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Scripture Reading: Col. 1:18-19; 2:9; Eph. 1:22b-23; 5:23b; Col. 3:4a; Eph. 3:8, 10; 1:11a; Col. 3:11; 1:27
The second emphasis in the Lord’s recovery is a wonderful person — Christ. Christ is the central subject of the Bible, and His riches are unsearchable (Eph. 3:8). In this chapter I would like to present a living biography of Christ.
The first point in the biography of Christ is in John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Christ is the Word of God, and the Word is God. The Word, who is Christ, is the One who was, who is, and who is coming (Rev. 1:4b). He is all three tenses — past, present, and future — because He is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb. 13:8). In the past He is Christ, in the present He is Christ, and in the future He is Christ.
Christ was the Word in the beginning. In the beginning in John 1:1 refers to eternity past. Christ was in the beginning without any beginning. This is the first item of Christ’s biography. Christ is not only the Word of God but also the Word who was God in eternity past without any beginning. Christ as the Word of God is the speaking of God. He is the explanation, definition, and the content of our unlimited God.
Furthermore, Colossians 1:15 tells us that this Christ is the image of the invisible God. He is not only the definition and content of our God but also the image and expression of God. God is invisible, yet this invisible God has an image. Hebrews 1:3 says that Christ is the effulgence of God’s glory and the impress of His substance. This is the second item of the biography of Christ.
In the beginning of time and in the creation, God created man in His own image (Gen. 1:26). Since Christ is the image of God, we were created in the image of Christ, who is God’s image. A photo is the image of a person. Because we were made in the image of Christ, we are photos of Christ. This is the third point of the biography of Christ.
In Genesis 2 man as the photo of Christ was put before the tree of life (v. 9). Also before man was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the tree of death. Genesis 2:17 says, “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, of it you shall not eat; for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” There were two trees in front of man. If he ate the tree of life, surely he would get life. If he ate the other tree, he would become dead. Thus, man as the photo of Christ has two destinies — life or death. Man has these two choices.
When Adam and Eve heard God’s explanation about the two trees, the subtle one, the serpent, was crouching there, waiting for an opportunity to poison them. He put a doubt, a question mark, into Eve when he asked her, “Did God really say...?” (3:1). A question mark is shaped like a snake standing upright. Every doubt and question about what God says is the snake, Satan. The woman was caught when she began to talk to the serpent, the subtle one. She should not have talked with him. Rather, she should have referred the serpent to her husband. Then she would have had protection. However, she boldly answered the serpent’s question and got caught. She did not take the fruit of the tree of life. Instead, she took the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and received death.
The knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong, issues in death. Whatever we do apart from Christ as life issues in death. To love people apart from Christ is death, to hate people apart from Christ is death, and to be neutral apart from Christ is death. To do anything apart from Christ is death, and not doing anything apart from Christ is also death. Then what shall we do? We should call on the name of the Lord Jesus. Only He is the tree of life.
Genesis tells us that man did not take the tree of life. Instead, he took in death and became fallen. Hence, God came in to judge the serpent. I believe that Adam and Eve regretted that they took the fruit of the tree of death. When they looked at themselves and realized that they were naked and sinful, they were afraid and covered themselves (vv. 7-8, 10). At that juncture God called to Adam, saying, Adam, “Where are you?” (v. 9).
God came in to preach the gospel, the good news, telling Adam and Eve that the seed of the woman would come to bruise the head of the serpent that damaged them (v. 15). Although Satan came in through the woman, the seed of promise would also come through a woman. This seed of the woman is Christ. The New Testament speaks of a virgin named Mary who conceived a child, a seed, of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 1:18). Joseph, the one to whom she was engaged, wanted to put her away secretly, but an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying that that which had been begotten in his wife, Mary, was of the Holy Spirit (vv. 19-20). Thus, the fulfillment of the promise concerning the seed of the woman in Genesis 3:15 is recorded in Matthew 1 with the birth of Jesus.
The time from Adam and Eve’s partaking of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to the time of Christ’s conception was about four thousand years. For this period of time God’s plan with Christ as the center was hidden and concealed within Himself as a mystery (Col. 1:26). About two thousand years after Adam, God told Abraham that in his seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed (Gen. 22:17-18). First, this seed was designated as the seed of the woman. Second, He was designated as the seed of Abraham. God’s promise to Abraham was a promise of grace, and this promise became the covenant between God and Abraham to have Christ as the seed for the blessing of the whole earth. In Galatians 3 Paul says that this was the preaching of the gospel by God directly to Abraham. Verses 8 and 9 say, “The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles out of faith, announced the gospel beforehand to Abraham: ‘In you shall all the nations be blessed.’ So then they who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham.” Thus, the gospel was preached to Abraham by God Himself about two thousand years before Christ was born.
