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I. The composition of the Gospel of John and the constitution of the spiritual things recorded in this Gospel are based upon not only the Triune God but also the processed Triune God.
II. The processes that the Triune God has gone through:
А. Incarnation — 1:14:
1. To become flesh, to put on human nature by partaking of human blood and human flesh, to be a real man through human birth by a virgin — Isa. 7:14.
2. To bring God into man, mingling God and man as one.
3. To court man according to His love (John 3:16), which He had from eternity toward man, by humbling Himself to lay aside His divine form and position to become in fashion as a man (Phil. 2:6-8) so that He could have man engaged to Him in the church age (2 Cor. 11:2) and married to Him to be His wife at the beginning of the kingdom age (Rev. 19:7-9).
4. This was accomplished not only by the Son but also with the Father (John 8:16, 29) and through the Spirit (Luke 1:35; Matt. 1:18, 20); hence, He was called the mighty God and the eternal Father (Isa. 9:6) but lay in a manger as a human baby (Luke 2:7).
B. Human living:
1. The God-incarnated Jesus lived on the earth as a man for thirty-three and a half years.
2. To experience all the trials and troubles in human living — Heb. 4:15.
3. To manifest God’s attributes (1 Tim. 3:16) in His human virtues in the flesh.
4. Going through temptations yet without sin, and having no sin, even though He was made sin — Heb. 4:15; 2 Cor. 5:21.
5. Made perfect through sufferings — Heb. 2:10.
6. Thus, He has qualified Himself to be the Redeemer and Savior of the men of sin.
C. The all-terminating, all-redeeming, life-releasing, and new-man-creating death:
1. Christ as the embodiment of God and through the eternal Spirit (9:14) passed through death on the cross.
2. By, in, and through this death He terminated all the negative things in the universe:
а. Satan, the devil, the enemy of God — 2:14.
b. Sin — Rom. 8:3; John 1:29.
c. The flesh of fallen man — Gal. 5:24.
d. The world, the cosmos, the evil system of Satan — John 12:31.
e. The old creation, represented by the old man — Rom. 6:6.
f. The separating ordinances of the law — Eph. 2:15.
3. Redeeming judicially fallen mankind and all things created by God — Col. 1:20; Heb. 2:9.
4. Releasing organically His divine life held in His human shell as that of a grain of wheat — John 12:24.
5. Through His death Christ creating in Himself as the sphere, as the realm, and as the element the Jews and the Gentiles into one new man — Eph. 2:15.
D. The life-dispensing, germinating, and washing resurrection:
1. After He passed through the process of death, Christ entered into the process of resurrection.
2. By this resurrection He:
а. Was born to be the firstborn Son of God by the designation of His flesh through the Spirit of holiness — Rom. 1:3-4; 8:29.
b. Became the life-giving Spirit — 1 Cor. 15:45b.
c. Regenerated all His believers chosen by God in eternity past — 1 Pet. 1:3:
1) Dispensing the divine life to the believers in Christ — John 3:15.
2) Germinating all the believers in Christ through regeneration — vv. 5-6.
3) Washing away all the old things from the regenerated believers — Titus 3:5.
We have seen that the Triune God has been processed to flow as the fountain, the spring, and the river. Every process through which the Triune God passed was a “tunnel.” The first process our Triune God went through was of nine months in a virgin’s womb. Matthew 1:20 says that what was born in Mary was of the Holy Spirit. The divine God, the Divine Trinity, was born into a human virgin’s womb and remained there for nine months. The second process was His human living, a long tunnel of thirty-three and a half years. The third process, His death by crucifixion, lasted six hours, from nine o’clock in the morning to three o’clock in the afternoon. For the first three hours He was persecuted by human rebels, and for the last three hours He was judged by God.
The next process was the resurrection, which was not as quick as most people think. By reading 1 Peter 3:18 with Romans 1:4, we can see that the resurrection was a designating process. Christ was originally the only begotten Son of God becoming a man. How could the only begotten Son of God be God’s Firstborn? There was the need of a process. The only begotten Son of God was processed to be the firstborn Son of God. In this process He regenerated all the chosen people of God. First Peter 1:3 says that by His mercy, we believers in Christ were all regenerated through His resurrection. First Peter 3:18 says that when Christ died on the cross, on the one hand, He was crucified in His flesh, but on the other hand, He was made alive in the Spirit. God was acting to transfigure the man Jesus into the divine sonship. Acts 13:33 reveals that on the day of resurrection God the Father said, “You are My Son; this day have I begotten You.” This begetting was not a quick delivery. It was through the process of resurrection.
