Search
Date: February 9, 1972
Scripture Reading: 1 Cor. 15:47; 1 Tim. 2:5; Heb. 2:6, 9; Matt. 4:3-4; 26:63-64; Acts 7:55-56; John 1:51; 5:27; Rom. 5:17, 19
The Bible shows that the first man, Adam, failed. He failed because he did not take God in; that is, he did not eat of the tree of life. Instead, he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 3:1-7). This tree signifies Satan as the source of death, just as the tree of life signifies God as the source of life. God wanted Adam to contact Him, but instead, he contacted Satan and took in the wrong element.
After the first man failed, God did not forsake His eternal purpose. God never gives up on what He has ordained. What God ordains will be accomplished. Thus, at the fullness of the time, God in the Son came as the second man (Gal. 4:4).
John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word...and the Word was God,” and verse 14 says, “The Word became flesh.” Everyone knows that the One who became flesh is Jesus. God became flesh. This is truly a wonderful matter. However, unbelievers and even many in Christianity, including theologians, do not have a clear understanding of this matter. This matter is so mysterious that it is incomprehensible to the fallen human mind. It is not a concept that comes naturally to the human mind. Nevertheless, I must say that God became flesh. This is a great matter in human history.
God become flesh when He was born of a virgin. The prophecy of Isaiah in the Old Testament clearly says, “Behold, the virgin will conceive and will bear a son, and she will call his name Immanuel” (7:14). Immanuel means “God with us.” The son spoken of in this verse is very wonderful; He is a man, yet He is God; He is God, yet He put on flesh. He is God with man; this is Jesus.
The Bible certainly presents Jesus as a wonderful person; even history testifies that Jesus is a wonderful person. In human history there has never been a person as wonderful as Jesus. Every nation, even atheistic nations that oppose Him, regard the year of Christ’s birth as the beginning of a new era. The Chinese know that the first year of an emperor’s rule establishes the start of a new era and indicates that China, during that era, belongs to that emperor. Currently, the whole world is in an era based on the year of Jesus’ birth. Even nations that are against God and resist Jesus unknowingly acknowledge that they belong to Christ. Jesus is so wonderful. Even though some may oppose Him, they still acknowledge Him.
When Joseph Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union, which was strongly opposing God, he was served by a military marshal named Beria, who was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people. When Stalin died, Beria lost a power struggle, and he was discharged from service and executed. In 1953 I saw a newspaper report that contained a picture of his execution. According to the report, when Beria was taken to the place of his execution, he was granted one request. Incredibly, he asked for a Bible and began to pray. This shows that even those who profess to oppose Jesus still acknowledge Him in some way or another. Last year I went to Chicago and stayed at an American brother’s home. He had a booklet concerning the repentance and conversion of Nikita Khrushchev, who eventually succeeded Stalin. I was amazed that Khrushchev, the one who dealt with Beria, heard the gospel and repented of his sins.
Saul of Tarsus resisted the Lord Jesus and was devoted to binding all who called upon the name of the Lord Jesus. One day, as he went from Jerusalem and drew near to Damascus, the Lord Jesus appeared to him and said, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” And he said, “Who are You, Lord?” And He said, “I am Jesus, whom you persecute” (Acts 9:4-5). Saul thought that he was persecuting only the followers of Jesus, such as Stephen, but the Lord said that Saul was persecuting the Lord because the Lord Jesus and His believers had become one great person. After the Lord Jesus appeared to Saul of Tarsus, he became a believer and an apostle. Jesus is indeed a wonderful person.
Isaiah 7:14 says, “Behold, the virgin will conceive and will bear a son, and she will call his name Immanuel.” Verse 6 of chapter 9 says, “A child is born to us, / A Son is given to us; / ...And His name will be called / ...Mighty God, / Eternal Father.” The baby who was in the manger in Bethlehem was the mighty God. He was a Son born of man, yet He was also the eternal Father. He is the Son, yet He is the Father. This is truly wonderful. Our Lord Jesus is such a wonderful One. He is the second man. Regrettably, most of the speaking in Christianity regarding the Lord Jesus relates to His status as God; seldom is there speaking regarding His status as a man. Although Christians confess that the Lord Jesus came into the world as a man to be our Savior, the depths of this confession are rarely considered.
We need to consider the humanity of the Lord Jesus because God’s eternal purpose is accomplished through man. God cannot accomplish His purpose without man. His eternal purpose is accomplished in man and through man.