Nevertheless, no one fully knew about this mystery of Christ as the seed before the New Testament age. Moses, Enoch, Noah, and David did not know. Although Isaiah prophesied concerning the incarnation of Christ (Isa. 7:14), it is doubtful that he knew that his prophecy referred to Christ as the seed of the woman and the seed of Abraham. In the Old Testament age Christ as the seed was a mystery.
God sovereignly prepared the environment for the birth of Christ as the seed of the woman and the seed of Abraham. In the history of Israel the holy people chosen by God became captives of the Babylonian Empire. Then they became captives of the Medo-Persian Empire and eventually of the Grecian and Roman Empires. Their captivity under the Romans was under the reign of Augustus, the first formal Caesar of the Roman Empire. A decree was issued by him that brought about the proper circumstance for the birth of Christ (Luke 2:1-2 and footnote 21, Recovery Version). Christ was born to be the seed of the woman and the seed of Abraham for the blessing of the entire earth.
The incarnation of Christ brought God into man. God was begotten in a virgin. The child who came out of this virgin’s womb was a God-man. He was not an ordinary man but a perfect man who was also the complete God. The God-ordained name given to this God-man was Jesus.
The meaning of the name of Jesus is “Jehovah the Savior” or “the salvation of Jehovah.” Jehovah in the Old Testament was Jesus, and Jesus in the New Testament is Jehovah. Jehovah and Jesus are one person. We need to know all these wonderful items about this wonderful person. He is wonderful, and His name is “Wonderful” (Isa. 9:6). Therefore, His biography, His history, His story, is altogether wonderful. Jesus is Jehovah becoming a man to be our Savior.
Although His name given by God was Jesus, the people called Him Emmanuel, which means “God with us” (Matt. 1:23). Jesus is God with us. He is God incarnated to dwell among us (John 1:14). He is not only God but also God with us. The title for His divine commission is Christ, the Messiah, God’s anointed One.
Christ is the Word of God who was God in eternity past. In time man was created in His image to be His photo. After man fell, God promised that a seed of the woman would come to bruise the head of the serpent. About two thousand years later, God came to Abraham and promised him a seed, telling him that this seed would become a blessing to the whole earth. This seed was Jesus. One day He came in incarnation to be a man. He came as the Word of God and as the image of God begotten in the virgin Mary’s womb. He came out of that womb to be Jesus, Jehovah our Savior, for our salvation, and Emmanuel, God with us. He is God’s anointed One, the Christ, to accomplish God’s will, God’s desire.
This wonderful One is the Son who embodies and expresses the Father. In John 14 Philip asked the Lord to show him and the other disciples the Father. The Lord Jesus responded in this way: “Have I been so long a time with you, and you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father...Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me” (vv. 8-9, 11a). The Lord revealed to His disciples that He is the embodiment and expression of the Father. He is both the Father and the Son (Isa. 9:6).
He is the Word of the Father, describing and defining the Father. Since He is the embodiment and expression of the Father, when He was with His disciples, that was also the Father with the disciples. Although the Father and the Son are one, They are still distinct, as indicated by the fact that the Son prayed to the Father.
John 14 says that He asked the Father to send another Comforter (v. 16), indicating that He was the first Comforter from the Father. According to John 14, another Comforter was needed. The second Comforter is the Spirit of reality who is the realization of the Son. The Spirit of reality came not only to be with us but also to be in us. The Spirit of reality within us is the realization of the Son, who is the embodiment of the Father. We have the Triune God within us. The Father is embodied in the Son, the Son is realized as the Spirit, and the Spirit is within us as the Son who is the embodiment of the Father.
The Father is the source, the Son is the embodiment of the Father, and the Spirit is the realization of the Son who is the embodiment of the Father. When we have the Spirit, we have the Son. When we have the Son, we have the Father. In other words, when we have the Son, we have the Father who is the source and also the Spirit as the realization of the Son, who is the embodiment of the Father. This is all a part of the biography of Christ.
Our Lord Jesus Christ is the Word of God and the image of God, according to which we were made. When man became fallen, the Father promised that a seed of the woman would come. This seed of the woman is the seed of Abraham to be the blessing for the whole earth. This seed came through a woman, a virgin named Mary. God came into her womb and came out of her womb as a God-man named Jesus, Jehovah the Savior to be our salvation. People called Him Emmanuel, God with us. Later, He told His disciples that He was the embodiment and the expression of the Father. He went on to tell them that He would ask the Father to give them another Comforter to come as His realization.
This fellowship should help us to realize how rich Christ is. He is the Word of God, the seed of the woman, the seed of Abraham, a God-man, Jehovah the Savior, Jesus, and Emmanuel. He is the embodiment and expression of the Father, and the Spirit is His realization. Now He is within us as the Spirit.
