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Scripture Reading: John 3:5; Gal. 2:20a; 1 Cor. 15:36; Matt. 16:24-26; Gal. 5:24; Rom. 6:6; 8:13b; 2 Cor. 4:10, 16; Phil. 3:10
In the previous chapter we saw that we need to be those who live and walk by the Spirit. In this chapter we want to see our need to live and walk under the crucifixion of Christ. To live and walk by the Spirit is to walk in Christ’s resurrection, through His crucifixion, and by the compound Spirit (Phil. 3:10; 1:19b).
The crucifixion of the Lord on the cross has two significant aspects — the objective aspect and the subjective aspect. The objective aspect of Christ’s death refers to His redemption. He died for our sins to redeem us. In other words, Christ died a vicarious death for us. This was the objective aspect that He accomplished on the cross apart from us about two thousand years ago in the distant land of Palestine. There is also the subjective aspect of the death of Christ. Christ died on the cross not only for us but also with us (Gal. 2:20a). When He died on the cross, He was not dying by Himself. He died with us.
People have different opinions about who actually died on the cross. Some unbelieving Jewish scholars would say that a martyr by the name of Jesus died on the cross for his religious teachings. They would say that he was martyred on the cross by the Jewish religionists through the hands of the Roman government. Other unbelievers would say that Jesus was a great man with the highest ethics of human life. According to their opinion, such a great, good, and wise man, whose teachings were on the highest plane of human ethics, was killed by his opposers.
Among the believers of Christ, there are also a number of views concerning who died on the cross. Many believers of Christ are shallow and superficial, and in their spiritual understanding they are just at the threshold of God’s economy. They know only that Christ died for them on the cross as their Savior. To them Christ was not merely a martyr or a good man but a Savior. This understanding is right, but it is only partially right. This is a shallow, superficial understanding of who died on the cross.
First Corinthians 15:3 says that the first thing Paul delivered to the saints in the gospel was that Christ died for our sins. The word for means that He died a vicarious death. We needed Him to die for us as our Substitute. As our Savior, He represented us to die for our sins to accomplish redemption for us. This is right, but this is not a deep understanding of the death of Christ. If we are to be those who live and walk under the crucifixion of Christ, we need a deeper understanding of Christ’s death.
Recently, I looked at two books that I purchased in San Francisco twenty-nine years ago in 1963. One is called Bone of His Bone, and the other is called Born Crucified. Bone of His Bone is a reference to Adam’s word when God presented Eve to him (Gen. 2:23). Adam was looking for a counterpart, and God presented to him all the animals one by one. Of course, all these animals could not match him. Adam named every living creature, but not one matched him. Then God put Adam to sleep, opened up his side, and took out a rib. Genesis 2:22 says that with this rib God built a woman for Adam. The King James Version says that God “made” a woman, but this is an inadequate translation. The Hebrew text says that God “built” a woman. The rib of Adam was the building material with which God built a female. Then Adam woke up, and God brought Eve to Adam. When Adam saw Eve, Adam said, “This time this is bone of my bones, / And flesh of my flesh” (v. 23). In typology the bone with which Eve was built signifies the resurrection life of Christ. Bone of my bones indicates that we, the members of the church as the Body of Christ, are parts of the resurrected Christ.
On the jacket of the book Bone of His Bone, the publisher says that Christ’s death on the cross was not just for redemption but for identification. Identification here means union. Christ died so that we could be united with Him. He died on the cross not only for objective redemption but also for subjective union, subjective identification. The book Bone of His Bone says that the Christian life is not an imitation of Christ but a participation of Christ. To imitate Christ is wrong. Christ died on the cross, and we cannot imitate that, but we can participate in Christ’s death. We cannot imitate Christ, but we participate in Him and in all that He has accomplished.