God’s expression of Himself is through man. Man is a God-expressing vessel. Without man, God’s expression would not be fully manifested. When the first man failed, a second man came. The second man, Jesus, came to express God. During His thirty-three and a half years on the earth, He was expressing God. Prior to Jesus’ coming, no one had ever seen God, but when He, as God, came in the flesh, He, as the man Jesus, declared God (John 1:14, 18). This shows that the expression of God is through man.
God also has an adversary, Satan. However, God does not want to deal with Satan from His position as God. If God dealt with Satan in this way, He would be lowering His standing as God. Consequently, He deals with Satan through man. Without man, God is unwilling to directly deal with Satan. When the Lord Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, Satan said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, speak that these stones may become loaves of bread” (Matt. 4:3). Satan, being very crafty, tried to draw the Lord Jesus away from His position as a man so that He would stand on His position as the Son of God. The Lord Jesus knew of Satan’s subtle intention and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone’” (v. 4). The Lord Jesus came as man to defeat Satan. The greatest threat to Satan was the humanity of Jesus.
Satan tempted the Lord Jesus in the wilderness, and when the Lord Jesus was judged by Caiaphas the high priest, Satan again tempted Him to stand on His position as the Son of God. When Caiaphas said, “Tell us if You are the Christ, the Son of God,” the Lord Jesus said, “You have said rightly. Nevertheless I say to you, From now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (26:63-64). Prior to His crucifixion, the Lord Jesus stood in His position as the Son of Man. When He ascended, He was a man, and in His coming back, He will still be a man. Satan is most fearful of the Lord Jesus in His status as a man because God has chosen to deal with Satan through man.
Two more verses speak of the Lord as a man who has come to deal with Satan. The first verse, Genesis 3:15, indicates that the serpent’s head would be bruised by the seed of the woman. Satan’s head is bruised by the seed of a woman, and the Lord Jesus, who was born of a virgin, is this seed. God did not come only in His divinity in order to deal with Satan; rather, He came as the seed of a woman, being born of a virgin, in order to bruise Satan’s head. The second verse, Hebrews 2:14, says, “Since therefore the children have shared in blood and flesh, He also Himself in like manner partook of the same, that through death He might destroy him who has the might of death, that is, the devil.” Jesus partook of blood and flesh as a man in order to destroy Satan.
The Lord Jesus also came as the Son of Man in order to seek and save lost humanity. Luke 19:10 says, “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which is lost.” If the Lord Jesus had not become a man, He could not have become our Savior. God expresses Himself through man, God deals with His enemy through man, and God saves the lost through man.
The importance of humanity can also be seen in the type of the forty-eight standing boards of the tabernacle in the Old Testament. Every one of the forty-eight boards was made of acacia wood overlaid with gold (Exo. 26:15, 29). Each standing board was a product of two natures — wood within and gold without. The gold without was for the adornment of beauty and the increase of value. The acacia wood within was for the boards to stand. Bible readers know that gold signifies divinity and that wood signifies humanity. The Lord Jesus has both divinity and humanity; He is both God and man. He is a man who has become God’s dwelling place. He can stand firmly in the universe and accomplish God’s eternal purpose because He is not only God with divinity but also man with humanity. John 1:14 says, “The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.” Jesus Christ became flesh; He is the tabernacle of God among us. The standing boards of this tabernacle come from the humanity of Jesus. Jesus is God’s dwelling place because of His humanity.
Of the five types of offerings in Leviticus in the Old Testament — including the burnt offering, the peace offering, the sin offering, the trespass offering, and the meal offering — the meal offering consisted of fine flour mingled with oil (2:1, 4). In the New Testament the Lord revealed that He was a grain of wheat that would fall into the ground (John 12:24); the meal offering typifies the humanity of the Lord Jesus in His walk on the earth. The meal offering was the daily food for the priests who served in God’s presence (Lev. 2:3, 10). Every day the priests ate the meal offering. This typifies our need to take Jesus as our food in our service to God. In other words, we need the humanity of Jesus in our service to God.
God wants to express Himself, and He will do so only through man. God wants to deal with Satan, and He will do so only through man. God wanted to accomplish redemption to save man, and He could do so only through man. Furthermore, God’s dwelling place on the earth depends upon humanity, and the humanity of Jesus is our food in our service to God.
