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Scripture Reading: Gen. 1:26, 28b; 2:8-9, 22-24; Heb. 2:14; John 1:29; Rom. 8:3; 2 Tim. 1:10b; 1 Pet. 1:3b; Rom. 6:6a; 1 Tim. 2:14; Rom. 5:12; 1 Cor. 15:45b; Rom. 8:9b, 11; Rev. 22:17a; John 3:5-6; 2 Cor. 3:17-18; Rom. 8:29; Luke 1:31-32; Acts 13:33-34; 5:30b-31a; 2 Tim. 2:12a; Rev. 20:4, 6; Rom. 6:3-5; Eph. 2:6; 1 Cor. 6:17; Phil. 3:10; 1:19b-21a; Acts 13:52; 4:31b; Gal. 5:16, 25; Rom. 8:4b; Rev. 2:26-27; 3:21; 1 Thes. 5:17, 19
Prayer: Lord, we look to You again for Your mercy and blessing. Without You we are nothing, and we can do nothing. Lord, be merciful to us and speak to us. Give us grace that we may humble ourselves as we come to You with Your Word. We look to You that You would shine upon us and upon every line as we read. Lord, give us light. Give us the instant utterance that we may speak what You have shown us. Amen.
Christ as the threefold seed touches the essence of the divine revelation. The revelation of the Bible is mainly an unveiling of Christ as the threefold seed: the seed of the woman (Gen. 3:15; Isa. 7:14), the seed of Abraham (Gen. 17:8; Gal. 3:16), and the seed of David (2 Sam. 7:12-14; Matt. 1:1, 6; 22:42-45; Rom. 1:3; Rev. 22:16). The promise of the seed of the woman was given nearly six thousand years ago. The promise concerning the seed of Abraham was given two thousand years after the first promise, and the fulfillment of that promise came two thousand years later. The entire revelation of the Scriptures is wrapped up with the seed of the woman, the seed of Abraham, and the seed of David. This threefold seed links Christ as God to man and Christ as man to God. In other words, this seed makes Christ the mingling, the blending, of God and man.
As we pointed out in the previous chapter, the Bible tells us that Christ is the seed of only three persons: the woman (Mary); Abraham, the forefather of God’s chosen people; and David, the one who founded the kingdom of Israel. These three are mentioned in a particular way in the genealogy of Christ in Matthew 1. In verse 1 Christ is introduced as the son of David and the son of Abraham. This indicates that Christ is the seed of David and the seed of Abraham. Then at the end of the genealogy, Matthew records that Christ was born of Mary (v. 16). Mary’s husband was Joseph, but Christ was not born of Joseph; He was born of Mary. This indicates that Christ is her seed, the seed of the woman.
Christ’s being the seed of the woman, the seed of Abraham, and the seed of David strongly implies the dispensing of God Himself into man. The seed of the woman (Gen. 3:15) refers to the incarnation of Christ. Isaiah 7:14 confirms the promise in Genesis 3:15, and the birth of Christ in Matthew 1:22-23 and 25 was the fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14. Incarnation was the dispensing of God Himself into humanity.
The incarnation was God being born into humanity. When Mary’s husband Joseph purposed to put Mary away secretly, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and told him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife, “for that which has been begotten in her is of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 1:20). The Spirit of God, who is God reaching man, had come into Mary’s womb. In the process of incarnation God was begotten in humanity. Eventually, a child was born who was called Mighty God (Isa. 9:6). Because He was the very God, His name was also called Emmanuel — God with us (Matt. 1:23). Through incarnation God entered into humanity, and this entering of God into humanity was His dispensing of Himself into humanity.
The dispensing of God into man is greater than the creation of the heavens and the earth, because incarnation makes God one with man and makes man one with God. In His creation God created many things, and before His incarnation, throughout the Old Testament, He performed a number of miracles and works of power, such as the parting of the Red Sea (Exo. 14:21-22). But there is no comparison between these miracles and incarnation. Incarnation was the bringing of God into man.
Regeneration is as great an event as incarnation. With the Lord Jesus, God’s entering into man was incarnation, but with us, God’s entering into man is regeneration. Through regeneration we are the same as Christ; we even are little “Christs.” D. L. Moody once said that regeneration is the greatest miracle. When we repented and believed, we received the Lord Jesus, and as we prayed, God entered into us. The New Testament tells us clearly that, first, God is within us (Eph. 4:6); second, Christ is within us (Rom. 8:10; 2 Cor. 13:5); and third, the Spirit is within us (Rom. 8:9). Eventually, Philippians 2:13 tells us that God is operating in us. Every day God operates in us. God’s operation within us is a great matter.
Christ as the seed of the woman, the seed of Abraham, and the seed of David is a threefold seed and also a threefold dispensing. God promised that the seed of the woman would bruise the head of the serpent. This is the first aspect of God’s dispensing.
