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Scripture Reading: Mark 8:27—9:13; 13:8; 14:3-9
I. The highlight of the Gospel of Mark is the vision of Christ’s person with His all-inclusive death and His wonderful resurrection to be our entire, all-inclusive replacement for the producing, the bringing forth, of the one new man in the manifestation of the kingdom — 8:27—9:13:
А. After the Lord’s followers passed though the steps recorded in Mark 1:1—8:26 (experiencing the healing of their hearing, speaking, and seeing organs), they were qualified and able to see a wonderful person, who is the secret of the universe, a mystery to all mankind, and the secret of God’s eternal economy — 7:31-37; 8:14-26; Acts 17:23; cf. John 1:18; Phil. 3:8, 10.
B. After Peter made the declaration that Jesus is the Christ, the Lord began to unveil the mysteries of God’s economy concerning Christ as the Son of Man with His death and resurrection; the Lord then brought His disciples to the mount of His transfiguration in order to show them that God’s desire in His economy is for everything and everyone to be replaced by Christ, the all-inclusive One — Mark 8:27-37; 9:7-8.
II. Christ as the life-giving Spirit, with His death and resurrection, replaces everything and everyone; He replaces Moses, He replaces Elijah, and He replaces us; this One replaces everyone, everything, and every matter in the universe — 1 Cor. 15:45b; Eph. 1:23; 1 Cor. 15:28; Col. 3:10-11:
А. For Peter to make his absurd proposal to keep Moses (representing the law) and Elijah (representing the prophets) on the same level with Christ was for him to make the law and the prophets equal with Christ to replace Christ — Mark 9:4-6:
1. In God’s New Testament economy Jesus is today’s Moses, imparting Himself as the law of the Spirit of life into His believers, and He is also today’s Elijah, speaking Himself as the Word of life into His believers — Heb. 8:10; Rom. 8:2; Acts 3:22; Phil. 2:16; 1 John 1:1; John 6:63; Acts 5:20.
2. Being according to the law means to walk according to the “letter” of outward statutes and regulations; being according to the prophets means to walk according to what other men say; being according to Christ is to walk according to the Spirit mingled with our spirit, the mingled spirit — 2 Cor. 3:6; Gal. 1:10; 2:2; 1 Thes. 2:4; Gal. 5:25; Phil. 3:3; Rom. 1:9; 8:4.
B. In God’s New Testament economy, now that Christ has come, we should “hear Him”; we should no longer hear the law or the prophets, since the law and the prophets were fulfilled in and by Him; to “hear Him” is to hear what the pneumatic Christ as the speaking Spirit says in our spirit and to the churches for the testimony of “Jesus only” — Mark 9:7-8; 2 Cor. 13:3; Matt. 10:20; Eph. 5:26; Rev. 2:7; 1:2.
C. In God’s New Testament economy we should look away unto Jesus (Heb. 12:2) to see no one except “Jesus only” (Mark 9:8); no one except “Jesus only” should remain in the New Testament (Acts 9:4-5; 1 Cor. 12:12; Col. 3:10-11).
D. Christ is God’s Beloved, God’s Favorite; He is the One who replaces everyone and everything; therefore, He should have all the ground in our living; everything in our living should be given over to Him so that we may live Christ, grow Christ, express Christ, and propagate Christ in every respect — 1:10-11.
E. God does not want anything of what we are in ourselves; God wants only Christ; to deny ourselves is to be replaced by Christ as the Spirit so that we may live Christ for His magnification — Mark 8:34; Gal. 2:20; Rom. 11:24; Phil. 1:19-21a.
F. The Lord “went up into the mountain to pray...and as He prayed, the appearance of His face became different, and His garment dazzling white” (Luke 9:28-29); the Lord’s pattern here shows that we can be replaced with the God of glory to be transfigured, conformed to the body of Christ’s glory, through the process of the Spirit’s transforming us from glory to glory by our prayer (2 Cor. 3:16, 18; Phil. 3:21; 4:6-7).
III. The entire world situation is for the producing of the new man; from the day of the Lord’s resurrection until He comes back is the period of a long delivery of the new man through the preaching of the gospel and the suffering of persecutions, which are “birth pangs” as the travail involved in the birth of the new man — Mark 13:3-8; Gal. 4:19:
А. God’s economy is to produce the new man, and in the new man Christ is everyone, Christ is in everyone, and Christ is everything; when we enjoy Christ as the universal replacement, He becomes everything to us, for He replaces us with Himself — Col. 3:10-11; Gal. 2:20.
B. Birth pangs refers to all the tribulations in the New Testament age, including wars, famines, earthquakes, afflictions, and persecutions; birth pangs for the delivery of the new man are suffered only by the New Testament believers for the Lord’s sake, whereas the travailing in birth in Revelation 12:2 refers to all the travailings suffered throughout the generations by God’s people in both the Old Testament and the New Testament — Matt. 24:6-9, 21.
C. In one sense, a child, the new man, was born at the time of the Lord’s resurrection (John 16:20-22), but in another sense, the universal new man revealed in Ephesians 2 and 4 has not been fully delivered (2:15; 4:24).
D. When the Lord comes back, there will be a rapture, which will be the final delivery of the new man; we believe that we are living at the end of that period of time in which the new man is being delivered — Dan. 2:28, 44-45; 8:17.
IV. We can enjoy Christ as our replacement in the church life, which is depicted by the house of Simon the leper as a house of feasting in and with the presence of the Lord, to bring forth the new man — Mark 14:3-9:
А. Mary received the revelation of the Lord’s death through the Lord’s words, and she anointed His body beforehand for burial, implying His death and resurrection; hence, she grasped the opportunity to pour upon the Lord the best that she had; to love the Lord with our best requires a revelation concerning Him as our all-inclusive replacement.
B. In the church life we have Christ as our replacement; we in the church life are lepers who have been cleansed by Him to love Him supremely, and in our hearts there is room only for Him — cf. Col. 1:18b; Psa. 73:25-26.
V. As our replacement, the transfigured Christ is the all-inclusive, processed, indwelling life-giving Spirit in our spirit, and we have become one spirit with Him; as we live in and by the Spirit and even live this Spirit, He will become in us the reality of Christ with His death, resurrection, and ascension as our complete and full enjoyment; this is the way of the divine delivery of the new man to bring Christ back — Gal. 5:25; John 16:13; Rom. 8:16; 1 Cor. 6:17; cf. Eph. 4:3-4a, 23-24; Col. 3:10-11.
