Search
Scripture Reading: Rom. 5:12; 1 Cor. 15:22a; Heb. 9:27; Rom. 5:10; 2 Cor. 5:14-15; Heb. 9:26; Rom. 8:3b; Heb. 9:28; 1 Cor. 15:3; Matt. 26:28; John 1:29; Heb. 2:14; John 12:31; Gal. 6:14-15; Col. 2:15; Rom. 6:6a; 2 Cor. 4:10a, 11a, 12a, 16a; Gal. 5:24; Rom. 6:6b; Eph. 2:15; Col. 2:14; Eph. 2:16; John 12:24; Rom. 12:5; 1 Cor. 10:17; John 19:34
In the Scripture Reading for this chapter we have listed thirty verses. All these verses are like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle concerning the revelation of the all-inclusive death of Christ. These verses are scattered throughout the Bible. Under the inspiration of the Spirit, the Bible was written in this way. The truths are scattered here and there throughout the Bible. Time, insight, and skill are needed to put these pieces of the truth together. Then we can have a complete picture. In this chapter we want to put the pieces of the truth concerning Christ’s all-inclusive death together so that we can have a complete picture of His death.
In the early days, by reading some spiritual books, I found out that Christ’s death has two aspects — the objective aspect and the subjective aspect. The objective aspect is that Christ died for my sins (1 Cor. 15:3), and the subjective aspect is that when Christ was crucified, I was crucified with Him (Gal. 2:20a). Through my reading of the Bible for over sixty years, I have collected the scattered pieces of the truth concerning the all-inclusive death of Christ.
The Bible was not written in a systematic way according to our thought. It was written according to what Isaiah says in Isaiah 28:13: “Therefore Jehovah’s word to them will be: / Rule upon rule, rule upon rule; / Line upon line, line upon line; / Here a little, there a little.” We need the sight and the insight to put all the pieces of a certain truth together. I have spent much time to put the pieces of the truth concerning Christ’s death together. All the verses I have collected from the Scriptures give us a marvelous picture of Christ’s wonderful, excellent, and all-inclusive death.
If we do not know the all-inclusive death of Christ and if we do not experience His death in our daily life, we cannot live the Christian life. Without experiencing His death, we can live at best only an ethical life. We may live an ethical life according to our culture in the Chinese way or in the American way. Ethics are always different from country to country. We may live a life that is good in the eyes of people, but such a living has altogether nothing to do with the Christian life.
The Christian life is to live Christ, but to live Christ, we must die. If you do not know that you have been crucified before you were born, you can never live the Christian life. We have to realize that not only many negative things but also many of our natural positive things need to be dealt with subjectively by the cross of Christ. For example, we may always gossip about others. Some saints are the “information desk of the church.” If people come to this “desk,” they can find out all the information about the saints in the church. This is negative. Things like this need to be dealt with by the cross because they are of the flesh. And the good things, the ethical things, which are by our natural life, even though they are positive, also need to be dealt with by the cross of Christ because they are not something by Christ and cannot be considered something of the Christian life. In order to live the Christian life, we must be under the killing of the cross of Christ in the subjective experience of His all-inclusive death.
The death of Christ is different from the death of Adam. The death of Adam brings every one of us into death, making all of us dead.
The death of Adam came in through sin, and all men have suffered of his death (Rom. 5:12; 1 Cor. 15:22a; Heb. 9:27). Even before Adam’s sin, death was mentioned in Genesis. God warned Adam that if he partook of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he would surely die (Gen. 2:17). After God created man, He put him in a garden before two trees: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The Bible does not say that there is a tree called the tree of death. The tree of death is called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. On the positive side there is a tree called the tree of life. On the negative side there is a tree that we would think should be called the tree of death. But the Bible calls the tree of death “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Knowledge plus good plus evil equals death.
Today if you are trying to collect knowledge or do good, you are involved with the element of death. We would always consider evil as death, but we would not consider knowledge or good as death. The knowledge such as the knowledge concerning Christ and the church is positive, but the knowledge that has nothing to do with the reality of God’s economy is negative, being in the same category of good and evil, which are of death.
We should not think that death was not present before Adam’s fall. Before Adam’s fall, death was there with Satan. Hebrews 2:14 says that the devil is the one who has the might of death. Death is Satan’s might. Satan is the very source of death, just as God is the very source of life.