Christ lived as a God-man on this earth for thirty years in Nazareth. At thirty years of age He came out to minister, to speak, to prophesy. Since we are His members, we all must prophesy as He did. His prophesying presents God to us. When we listen to His speaking, we see God; when we accept His speaking, we accept God. Through His speaking for three and a half years, the wonderful Triune God, who is altogether organic, was sown into all His disciples. They, however, did not have this realization. They were ignorant and unconscious of this. The disciples simply thought that He was their Teacher and their Master and that one day He would be the King in the heavenly kingdom. James and John were concerned about who would sit on His right and on His left in the kingdom (Mark 10:35-37).
The disciples did not know what they were doing or where they were going, but Jesus, Jehovah the Savior, knew. He was going forward boldly to Jerusalem to hand Himself over to the chief priests and scribes to be crucified (Matt. 20:18-19). When they came to arrest Him at Gethsemane, Jesus “went forth and said to them, Whom do you seek? They answered Him, Jesus the Nazarene. He said to them, I am...When therefore He said to them, I am, they drew back and fell to the ground” (John 18:4-6). They knew that “I am” was the name of Jehovah (Exo. 3:14). They did not have the capacity, the power, the strength, the might, to arrest this One who was Jehovah God. Actually, He handed Himself over to them to accomplish God’s will (Matt. 26:53-54).
Christ as the complete God and the perfect man went to the cross and died an all-inclusive death. On the one hand, through His death He accomplished a full and eternal redemption (Heb. 9:12). He terminated all the negative things in the universe, including Satan (2:14; John 12:31), the world (v. 31), the old creation (Col. 1:20), the old man (Rom. 6:6), the flesh (Gal. 5:24), the self (2:20), sin (2 Cor. 5:21; Rom. 8:3; John 1:29), sins (1 Pet. 2:24; Isa. 53:6), and religion (Gal. 6:14). On the other hand, through His death He released the divine life concealed within Him so that this life could be imparted into His believers (John 12:24).
When the Lord was on the cross, two substances came out of His pierced side: blood and water (19:34). Blood is for redemption, dealing with sins (1:29; Heb. 9:22) for the purchase of the church (Acts 20:28); water is for imparting life, dealing with death (John 12:24; 3:14-15) for the producing of the church (Eph. 5:29-31). The Lord’s death is, on the negative side, to take away our sins, and, on the positive side, to impart life into us. Hence, it has two aspects: the redeeming aspect and the life-imparting aspect. The death of Christ is an all-inclusive death.
In resurrection He became the firstborn Son of God (Rom. 8:29; Acts 13:33). He was the only begotten Son of God in incarnation (John 3:16). However, after His death and His resurrection, He became the firstborn Son among many brothers, many sons. In resurrection He regenerated us, the sinners, to be God’s many sons and His many brothers (1 Pet. 1:3). Now in the divine sonship there are many sons. The firstborn Son is Jesus Christ, and we are the many sons.
In resurrection He also became the life-giving Spirit, the life-giving pneuma. He became the pneumatic Christ, the pneumatic, organic, life-giving Spirit. Whenever a person calls on the Lord’s name, He comes into this person as the regenerating One to be the indwelling Spirit. He is indwelling us and is now one spirit with us (1 Cor. 6:17). He is living within us. This is also included in the biography of Christ.
One day we heard the gospel, and we repented and confessed our sins. We called on the Lord’s name and received Him. When we received the Lord, we received another person into us. He changed our choices and preferences. One by one our sinful habits were dropped, and we became different persons. From the day that I received the Lord, I had the sensation that Someone was taking care of me, controlling me, and regulating me. When I was going to lose my temper, He did not agree with this. He spoke to me from within, “You have to go along with Me.” Thus, I was forced to stop my temper. Do you realize that this was to live Christ? Since the day I received Christ, when I began to criticize others, He within me as a person said, “Do not say anything like this. I do not speak in this way.” I did not speak my criticism, because He did not speak it. This is to live Christ.
Christ lives in us not only as our life but also as our person. We have a particular person within us, and this particular person is our unique life. Christ is now subjective and organic to us. He is our person, the better person, even the best person. He should become our daily life, our daily living, and our reality. Many times we neglect to hear Him and act too fast. Even though He says, “Do not do it,” we do not care for His speaking. At these times, we neglect Jesus within us, without caring for Him. Then we have to say, “Lord, forgive me. Lord, I rebelled against You.” When we say this to the Lord, He may tell us to confess to someone we have argued with or offended. He is always urging us from within to go along with Him, to be one with Him, and to follow Him.