This union between us and Christ began from incarnation. Before incarnation God was merely God, and man was man. God and man did have some kind of relationship and some transactions with each other before the incarnation, but there was no union between them. The thought of union is in the divine revelation. First Corinthians 6:17 says, “He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” Some call this union a union of life. We have a life union with the Lord Jesus. We are identified with Him. However, even the word identification is not fully adequate, because it does not convey the full thought of the divine economy. An identification card may have our picture on it, but that picture is not the real, living person. This shows that our terminology in human language is always inadequate.
We need to see the revelation of the union of God and man, beginning from the incarnation. Incarnation is God in His second person, embodying the entire Divine Trinity, becoming a man. In other words, incarnation was the Triune God embodied in Christ becoming a man. This is God uniting Himself with man. John 1 says that the Word, who was God, became flesh (vv. 1, 14). Thus, the identification between divinity and humanity, or the life union between divinity and humanity, began with divinity being joined to the flesh. Thus, when God became a man, the union between God and man started.
When the Lord Jesus was crucified on the cross, He was crucified in His flesh. The flesh, to which the Triune God was joined, implies a lot. This flesh implies all of us. All of us are flesh. Therefore, the New Testament says that no flesh can be justified by the works of the law (Rom. 3:20; Gal. 2:16). No flesh here means no man, no person. As long as we are a descendant of Adam, we are flesh. The entire human race is flesh.
We need to consider the use of the word flesh in the Bible. After God created Adam, He put Adam to sleep, took a rib out of his side, and built that rib into a woman. When Adam awoke, he saw Eve and declared, “She is flesh of my flesh.” Adam was saying that she was flesh and that he also was flesh. She was not something separate from Adam. Thus, both the male and the female are flesh. At that time the flesh did not have any sin; it was pure and clean. But by the time of Genesis 6, the Lord said that man’s sin had become very great and that man had become flesh (vv. 5-7, 12). In Genesis 6 flesh is not used in a positive sense but in a negative sense. From Genesis 6 the word flesh throughout the Bible mostly refers to the negative sense.
In 1 Corinthians Paul uses the words fleshy and fleshly (3:1, 3). Fleshy is worse than fleshly. The Corinthians became not only fleshly but also fleshy. Fleshy denotes being made of flesh; fleshly denotes being influenced by the nature of the flesh and partaking of the character of the flesh. The apostle considered the Corinthian believers to be totally of the flesh, to be made of the flesh, and to be just the flesh. We may not be fleshy, but much of the time we are fleshly. This is because we live, act, and walk not according to our spirit but according to our flesh.
John 1:14 tells us that the Lord Jesus became flesh. Paul in Romans 8:3 says that God sent His own Son in the likeness of the flesh of sin. By the time of Genesis 6 man had become flesh, something utterly sinful. Man became the flesh of sin. Christ became flesh, yet He was only in the likeness of the flesh of sin. Sin was not within Him (2 Cor. 5:21). In His flesh, in His humanity, there was no sin. He was only in the likeness of the flesh of sin. We thank the Lord for this revelation in Romans 8:3.
When Christ as the divine person became incarnated, He joined Himself in His divinity with us, the flesh. When He became flesh, He started His union with man. He identified God with man. This means that He brought God into union with man. He brought God into humanity. Incarnation brought divinity into humanity.
Now we need to consider when humanity was brought into divinity. Union requires two parties, so there must be a two-way traffic of divinity being brought into humanity and of humanity being brought into divinity. God united Himself with us; then He caused us to be united with Him. God’s uniting Himself with us in His incarnation is a one-way traffic. Then in His resurrection, He brought us, the flesh, into divinity. This is the completion of a traffic of two ways.
The identification, the union, between God and man took a long time to accomplish. God made man about six thousand years ago. In Genesis 3:15 God promised fallen man that He would come as the seed of the woman, indicating His incarnation, but He did not come right away. After two thousand years He repeated nearly the same promise to Abraham. He told Abraham that in his seed (singular) all the nations would be blessed (22:18; Gal. 3:16). The seed of the woman in Genesis 3:15 would be the seed of Abraham, a descendant of Abraham. God waited for still another two thousand years to fulfill this promise. From Adam to Abraham, there were two thousand years; and from Abraham to Christ, there were another two thousand years. There were altogether four thousand years from the creation of Adam to the incarnation of Christ as the seed of the woman and the seed of Abraham.