God’s promise to Abraham that his seed would be the blessing to all the nations is the second aspect of His dispensing. This blessing to all the nations is the Spirit. The seed of Abraham is Christ as the last Adam. This last Adam, the God-man, eventually became the life-giving Spirit. A man who was the seed of Abraham became a Spirit, even a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). John 1:14 reveals that the Word became flesh. Then, according to 1 Corinthians 15:45, Christ as the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit. The first time the word became is used concerning Christ is when He became a man to bring divinity into humanity. The second time is when Christ as the last Adam became a Spirit in order to give life. In order to impart God into man, the man Jesus had to die and be resurrected so that He could become a life-giving Spirit. How marvelous this is!
Christ as the seed of David was begotten through His resurrection to be the firstborn Son of God and God’s sure mercies shown to David (Acts 13:33-34). This is the third aspect of His dispensing.
In eternity past the Triune God held a divine council. In that divine conference the Triune God made a counsel, and this counsel became His economy. The positive intention of God’s economy comprises three items.
The first item of God’s positive intention in His economy is to have man in His image and according to His likeness for man to be one with Him that He may express Himself in humanity (Gen. 1:26a). As a man on this earth, Jesus was made, or created, in God’s image and according to God’s likeness. Christ was not only born but also created. When He entered into a human womb, Christ joined Himself with the created man, Adam. Hence, Christ was created in God’s image and according to God’s likeness. As human beings, we all were begotten of our parents. But we were not only begotten; we were also created. We were created when Adam was created. Our birth caused us merely to participate in that creation. In the same way, Christ was created in God’s image and according to God’s likeness to be one with man and one with God.
Man was made in God’s image and according to His likeness so that God could express Himself in humanity. God expressed Himself in the humanity of Jesus while He was on the earth for thirty-three and a half years. John 1:18 says, “No one has ever seen God; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.” When He wept, Jesus expressed God. When He was angry with the Pharisees, He expressed God. He did everything to express God in His humanity.
Although God was seen in the humanity of the one man Jesus, this was not sufficient. The man Jesus had to be duplicated, mass-produced. In Christ’s incarnation God entered into only one man, but in Christ’s becoming the life-giving Spirit, God entered into millions of people. On the day of Pentecost three thousand were produced at one time (Acts 2:41). All these believers were made small “Christs”; that is, they were the mass production of Christ.
The second item of God’s positive intention in His economy was to give man His dominion over the earth and over all the creatures on the earth, in the water, and in the heavens that man may represent Him in His administration (Gen. 1:26b, 28b). Man should not only express God but also represent God in His administration. This touches the matter of God’s government. The four Gospels reveal that Jesus is not only God’s expression but also God’s representative. The little man Jesus rebuked the wind and silenced the sea (Mark 4:39). His disciples said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?” (v. 41). He was a small Nazarene, but the wind and the sea obeyed Him. This was because He had God’s dominion; as a man He represented God. The Lord Jesus represented God, and we also must learn to represent God.
The third item of God’s positive intention in His economy is to be received by man as man’s life for his inward constitution that man may become the counterpart of the Triune God (Gen. 2:8-9, 22-24). Adam was created in God’s image and according to God’s likeness. God formed man with a body of clay and with the breath of life out from God. This breath became man’s spirit as a receiver and container of God. God made man in this way and put him in front of the tree of life (v. 9) because He intended to be received by man. He then told man that he could eat of all the trees in the garden, including the tree of life (v. 16). He also warned man not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (v. 17). The tree of life signifies God as life to man. If man would have eaten of the tree of life, he would have taken God Himself into him. Without the life signified by the tree of life, man is an empty container, a vessel without any content. Today we as God’s containers have the Triune God as our life and content. Every day this life constitutes us.
Today God is within us as our life and life supply. As our life supply, He constitutes us with Himself, making Himself our constituent. Whenever we eat food, a dispensing takes place. Once food is eaten, after about eight hours it becomes our constitution. When the children of Israel were brought out of Egypt and journeyed in the wilderness, they had nothing to eat. They had no farms to produce their food, so every morning God dropped manna from heaven for them to eat. The children of Israel lived on manna for forty years. Wherever they went for those forty years, the manna was there. Before entering the wilderness, the children of Israel were Egyptian in their constitution because all they had eaten were the things of the Egyptian diet, including fish, cucumbers, green onions, leeks, and garlic. Such eating produced an Egyptian constitution within them. But God changed their constitution by giving them manna to eat. By eating manna for forty years, the Israelites became a constitution of manna. Their constitution was changed by their eating.