In his cleverness Satan contacted the female first. Through the female he reached Adam, and Adam took in Satan’s proposal. When you take in another’s proposal, that means you take the proposer. Thus, the proposer got into Adam. The result of Adam’s fall was death. Thus, Romans 5:12 tells us very clearly that sin entered into the world, into the human race, through one man, Adam. Then this sin brought in death as the result, the end. The death of Adam is altogether negative. Adam’s death caused all of us, his descendants, to be in death. We were born not only in sin but also in death. Sin and death were our inheritance at our birth.
The death of Christ comes to His believers through His redemption, and all His believers have been redeemed that they may enjoy the salvation of His life (Rom. 5:10; 2 Cor. 5:14-15). Christ accomplished redemption on the cross. His death was a redeeming death. A positive, wonderful, good, and excellent death has come to us. If we reject this death, we will suffer the negative death in Adam.
The purpose of Christ’s death is not that we may go to heaven. Even the heavens have been redeemed by Christ’s death. Colossians 1:20 says that Christ’s death has reconciled all things, including the things in the heavens. Satan’s rebellion contaminated also the heavens, so even the heavens needed to be reconciled to God. Reconciliation is for the enemy, so all the created things, including the heavens, were enemies to God. Through His redeeming death, Christ reconciled all things to Himself. All His believers have been redeemed so that they may enjoy the salvation of His life. Adam’s death brought us into death. Christ’s death, however, brought us into life.
The death of Christ is the redeeming and life-releasing and life-imparting death. The redeeming death is on the negative side. The life-releasing and life-imparting death is on the positive side. Hence, Christ’s death is all-inclusive.
The redeeming death of Christ is on the negative side.
Christ’s death dealt with sin. There are three aspects to His dealing with sin.
Christ dealt with sin in His death to put away sin in our nature (Heb. 9:26; Rom. 8:3b). Men are sinners because sin is in their nature. A fruit tree does not learn how to bring forth fruit. It brings forth fruit spontaneously out of its nature. Similarly, men always lie because sin is in their nature. There is not a trade school teaching people how to lie. Parents may warn their children not to lie, but the children lie spontaneously in many ways. Children do not learn to lie. They were born to lie because sin is within them.
Hebrews 9:26 says that Christ “has been manifested for the putting away of sin through the sacrifice of Himself.” This refers to the putting away of sin in our nature. Then Romans 8:3 says that Christ, in His death on the cross, “condemned sin in the flesh.” When Christ became flesh, according to Romans 8:3, He was in the likeness of the flesh of sin, but He did not have the sin of the flesh (2 Cor. 5:21; Heb. 4:15). But our flesh is the flesh of sin. Our flesh is constituted with sin. It is a sinful flesh. Through Christ’s crucifixion in the flesh, God condemned sin, which was brought by Satan into man’s flesh, into man’s nature.
Christ died on the cross to bear our sins (Heb. 9:28; 1 Cor. 15:3; Matt. 26:28). These are the sins in our conduct, in our behavior, not in our nature. Hebrews 9:26 speaks of Christ’s death dealing with the sin in our nature, whereas verse 28 speaks of His death dealing with the sins in our conduct, in our behavior. First Corinthians 15:3 says that Christ died for our sins, and Matthew 26:28 says that His blood was poured out for the forgiveness of sins.
John 1:29 says, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” This refers to sin in its totality. Christ died to take away sin in totality.
When we define the death of Christ in dealing with sin, we have to cover the above three items with all the related Scripture references.
The death of Christ, on the negative side, also dealt with Satan.
Christ’s death destroyed the devil, who has the might of death (Heb. 2:14). Satan is the source of death who has the might of death.
Through His death on the cross, Christ judged the world of Satan and cast out Satan as the ruler of the world (John 12:31; Gal. 6:14). The world belongs to Satan. It is Satan’s kingdom and Satan’s possession. Christ’s death on the cross judged the satanic world and cast out Satan as the ruler of the world.
Colossians 2:15 says, “Stripping off the rulers and the authorities, He made a display of them openly, triumphing over them in it.” This is a very deep verse concerning the death of Christ. While Christ was dying on the cross, He did a work to strip off the evil angelic rulers and authorities of the rebellious angels, and made a display of them openly, triumphing over them in the cross.