God came to join Himself to the flesh, to us, to humanity. He lived on the earth in humanity for thirty-three and a half years. The “divine factory” did not produce the mingling of God and man in a quick way. For God to fully accomplish His union with man, He had to pass through human living, pass through death, and enter into resurrection. He did this to bring humanity, to which He had united Himself, into divinity.
The New Testament tells us that when He died on the cross, He died with us (Gal. 2:20a), because He died on the cross in the flesh, and we are the flesh. He was in union with us. The Lord Jesus was crucified in His flesh (1 Pet. 3:18; Col. 1:22). Christ’s divinity was not crucified; divinity cannot be crucified. His divinity includes the eternal life, the resurrection life; nothing can kill it. Christ died in His flesh. In His flesh, in the condition of His flesh, He was killed. The flesh not only includes us but also refers to us. Christ died in the flesh, and this flesh refers to the entire human race. This means that He died on the cross with us.
In the book Born Crucified there are a number of good expressions. The author said that Christ not only died for us but also died with us. He died for us to redeem us, and He died and resurrected with us (Eph. 2:6) to identify us with Him. When He became incarnated, He identified God with man. When He died and resurrected with us, He identified us with God. This is a two-way traffic.
Now we need to ask where Christ is today. We have to answer strongly, “Christ is in us!” Christ has been located. Before Christ became a man He was merely the universal, omnipresent God. But when He became a man, He became located. Before His incarnation He was like a bird soaring everywhere in the air, but through His incarnation He entered into a cage. He became located. Jesus was caged, limited. When He was in Jerusalem, He could not be in Galilee at the same time. He was caged in His humanity.
Before we were saved, we were soaring, wandering everywhere. I can testify that I was once wandering everywhere. But one day when I was nineteen years old, I believed in the Lord Jesus. At that time I was caged. The cage into which Christ entered was the flesh, the human race. The cage into which we believers have entered is a wonderful cage. This cage is Christ! Today we are in Christ.
Positionally, we are in Christ, but at times in our experience we get out of Christ. Sometimes the enemy comes to open the door of the cage. Then we are released. When we get mad, we are out of the cage. Christ was caged when He united Himself with man. We were caged when we were united with God. In Christian theology this is known as identification, but in our teaching we do not usually use the term identification. Instead, we use the terms union and mingling.
Mingling is deeper than union. In the incarnation God not only united Himself with man but also mingled Himself with man. If I clasp my hands together, my hands are in union with each other, but mingling is much more than this. When one item is grafted to another, the result is mingling. Sometimes in surgery, skin is taken from one part of a person’s body and grafted to another part. Eventually, the two pieces of skin are not only united but also mingled together. When a branch from one tree is grafted to another tree, they are mingled together. In the same way, God was mingled with man in incarnation. Then in Christ’s resurrection, man was mingled with God. This is why the New Testament tells us that we were crucified with Christ (Gal. 2:20a) and were resurrected with Christ (Eph. 2:6). Through Christ’s death and resurrection we were not only united to Christ, to God, but also mingled with Him.
In our recent life-study of the book of Jeremiah, I pointed out that in God’s new covenant (31:33-34), we have been made God in His nature and in His life but not in His Godhead. This is because we have been begotten of God (John 1:13). Dogs beget dogs; lions beget lions; and man begets man. Since your father is a man, and you are born of him, are you not a man? As believers in Christ, we have been born of God; we have been regenerated by God. God is our Father, and we are His sons. Since our Father is God, what are we, the sons? The sons must be the same as their Father in life and in nature. We have been born of God to be the children of God (1 John 3:1). Eventually, when Christ comes, He will make us fully the same as God in life and in nature (v. 2). However, none of us are or can be God in His Godhead as an object of worship. In a family, only the father has the fatherhood. The children of the father do not have his fatherhood. There is only one father with many children. The father is human, and the children also are human, but there is only one father. In the same way, God is our unique Father; only He has the divine fatherhood. But we as His children are the same as He is in life and in nature.