God’s intention in His economy is that He would be man’s life for man’s inward constitution that man may become the counterpart of God. What a wonder that we can be the counterpart of God! This is fully typified as a divine revelation in Genesis 2. God created Adam (v. 7), built a wife from one of his ribs (vv. 21-22), and brought the wife back to Adam, and the two of them became one flesh (vv. 22-24). Eve became the counterpart of Adam. Today we have become the counterpart of God, a part of God that matches God. Initially, God was alone, but it was not good for Him to be alone (v. 18). God needed a counterpart. After receiving God as his life for his inward constitution, man has become the counterpart of the Triune God.
According to Ephesians 4:4-6, the Father, the Son, the Spirit, and the Body are all one. This is the oneness of the Body. It is altogether proper to say that the Father, the Son, the Spirit, and the Body are four-in-one. The Triune God is three, yet He now has a fourth part, a counterpart. However, only the first three are worthy of our worship. The Triune God and His counterpart are now four-in-one.
God’s positive intention in His economy consists of the aforementioned three positive items. But man’s fall through the temptation of God’s adversary caused a negative need. This need consists of four items.
The first item of the negative need caused by man’s fall is to destroy Satan, the origin of sin and the possessor of the might of death, in Christ’s humanity through death (Heb. 2:14). Satan is not only God’s enemy but also God’s adversary. An enemy is one who is on the outside, but an adversary is one who is on the inside. God’s intention is to deal with man’s negative need by destroying Satan, God’s enemy and God’s adversary.
The second item of man’s negative need is to take away sin through Christ’s death in His flesh (John 1:29; Rom. 8:3). Christ as the Lamb of God took away the sin of the world.
The third item of man’s negative need is to nullify death through Christ’s resurrection in His humanity (2 Tim. 1:10b; 1 Pet. 1:3b). In His humanity Christ nullified death through His resurrection.
The fourth item of the negative need caused by man’s fall is to terminate the old man corrupted by Satan with sin unto death (Rom. 6:6a; 1 Tim. 2:14; Rom. 5:12). God did not create man in an old condition; He created man in a very fresh condition. Man became old when Satan came into him with sin, which is unto death. These three factors — Satan, sin, and death — entered into us to corrupt us and make us old. Being old is not a matter of age but a matter of condition. We were dirty, sinful, and destined to die because we have Satan, sin, and death within us. Our entire old being, our old man, was and still is wrapped up with these three things. However, through Christ’s death on the cross in His humanity, the old man corrupted by Satan with sin unto death was terminated.
Christ as the seed of the woman has dealt with Satan, sin, death, and the old man. The first stanza and chorus of Hymns, #890 express the fact that Christ is the Victor over Satan, sin, and death:
Sin and death are the product of Satan. Sin came from Satan and issues in death (Rom. 5:12). However, Satan was destroyed by Christ, sin was taken away through Christ’s death, and death was nullified by Christ’s appearing in the flesh. Moreover, our old man, which was corrupted by Satan, sin, and death, was terminated by being crucified with Christ. All these items are included in the bruising of the serpent’s head by the seed of the woman. These are the achievements of Christ as the seed of the woman.
Christ as the seed of Abraham, the last Adam, the God-man, has become the life-giving Spirit; the Spirit of Christ; the consummated and indwelling Spirit; the divine Spirit processed and compounded with Christ’s humanity, His death and its effectiveness, and His resurrection and its power; the unique and all-inclusive Spirit; and the Spirit (as the aggregate of the blessing of the full gospel of God in Christ) to impart Himself as God’s embodiment and life into us that we may be regenerated and transformed and conformed to the glorious image of Christ as the firstborn Son of God (1 Cor. 15:45b; Rom. 8:9b, 11; Rev. 22:17a; John 3:5-6; 2 Cor. 3:17-18; Rom. 8:29).
The first man, Adam, was not a God-man. But the last Adam was a God-man, a man wrapped up with the element of God. As the last Adam, Christ died and resurrected, and through death and resurrection He became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). It is significant that Paul inserted the adjective life-giving before the word Spirit. We might also render the adjective life-giving as life-imparting. Christ has become the life-imparting Spirit. Since life is God Himself embodied in Christ, this life-imparting Spirit is also the God-giving, or God-imparting, Spirit, the Spirit who imparts God into us. This is implied not in the seed of the woman but in the seed of Abraham (Gal. 3:14, 16). Jesus Christ, our Redeemer and Savior, has become a Spirit who gives life, a Spirit who imparts God.
Christ as the life-giving Spirit is also the Spirit of Christ. He is not just the Spirit of God but the Spirit of Christ. This is the consummated and indwelling Spirit. The word consummated implies a process. Thus, the consummated and indwelling Spirit is the Spirit who has gone through a process to become qualified and able to indwell us. The Spirit of God could not indwell us without being processed. In order to indwell us, the Spirit of God passed through incarnation, human living, death, and resurrection as the steps of a long process. Now, because of this process, He is qualified and able to dwell within us. This indwelling is a great thing.
