, but according to its inner life, it operates to bring forth tender sprouts. This is a picture of resurrection.
In God’s eyes, when Christ was resurrected, not only He alone was resurrected, but all of us who have been chosen and counted by God to be in Christ were also resurrected together with Him. Just as in His death He brought all of us with Him to pass through death, so also in His resurrection from the dead He brought us out of death into resurrection. Therefore, Ephesians 2:6 says that God raised us up together with Christ and seated us together with Him in the heavenlies. First Peter 1:3 also tells us that God regenerated us through the resurrection of Christ. Never think that you were not regenerated until you believed in the Lord. This manner of accounting is wrong. You were regenerated on the same day as Peter and John, which was the day of the Lord’s resurrection. The day in which the Lord Jesus was resurrected was also the day in which you were regenerated. God is eternal; with Him there is no factor of time or space. In His eyes all the saved ones were regenerated with Christ on the same day.
God chose us before the foundation of the world. At that time, not only were we not yet born, but even the angels, the heavens, and the earth were not yet created. In the eyes of God, however, we already existed at that time. Brothers and sisters, do you believe that you already existed before the foundation of the world? Ephesians 1:4-5 says that God chose us and predestinated us. Predestination is a marking out. If we had not existed in eternity, how could God have chosen and predestinated us? We cannot comprehend this in our mind. However, to God, you and I existed long, long ago in this universe, and God chose and predestinated us at that time. One day He came to die for us, and after everything was accomplished, He was also resurrected for us. Then at a certain time we were born and grew up, and somehow we heard the gospel and believed in Jesus. Previously, the gospel may have seemed like a superstition to us, but we could not help believing it. Moreover, the more we believed, the more comfortable and happy we were. Have you seen a family or nation that believes in Jesus but is not blessed?
Dear brothers and sisters, we truly must understand that we are those chosen by God and that when the Lord Jesus was crucified, He also brought us to the cross. He is all-inclusive, His death is all-inclusive, and His resurrection is limitless. When a grain of wheat dies, many grains are produced. What is sown is one grain, but what is brought forth are many grains. One Jesus was buried in the tomb, but tens of millions of people were resurrected. Today we are all in Christ. Very often we feel weak in ourselves, and we all have many problems. However, the Lord’s word tells us that in Christ we can do all things (Phil. 4:13). In Christ we are all strong and not weak. Do not believe in your weakness; that is Satan’s lie. Each one of us is strong because we are the resurrected ones, and today we are sitting in the heavenlies.
Christ resurrected from the dead to bring man into God that humanity may be mingled with divinity.
Christ also resurrected from the dead to become the life-giving Spirit for the dispensing of God’s life into man.
Dear brothers and sisters, there are no words more excellent and trustworthy than the words of the Bible. The Bible tells us that we have been chosen by God and that God has put us into Christ. When Christ died, we died together with Him. When Christ resurrected, we were raised up together with Him. When Christ ascended, we ascended with Him to the heavenlies and were seated with Him on the throne. Today we look neither at the environment nor at our own condition. We look only at Him. As the Lord in the heavens today, this Jesus rules over everything, and as Christ, He accomplishes everything.
He is also the Head over all things for the church and to the church so that all things may be headed up in Him. The people of the world are sinful and degraded. Sin and degradation cause people to be scattered. However, when we believe in the Lord Jesus, He heads us up in Himself. Therefore, today when we preach the gospel, we bring people into the Lord Jesus. All those people who believe will be headed up in Christ as the Head.
Last, when He ascended to the heavens and received the all-inclusive Spirit from the Father, He poured this Spirit out upon all who believe in Him. In this Spirit we have become one Body, which is the church. When I come to this point, my heart is so joyful, and my spirit leaps. Glory, hallelujah! We who are in Christ have been seated together with Him in the heavenlies, and we have the Holy Spirit poured out upon us to make us one Body for His testimony.