Many today do not see that God has been processed, because they are covered by their traditional veil. This is why Paul says that we have to look unto Christ with an unveiled face (2 Cor. 3:18). The entire New Testament unveils to us that God went through the process of incarnation, the process of human living, the process of an all-inclusive death, and the process of a life-dispensing resurrection. What a mercy that the Lord has shown us all these wonderful truths! These are not the initial truths but the consummated truths. The processed Triune God is a flowing God. His Trinity is for flowing. The Father as love is the fountain, the Son as grace is the spring, and the Spirit as the fellowship is the flowing river (13:14). The Triune God is flowing as love, grace, and fellowship into us, His elect. God’s elect are the destination of His flowing.
The composition of the Gospel of John and the constitution of the spiritual things recorded in this Gospel are based upon not only the Triune God but also the processed Triune God. There is a big difference between the Triune God and the processed Triune God. For God to enter into a human womb and remain there for nine months to be born as a man was not a small thing. He passed through human living for thirty-three and a half years and suffered the death of the cross. Then in resurrection the man Jesus Christ was designated into the divine sonship, became the life-giving Spirit, and regenerated His millions of believers. According to God’s view, we were regenerated about two thousand years ago in the resurrection of Christ. In other words, we were regenerated before we were born. We believers were all born of God in one great delivery, which brought forth millions of regenerated people. The processes of the Triune God were a long procedure, even for the Almighty God.
I worship God for His dear incarnation (John 1:14), which is so sweet and marvelous. God became flesh. Flesh is a negative term, not a positive one. God became a man who had become flesh. Genesis 6:3 says that God had no way to go on with man because man had become flesh. This forced God to destroy man by a great flood. God became a man, not before but after the fall. He became flesh, putting on human nature by partaking of human blood and human flesh to be a real man through human birth by a virgin (Isa. 7:14).
The incarnation was to bring God into man, mingling God and man as one entity.
Christ was a “God-husband” courting a “man-female.” He came as God, the universal male, to court man, the universal female. The term dating is too low. Courting is high. God came to be a man in order to be a high-standard Husband. The end of the Bible says that the New Jerusalem is the wife of the Lamb (Rev. 21:2, 9). Revelation 19 speaks of the wedding day of the Lamb for His marriage to the overcomers (vv. 7-9). John 3 says that Christ, as the One who marries the bride, is the Bridegroom. His regenerated ones are His bride to be His increase (vv. 29-30). This is what I call the biblical romance. In the Bible there is a universal romance, a romance concerning God courting man. John 3:16 reveals that God fell in love with the world. The world here means the worldly people. God fell in love with mankind. This love was the love that He had from eternity toward man. In eternity past God had a love toward man, so He became a man to court and to marry man.
He courted man by humbling Himself to lay aside His divine form and position to become in fashion as a man (Phil. 2:6-8) so that He could have man engaged to Him in the church age (2 Cor. 11:2) and married to Him to be His wife at the beginning of the kingdom age (Rev. 19:7-9). The book of Song of Songs reveals this divine romance. Solomon courted a country girl by laying aside the things of his kingship. If Solomon had gone to her as a king with a crown to court her, that would have frightened her, but he changed his form to that of a country man. In the same way, the Triune God laid aside His divine form in incarnation to become in fashion as a man in order to court man. This was so that He could have man engaged to Him.
The wedding has not yet come, so we are still in the time of engagement. My burden is to improve and strengthen our engagement with Christ. Paul says that he betrothed the believers as a virgin to Christ (2 Cor. 11:2). Betrothed means “engaged.” Eventually, the overcomers will have a wedding day of a thousand years with Christ. Then the marriage life with Christ for eternity in the new heaven and new earth will include all of God’s chosen and redeemed people. In Revelation 19 the bride is revealed on the wedding day, and in Revelation 21 this bride becomes the wife of Christ for eternity.
This was accomplished not only by the Son but also with the Father (John 8:16, 29) and through the Spirit (Luke 1:35; Matt. 1:18, 20); hence, He was called the mighty God and the eternal Father (Isa. 9:6), but He was lying in a manger as a human baby (Luke 2:7).
The God-incarnated Jesus lived on the earth as a man for thirty-three and a half years.
He passed through human living to experience all the trials and troubles in human living (Heb. 4:15).