The steps of incarnation, human living, death, and resurrection are a real process. In the process of incarnation God Himself was confined within the womb of Mary for nine months. Then after His birth He continued the process by passing through human living for thirty-three and a half years. Thus, human living was included in the long process of His incarnation. He then went through death and traveled through death, staying in the realm of death for three days. Then He entered into the process of resurrection. After His glorification in resurrection (Luke 24:26) the process of the Triune God was complete, and on the day of resurrection He came back to His disciples and breathed the Spirit into them (John 20:22). Before Jesus was glorified in resurrection, the Spirit who is the Spirit of Christ and the life-giving Spirit was not yet (7:39). After Christ’s resurrection the Spirit, the divine Spirit, was processed and compounded with Christ’s humanity, His death, the effectiveness of His death, His resurrection, and the power of His resurrection. The compound ointment in Exodus 30:23-25 is a clear type of the unique and all-inclusive Spirit, who is the Spirit. This Spirit is the aggregate of the blessing of the full gospel of God in Christ.
The eight items of blessing, including the last Adam, the God-man, the life-giving Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, the consummated and indwelling Spirit, the divine Spirit, the unique and all-inclusive Spirit, and the Spirit, are all wrapped up with Christ as the seed of Abraham. If you have Christ as the seed of Abraham, you are qualified to be blessed with these eight items. Although Confucius was a great teacher of morality, he was not qualified to receive this eightfold blessing. Only genuine, regenerated, and transformed Christians are qualified to enjoy these blessings. We are qualified with, by, in, and through the life-giving Spirit. This Spirit is the aggregate of the blessing of the full gospel of God in Christ. Christ became the life-giving Spirit so that He could impart Himself as God’s embodiment and life into us that we may be regenerated, transformed, and conformed to the glorious image of Christ as the firstborn Son of God.
Christ as the seed of David, the king anointed by God, was begotten through His resurrection to be the Prince (the King) in His humanity that we may share His kingship for God’s administration (Luke 1:31-32; Acts 13:33-34; 5:30b-31a; 2 Tim. 2:12a; Rev. 20:4, 6). If we read Acts 13:33 and receive light from the Lord, we can see clearly that resurrection was a birth to Christ. He was the unique, only begotten Son of God (John 3:16), but in resurrection He was born to be the firstborn Son of God (Rom. 8:29; Heb. 1:5-6).
When Christ as the seed of David became the firstborn Son in resurrection, He became God’s sure mercies (Acts 13:33-34 see footnote 1 on v. 34, Recovery Version). He also became the Prince, that is, the King, in His humanity that we may share His kingship for God’s administration (5:30b-31a; see footnote 2 on v. 31). This is the fulfillment of the second item of the positive intention of God’s economy, which is to give man God’s dominion that he may represent God in His administration.
In order to overcome Satan, sin, and death, to terminate the old man, and to participate in the all-embracing blessing of the Spirit of Christ and in the kingship of Christ, we need at least six items. These items cover all the charges to the believers in the New Testament.
First, we must be identified with the all-inclusive Christ as the threefold seed in His humanity, in His death, resurrection, and ascension, so that we can be one with Him, even one spirit with Him (Rom. 6:3-5; Eph. 2:6; 1 Cor. 6:17). It is in this way that we are one with the Triune God.
Second, we must live in Christ’s resurrection through His cross (Phil. 3:10). Every day we should walk and live under the shadow of the cross. We should always remain under the cross, not doing anything in a natural way. Then we will have the experience of Christ’s resurrection.
Third, we must live Him as the pneumatic Christ by the bountiful supply of His Spirit (Phil. 1:19b-21a). The pneumatic Christ has a supply — the Spirit of Jesus Christ. The Spirit of Jesus Christ has the bountiful supply to support us so that we can live the pneumatic Christ, who is not in the flesh but in the spirit, in the pneuma.
Fourth, we must be filled with the Spirit within and without, and we must live and walk according to the Spirit in our spirit (Acts 13:52; 4:31b; Gal. 5:16, 25; Rom. 8:4b). To be filled with the Spirit within and without is to be filled inwardly and outwardly. To be filled inwardly is to have the infilling of the Spirit, and to be filled outwardly is to experience the outpouring of the Spirit.
Fifth, we must overcome individualism, sectarianism, and Christianity, and we must live the life of the Body of Christ (Rev. 2:26-27; 3:21). We must overcome every kind of “anity” and “ism,” including Christianity and “church-anity.” We must also learn to live the life of the Body of Christ.
Sixth, we must receive God’s constant and instant dispensing continuously through unceasing prayer, not quenching the Spirit (1 Thes. 5:17, 19). When we become such persons, we will overcome Satan, sin, and death, we will experience the termination of the old man, and we will participate in the all-embracing blessing of the Spirit of Christ and in the kingship of Christ. This is our experience through the daily, moment by moment, dispensing of the Triune God.