When Christ was being crucified on the cross, there was a visible scene and an invisible scene. The Roman soldiers were seen by the disciples nailing Christ’s physical body to the cross where He suffered and died. This was the visible scene. Behind this visible scene, there was an invisible scene. Man could not see this scene, but the angels could see it. In that invisible scene Christ was stripping off the rebellious angels, the rulers and authorities in the air, coming to bother Him. When Christ was crucified on the cross, He was not only damaged by the physical soldiers of the Roman Empire, but in the invisible scene, the rulers and the authorities, the fallen angels from the air, came to trouble Him. Christ stripped them off, just as a person would strip off a jacket.
Even though Christ was in the likeness of the flesh of sin, He still had the flesh. The rulers and the authorities of the rebellious angels came to get that flesh, and they tried to remain on that flesh. Thus, He had to strip them off, indicating that this was a battle. This can be compared to a person trying to strip off a jacket while someone else is trying to keep this jacket on him. Christ, however, overcame these rebellious angels by stripping them off and making a display of them openly in the cross. This means that He shamed them openly. Man could not see this invisible scene, but all the angels, both good and bad, saw it. On the cross Christ triumphed over these rebellious angels.
Colossians 2:15 is a piece of the big puzzle of Christ’s death, but who has collected this piece? We need to see that while Christ was being crucified on the cross, He was struggling with all the evil angelic rulers and authorities. Christ on the cross did not deal merely with sin and with Satan. Satan is not that simple. He has many followers. According to Revelation 12:4, one-third of the angels followed Satan in his rebellion. He had a big following, and among all these rebellious angels, some are the rulers and authorities in the air.
Satan has a kingdom in a realm that covers the air, the earth, and the water. In the air Satan has angels, on the earth Satan has the fallen people, and in the water Satan has the demons (Eph. 2:1-2; Matt. 8:31-32; 12:43-44). Satan has a kingdom of which he is the ruler and the king. He has his subordinates in the air, his subjects on the earth, and his evil servants, the demons, in the water. This shows us again that behind the visible scene, there is an invisible scene. This is why the nightclubs and sinful places of amusement are so attractive to fallen man. Behind these things there is the unseen world of the fallen angels and demons.
Christ’s death also dealt with the old man. In ourselves we all are old because we belong to the old man. The old man is not the originally created man but the fallen created man.
Romans 6:6a says that our old man has been crucified with Christ. This includes everything related to our old man, such as our thinking, our likes and dislikes, and our good temper and bad temper.
Christ’s death terminated the old creation, which is related to the world. Galatians 6:14 says that the world was crucified on the cross. Then verse 15 says, “For neither is circumcision anything nor uncircumcision, but a new creation is what matters.” This shows that the crucifying of the world is related to the new creation. If we do not go through the cross, we cannot be a new creation. On one side of the cross is the old creation, and on the other side is the new creation. When we pass through the cross, the old creation becomes the new creation.
In our life-study of the book of Daniel, I pointed out that the crucifixion of Christ, the Messiah, the anointed One (Dan. 9:26), is a landmark between the old creation and the new creation. The old creation was terminated on the cross at Christ’s death, so Christ’s death becomes a landmark between the old creation and the new creation. We were the old creation, yet we have all been brought to the cross. On the cross we were terminated, and this termination ushered us into Christ’s resurrection in which we all have been germinated to become the new creation. The new creation needs the crossing out of the old creation.
The cross dealt with the old man to kill the natural life with its natural ability (2 Cor. 4:10a, 11a, 12a, 16a). A person who is very capable may do many things by his natural ability, but that ability should be broken. The apostle Peter had his natural strength and ability, and he thought that he was stronger than the other disciples. He told the Lord Jesus that even if all the others were stumbled, he would never be stumbled (Matt. 26:33). Then the Lord said, “Before a rooster crows, you will deny Me three times” (v. 34). The Lord allowed Peter to fail utterly in denying the Lord to His face three times (John 18:17, 25, 27), so that his natural strength and self-confidence could be dealt with. Then after His resurrection the Lord came back and asked Peter three times if he loved Him (21:15-17). The intention to love the Lord is right, but to love the Lord by our strength and by our ability is wrong. That is natural, and anything natural must be crucified.
Second Corinthians 4 shows that to the apostle Paul the Lord’s death became a constant killing. We may use today’s medicine as an illustration of how we can experience this killing. In an antibiotic there is the killing element to kill the germs. Today the all-inclusive Spirit is our divine antibiotic. In the all-inclusive Spirit there is the killing element of Christ’s death. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4 that he was under the killing of the death of Christ all the time. This death kills our flesh and our natural man.