The early church fathers used the term deification to describe the believers’ participation in the divine life and nature of God but not in the Godhead. We human beings need to be deified, to be made like God in life and in nature, but it is a great heresy to say that we are made like God in His Godhead. We are God, not in His Godhead but in His life, nature, element, essence, and image.
When we were regenerated, we were crucified. The writer of the book Born Crucified quotes a French preacher who said that the church was “born crucified.” Then he goes on to say that to be born here means to be regenerated. No one was born crucified in a physical sense, but every believer is regenerated crucified. This corresponds with the Lord’s word in John 3:5: “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” It would be helpful to read footnote 2 on this verse in the Recovery Version. Water here refers to the water in John the Baptist’s ministry. John said, “I baptize you in water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me...will baptize you in the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 3:11). In this word of John the Baptist to the Pharisees, water and the Spirit are referred to definitely. Later, the Lord Jesus came to talk to Nicodemus, who was also a Pharisee. Surely, he had heard John’s word. Thus, the Lord told him that he had to be born of water and the Spirit. The water refers to John’s ministry, and the Spirit refers to the Lord’s ministry.
To be born of water, according to John’s ministry, is for the termination of people of the old creation. When we are buried in the water of John’s ministry, this indicates that we realize that we are good for nothing but death. When people came to John to repent, John threw them into the water to bury them, to end them, to terminate them. When a sinner repents to God, he should repent to such an extent that he realizes he is good for nothing but death. Thus, he hands himself over like a corpse to the baptizer.
When we preach the gospel and lead people to repent and believe into Christ, we may tell them, “You have to realize that as a person who has repented and believed into Christ, you, as a person of the old creation, are now a dead person. You have handed yourself over to me as a corpse, and I will now put you into a tomb of water to terminate you.” Paul tells us clearly in Romans 6:4 and Colossians 2:12 that in baptism we are buried together with Christ into His death. When we raise up a baptized one from the water, that indicates resurrection. In resurrection we are now in the Spirit. Through the terminating water of death and the germinating Spirit, we are born spiritually. To be reborn through termination and germination is to be regenerated. Thus, every regenerated person is regenerated crucified.
We are regenerated crucified and are dying to live (1 Cor. 15:36). We were born dead, and now we are dying to live. Dying to live means to live under the crucifixion of Christ. Every day we are dying. Paul says that he died daily (v. 31; 2 Cor. 4:11). Our environment is putting us to death every day. Our dying is a continuous matter. The Christian life is a long life of dying. Every day we die to live. We were reborn crucified, and now we are dying to live. This is a living under the crucifixion of Christ. In Galatians 2:20 Paul says, “I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith.” On the one hand, Paul had been terminated, but on the other hand, a resurrected Paul, one who had been regenerated, still lived. Paul had been crucified with Christ, yet Christ lived in him and he lived Christ (Phil. 1:21a). Christ and Paul had one life and one living.
In the book Born Crucified, the writer tells a story that occurred during the Civil War in the United States. A man was chosen to go to the front to fight at the sacrifice of his life, yet he had a wife and six children. Another young man offered to go to replace this man, to be his substitute. Both parties agreed, and the authorities put this into their records. Then that young man who replaced the first man went to the war and was killed in action. Later, the authorities still tried to draft the first man into service. But the first man told them to look at their records, which said that the other man was his substitute. He claimed that he had died in the person of the young man who was his substitute, his representative. The author uses this case to illustrate that Christ was our Substitute.
According to the legal record, this is a good illustration, but according to the thought of our identification with Christ, this illustration is inadequate. Christ was our Substitute on the cross not just legally, to make a legal record in the heavenly account. He also came to be our Substitute in the way of identification. First, He came into humanity. He did not come to replace man but to be man. In the way of identification, He came to become us. Spontaneously, He is our Substitute.