To live Christ is to go along with Him as our inner person. Our Christian life is not merely a matter of speaking something spiritual in the meetings but a matter of living Christ in our private life. Many times I wanted to say something or go somewhere, but Christ within me was not saying what I wanted to say or going where I wanted to go. His not going forced me to say, “Lord, since You will not go, I will not go either. I will stay home.” This is living Christ.
By going along with Christ as my inner person, I have been graced by Him to grow in Him. It was easy for me to lose my temper when I was young. Now, however, it is difficult for anyone to offend me so that I lose my temper. This is because the One who lives in me does not lose His temper. I exercise myself to be one with Him to live Him. When Christ is increasing in us, all things other than Christ are decreasing. This experience is another part of the biography of Christ.
Paul says that Christ is our life (Col. 3:4). He also says in Galatians 2:20, “I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” This should not be just a doctrine or theological knowledge. This should be a living fact in our experience. It is no more I who live, but the very Christ who died for me and who died with me lives in me. We all have to declare this, and this should be our experience in our daily life.
We need to live Christ in all the details of our daily life. Sometimes when I am joking, the One within me tells me to stop. I stopped joking in order to live Christ. He is not only my life but also my person. When the brothers buy a tie, they should buy a tie according to the One who lives in them. We do not wear the kind of ties that many of the people in the world wear, because Christ within us does not wear that kind of tie. We should also experience Christ as our person in the way that we cut our hair. We should not think that this is a small thing. If a brother’s hair is too long, do you think Christ would still speak freely through him? To live Christ means having Christ as our person and life, not just day by day but moment by moment. The living of Christ is the organic and basic foundation of the church life. The aggregate of each one of us living Christ is the church. The church is the totality of all the saints living Christ.
Such a church is the issue, the coming out, of the organic Triune God. The Father has imparted His nature and life into our being as the basic substance. This is indicated in Ephesians 1 by His choosing us to be holy and predestinating us unto sonship (vv. 4-5). The Son in His redemption has become our element, by which we all have been made God’s divine inheritance (vv. 7-11). Do you think that God would inherit sinful people? What God inherits surely must be something very precious. According to our natural, sinful, corrupt nature, our fallen being, we cannot be God’s inheritance. But Ephesians 1:11 tells us that in Christ we were made God’s inheritance. We became God’s treasure because we have the element of Christ, the element of the divine nature and the divine life, within us. This element makes us a precious treasure in the eyes of God. We become His inheritance because we have Christ as the element within us.
Ephesians 1 also tells us that the Spirit of God seals us (v. 13). When a piece of paper is stamped with a seal, the sealing ink saturates the paper. The essence of the sealing ink is imparted into the fiber of the paper. In the same way, the sealing of the Spirit saturates our being in a fine way. Even though I have been in Christ for over sixty years, I still feel today that the Spirit is sealing me. I am still being infused and transfused with the Spirit, making me full of the essence of Christ’s element, which is the very element of God’s holy nature and of His divine life. This sealing makes us absolutely and essentially one with the Triune God. This is the church life. We all need to live in this sealing. Then we will surely have a wonderful church life in the Lord’s recovery. This is included in the biography of Christ.
This wonderful One, who is the embodiment of the Father, and whose realization is the Spirit, is the constituent of the church. Our living through Him, with Him, by Him, and in Him is the constitution of the practical church life. Then He within us is every part of the new man. The church as the new man is constituted with Christ as the inner constituent. Christ is every member of the new man and is within every member. In the new man Christ is all and in all (Col. 3:10-11). This is not only His history but also our story. His biography becomes our history.
We are awaiting the day when we will be raptured and brought fully into Christ in glory. He will then become our glory in full. Today He is within us as the hope of glory. In that day when we enter into the eternal part of His biography, we will live with Him, in Him, and through Him as one spirit with Him through the millennial kingdom and into eternity in the new heaven and new earth as the New Jerusalem, which is His ultimate consummation and ultimate enlargement.
In the first chapter of Genesis, God made man in His image, who is Christ, the image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15). In the last chapter of Revelation, Christ is “the Spirit.” Revelation 22:17 speaks of “the Spirit and the bride.” The conclusion of the holy Word reveals that the organic Triune God becomes fully mingled with us, the transformed, tripartite human beings. His name at the consummation of the divine revelation is “the Spirit.” On the first page of the Bible He was the image of God, and on the last page of the Bible He has become “the Spirit” mingled with us, the transformed, tripartite man as His bride. He as the Husband and we as the bride become a universal couple. This couple is the coming New Jerusalem, and this will be the history, the story, the biography, of Him with us for eternity. This biography began in eternity past and lasts without end through eternity future. In between eternity past and future, we are regenerated, renewed, sanctified, transformed, conformed, and glorified. We are in the process, in the way and on the way, of the biography of this wonderful One.