He manifested God’s attributes (1 Tim. 3:16) in His human virtues in the flesh. His human virtues were the expression of the divine attributes.
The incarnated God went through temptations yet without sin, and He had no sin, even though He was made sin (Heb. 4:15; 2 Cor. 5:21).
Hebrews 2:10 says that Christ was made perfect through sufferings.
Thus, He has qualified Himself to be the Redeemer and Savior of the men of sin. He has been tested and approved. He “graduated” from human living. That gave Him the qualification to be our Savior.
Christ’s death was all-terminating, all-redeeming, life-releasing, and new-man-creating. In His death He terminated all the old things and redeemed all of God’s creation. He also released His divine life and created the new man.
Christ as the embodiment of God and through the eternal Spirit (9:14) passed through death on the cross. Because the One who passed through death was the embodiment of the Triune God (Col. 2:9), the Triune God passed through death on the cross.
By, in, and through this death He terminated all the negative things in the universe. These negative things are Satan, the devil, the enemy of God (Heb. 2:14); sin (Rom. 8:3; John 1:29); the flesh of fallen man (Gal. 5:24); the world, the cosmos, the evil system of Satan (John 12:31); the old creation, represented by the old man (Rom. 6:6); and the separating ordinances of the law (Eph. 2:15). Not only the Jews but also all the nations have their ordinances. Ordinances are the forms or ways of living and worship, which create enmity and division. All the ordinances have been crucified on the cross. Christ has crossed out all the ordinances. In 1938 I was invited to visit a group of Japanese believers in Manchuria. When I visited them, I dropped my ordinances by taking off my shoes and kneeling down on the tatami to talk to them about Christ. To practice the proper church life, all ordinances should be repudiated and dropped.
In His death Christ redeemed judicially fallen mankind and all things created by God (Col. 1:20; Heb. 2:9). Colossians 1:20 reveals that all things created by God both in the heavens and on the earth needed to be reconciled to God.
Christ redeemed all things judicially, according to God’s righteous requirement. Then He released organically His divine life held in His human shell as that of a grain of wheat (John 12:24).
Through His death Christ created in Himself as the sphere, as the realm, and as the element the Jews and the Gentiles into one new man (Eph. 2:15).
The fourth process is the life-dispensing, germinating, and washing resurrection.
After He passed through the process of death, Christ entered into the process of resurrection. First Peter 3:18 tells us that when Christ was dying on the cross, He was put to death in His flesh but not in His Spirit. His Spirit as His divinity did not die at the cross when His flesh died; rather, His Spirit as His divinity was made alive, enlivened, with new power of life so that in this empowered Spirit as His divinity He made a proclamation to the fallen angels, proclaiming God’s victory over Satan. When He was dying in the flesh on the cross, at the same time He was rising up in His Spirit. This was the beginning of His resurrection.
By this resurrection He was born to be the firstborn Son of God by the designation of His flesh through the Spirit of holiness (Rom. 1:3-4; 8:29).
Through the process of resurrection Christ also became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). As the last Adam in the flesh, He was transfigured to be the life-giving Spirit.
In the process of resurrection He regenerated all His believers chosen by God in eternity past (1 Pet. 1:3) by dispensing the divine life to the believers in Christ (John 3:15), germinating all the believers in Christ through regeneration (vv. 5-6), and washing away all the old things from the regenerated believers (Titus 3:5). Resurrection was a great process.
Titus 3:5 says that our God saved us through the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Spirit. Footnote 4 on this verse in the Recovery Version says,
The Greek word for regeneration is different from that for regenerated in 1 Pet. 1:23. The only other place the word is used is Matt. 19:28, where it is used for the restoration in the millennium (see note 1 there). Here it refers to a change from one state to another. Being born again is the commencing of this change. The washing of regeneration begins with our being born again and continues with the renewing of the Holy Spirit as the process of God’s new creation, a process that makes us a new man. It is a kind of reconditioning, remaking, or remodeling, with life. Baptism (Rom. 6:3-5), the putting off of the old man, the putting on of the new man (Eph. 4:22, 24; Col. 3:9-11), and transformation by the renewing of the mind (Rom. 12:2; Eph. 4:23) are all related to this wonderful process. The washing of regeneration purges away all the things of the old nature of our old man, and the renewing of the Holy Spirit imparts something new — the divine essence of the new man — into our being. In this is a passing from our old state into a wholly new one, from the old creation into the status of a new creation. Hence, both the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit are working in us continually throughout our life until the completion of the new creation.