In the medical field a doctor will give someone an injection at a spot on their body for the benefit of their entire body. The doctor injects only one spot, but this one spot represents the entire body, so the entire body receives the injection. This spot where the injection takes place is not a kind of substitute of our entire body in a legal way. This spot is a substitute for the entire body in the way of identification. Thus, when this spot receives the injection, the entire body receives it. Christ could be our Substitute only in the way of identification. If He had never become us, He could never have been our Substitute. If He had not become us, His being our Substitute would have merely been according to a legal record. But because He became us, His being our Substitute is according to the way of identification.
Now we need to consider once more who died on the cross. We need to say, “I died on the cross.” When Christ was incarnated, He took us upon Himself. He put on blood and flesh (Heb. 2:14). Therefore, when He was crucified, we were crucified with Him. All of us as a part of Christ, received the injection of His death on the cross.
The writer of Born Crucified also tells a story about an old missionary who had lived a defeated Christian life. One day he was reading the Bible, and his eyes fell upon the words in Galatians 2:20 — “Christ liveth in me.” This phrase enlightened that man. The book says that though he was a solid Presbyterian, he was jumping around his table with joy, saying, “Christ liveth in me! Christ liveth in me!” The Christ who lived in this Presbyterian missionary is the pneumatic Christ, the life-giving Christ.
Some may speak of the doctrine of identification, but they do not see that our identification with Christ can be experienced by us only in the life-giving Spirit. The Christ who was our Substitute became a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). There are a number of people in Christianity who teach that the three of the Divine Trinity are three separate persons. To say this is wrong. There is no separation among the three, but there is a distinction among the Father and the Son and the Spirit. The three of the Godhead are one.
The New Testament says in 1 Corinthians 15:45b that the last Adam, who came to be our Substitute, became a life-giving Spirit. Christ as the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit for the purpose of indwelling us. If Christ as the God-man had never become the Spirit, how could He be our life within us? There would be no possibility of His dwelling in us if He were not the Spirit.
In Romans 8:9 Paul speaks of the Spirit of God dwelling in us and of our having the Spirit of Christ. Then in verse 10 he says, “If Christ is in you.” The Spirit of Christ and Christ are interchangeably used. This means that the Spirit of Christ is Christ. These two titles refer to the same person. Second Corinthians 3:17 says, “The Lord is the Spirit.” Then verse 18 speaks of “the Lord Spirit.” This shows that the Lord Christ is the Spirit and that the Spirit is the Lord Christ. First Corinthians 6:17 says, “He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” How can we be identified with Christ? There is no way but in the life-giving Spirit.
Furthermore, in the Lord’s revelation to us in His recovery, He has gone further to show that this life-giving Spirit is the compound Spirit, compounded with Christ’s divinity, with Christ’s humanity, with Christ’s human living, with Christ’s death, with the effectiveness of Christ’s death, with Christ’s resurrection, and with the power of Christ’s resurrection (see Phil. 1:19 and footnote 4, Recovery Version). Thus, He is the compound Spirit. Since we have such a compounded Spirit, we lack nothing. In Him we have God, the uplifted humanity, Christ’s death, the effectiveness of His death, Christ’s resurrection, and the power of His resurrection. Everything we need is here. We have to realize that in this pneumatic Christ, the life-giving Spirit, the compound Spirit, the death of Christ is available to us every day.
In these messages we are not burdened to merely teach the Bible. We want to expound all these things so that we would realize that the Spirit whom we are enjoying every day is a compound Spirit. This may be likened to a “compound” tea. When we drink the tea, we receive the elements of lemon, tea, and water since they have been compounded together. Similarly, as we drink the Spirit (1 Cor. 12:13b), we receive all His elements, which include the death of Christ with its effectiveness and the resurrection of Christ with its power. Thus, as we are drinking the Spirit, we are dying to live. In the next chapter we will continue our fellowship on our need to live and walk under the crucifixion of Christ.