Many Christians have the thought and desire to be like an angel. Perhaps even some sisters among us would like to be an angel. According to the Bible, the fall of man began when Satan seduced Eve and told her that she could become like God by eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 3:5). In doing so, Satan tempted man to leave his status as a man. Some religions are focused on the thought of pursuing and attaining immortality, but this is not God’s desire. Buddhist monks and Taoist priests have all been deceived by Satan in this regard. God wants us to be men who express Him; He has no desire that we become like Buddhist monks, Taoist priests, or Catholic priests and nuns. God needs normal men.
Christianity also promotes the concept of going to heaven. This is a wrong concept. Many Christians believe that they will go to heaven when they die, but Satan is not afraid of men who think only of going to heaven. Satan is afraid of men who will be men of God on earth. While man dreams of going to heaven, God longs to come to the earth. Man hopes for heaven, but God’s hopes are related to the earth. God is very interested in the earth, and He wants to gain the earth. When the Lord Jesus taught people to pray to the Father, He said, “Your will be done, as in heaven, so also on earth” (Matt. 6:10). Many Christians have no desire to be on this earth with its sufferings. A person may have no regard for his parents, be dissatisfied with his wife, disappointed in his sons, and displeased with his daughters. Hence, when he looks at his situation and considers his misery on earth, he longs to go to heaven as a means of escape. But this longing, however, goes against the Lord’s word: “Your will be done...on earth.”
Some have accused me of speaking heresy because I tell people that the New Jerusalem is not heaven or a place of heavenly mansions. When I say this, their concept of heaven is nullified. However, this is the word of the Bible; it is not a heresy. Revelation 21:2 says, “I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” Man wants to go to heaven, but God wants to come down to the earth. We do not need to be angels or to dream of going to heaven.
God does not need angels; He needs man. He not only needed man in order to accomplish redemption; He also needs man for the preaching of the gospel. God does not want angels to preach the gospel. When Cornelius was praying in Acts 10, an angel came and said to him, “Send for a certain Simon, who is surnamed Peter” (v. 5). If I were Cornelius, I would have asked the angel to preach the gospel to me directly. I would have seen no need to send for Peter. If I had spoken to the angel in this way, however, the angel would have said, “I am sorry, but I am not a man. I am not qualified to preach the gospel; I can only relay messages. Peter is qualified to preach the gospel.” This shows that an angel is not higher than a man. Would you rather be an angel or a man? I am almost seventy years old, but I do not feel that I have had sufficient time on the earth as a man. I have no desire to go to heaven; I would like to be on the earth as a man, expressing God and doing God’s will, until the Lord Jesus comes again. Those who feel that being a man involves only a bland existence lack Jesus. When we experience Christ in us, however, nothing is bland; even our sufferings become full of meaning.
The Bible contains only the revelation of God, but Christianity contains many concepts that are based only on the traditions of men. Women often want to be nuns because they do not want to deal with the difficulties of a husband or the encumbrance of children. This allows them to be an “angel,” according to their concept. This is in contrast to the thought of God, who said, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28).
We should ask ourselves whether we truly have a desire to be a man, because the true value of a man lies in our enjoyment of the Lord Jesus. Jesus is a man. Even though Jesus, as the last Adam, became the life-giving Spirit, He still is a man with humanity. His humanity and His person are in this Spirit. The Lord Jesus was not only a man on the earth; He is still a man in heaven, and He will be a man throughout eternity. In John 1:51 the Lord said to Nathanael, “You shall see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” Acts 7 records that when Stephen was being martyred, he saw the Lord as the Son of Man in heaven (v. 56). In eternity our Lord Jesus will still be the Son of Man. This is mysterious, and its depths cannot be exhausted in words.
The Lord Jesus is real and living. He possesses humanity in addition to divinity, and He dealt with Satan in His humanity. In His humanity He became our Savior and the dwelling place of God. Furthermore, His humanity has become our food. We need to eat Him, drink Him, and take Him into us so that His humanity becomes our humanity! The more a man has the Lord Jesus as his humanity, the more he appreciates his status as a man, especially as a man in relation to his parents, his wife, and his children. The more he lives as a man, the more he appreciates the meaning of being a man and the more he is a man. The more he is filled with the Lord Jesus, the more he experiences the reality of being a man because this second man is complete and perfect. This is possible because His humanity becomes our humanity.