In verse 16 Paul says that his outer man was decaying, being consumed, being wasted away, or being worn out. Our outer man is being consumed. Before a brother gets married, he may not be consumed that much. Many times the most consuming element to a brother is his wife and then his children. The wife is a big “cross,” and the children are small “crosses” to him. To be crossed out is to be consumed. The parents need to be crossed out, consumed, by their children. The killing of Christ is a consuming.
Brother Watchman Nee refers to this consuming as the breaking of the outer man in his book entitled The Breaking of the Outer Man and the Release of the Spirit. If the outer man is not broken, the inner spirit cannot be released. At the end of his ministry Brother Nee always talked about the breaking of the outer man, which is the killing of the death of Christ.
Galatians 5:24 says that they who are of Christ Jesus “have crucified the flesh with its passions and its lusts.” The flesh with its passions and its lusts has been crucified on the cross.
Through Christ’s death on the cross, the body of sin was annulled, or made of no effect, that we should no longer serve sin as slaves (Rom. 6:6b). Brother Nee said that Christ’s death made the body of sin jobless, unemployed. The job of the flesh is to sin. Now the crucifixion of Christ has made our body of sin jobless, of no effect, that we should no longer serve sin as slaves. The flesh has lost its job. This is all related to the death of Christ dealing with the old man.
The death of Christ also dealt with the law of the commandments.
Through His death, Christ abolished the ordinances that the two, Israel and the Gentiles, might be created into one new man in Christ, thus making peace (Eph. 2:15; Col. 2:14). The main ordinances among the Jews are the keeping of the Sabbath, circumcision, and the dietary regulations. The Jewish religion is built upon these three pillars. These became a strong factor of separation, separating the Jews from all the Gentiles.
Furthermore, all the different cultures have their ordinances. The Japanese and the Chinese have their specific ordinances. The Texans have their ordinances, and the Yankees have their ordinances. But all these ordinances have been crucified. The middle wall of partition, the wall of separation, has been torn down by Christ’s death. Now regardless of our race or culture, we all can be one in Christ.
With all the ordinances, we could have never been the one new man. How can the Chinese and the Japanese, and the whites and the blacks be one new man? They can be one new man because Christ slew all the ordinances and crucified all the natural persons on the cross. Now in the new man there is room only for Christ. In the new man Christ is all and in all (Col. 3:11).
Through His all-inclusive death Christ slew the enmity between Israel and the Gentiles that the two might be reconciled to God in one Body (Eph. 2:16). He created the two into one new man and reconciled both in one Body. The one new man is the one Body. As the Body of Christ, the church needs Christ as its life, whereas as the new man, the church needs Christ as its person. With the new man the person is Christ, and with the Body the life is the Spirit. Both Christ and the Spirit are one, and the new man and the Body are also one. All the separations have been crucified on the cross, and we have been reconciled to God in one Body.
Now we want to see two aspects on the positive side of Christ’s death.
Christ’s all-inclusive death released the divine life from the shell of His humanity (John 12:24). In incarnation Christ put on humanity, and that humanity became a shell to conceal the divine life. The divine life was hidden, concealed, in Christ’s humanity, and this humanity had to be broken on the cross. Christ’s death released the divine life from His human shell. He was the one grain falling to the earth to die for the release of His life.
Through His death Christ imparted the released divine life into the believers, making them many grains for the constitution of the Body of Christ (v. 24; Rom. 12:5; 1 Cor. 10:17). This is the positive side of Christ’s death: to release the divine life from Himself as the one grain and to impart the divine life into many grains so that the Body could be constituted for Christ’s counterpart.
Now we need to see the symbols of the two aspects of Christ’s all-inclusive death. These two symbols in John 19:34 are blood and water.
The blood symbolizes the redeeming death of Christ. The blood is for redemption. In this sense Christ’s death is a redeeming death.
The water symbolizes the life-releasing and life-imparting death of Christ. The purpose of this is to produce the Body of Christ.
We need to get into all the crucial points of this message to know the all-inclusive death of Christ. All the negative things in the whole universe have been cleared up by the death of Christ. Today if we are going to live the Christian life, we must live it through the death of Christ. “If no death, no life” (see Hymns, #631, chorus).
