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Scripture Reading: 1 Pet. 3:18; Rom. 1:4; 1 Cor. 15:44a; John 10:17-18; 1 Thes. 4:14; Rom. 10:9; 8:11; Acts 13:33; Rom. 8:29; 1 Pet. 1:3; Heb. 2:11-12; John 12:24; 1 Cor. 15:45b
Thus far, we have seen the Word’s incarnation, the Son’s living on this earth, and the Son’s death on the cross. The Son’s death is all-inclusive, excellent, and mysterious. After death there is resurrection. The Son’s resurrection, which is the fourth item in God’s New Testament economy, is even more mysterious than His death.
In 1936 I was speaking to a group of university students in the old capital of China, Beijing. Their university was one of the top universities in China. After I spoke, a young student came to me and told me that the thing that bothered him about the Christian faith was the teaching of resurrection. He could not understand how a man could die and be resurrected. In front of the window where we were standing was a wheat field. Pointing to the wheat field, I told him that it was full of resurrection. I explained to him that when a grain of wheat is sown into the earth, it dies. Then after it dies, it grows up in resurrection. I told him that we can see resurrection everywhere in nature. I pointed out to him strongly that a grain of wheat dies, but it does not stop at death, because through its death it grows; thus, its growth is by its death. Actually, a grain of wheat grows by its death. As a result of this fellowship, this young student was caught by the Lord.
If we sowed a little rock into the earth, that little rock would never die, and neither would it grow. The reason for this is that there is no life in the rock. Anything that does not have life can never die. A chair or a statue does not die, because neither of them has life. The death of anything is a proof that that very thing has life. Death, however, is followed by resurrection. The New Testament tells us that Christ has resurrected (1 Cor. 15:4) and that we Christians all will be resurrected (1 Thes. 4:16-17). After the millennium, even the unbelievers will be resurrected (John 5:29; Rev. 20:5, 12). Because every man has life, every man will die and be resurrected. According to the Scriptures, there are different resurrections. The resurrection of Christ was the firstfruits (1 Cor. 15:20). Then at His coming back there will be another resurrection — the resurrection of the believers. After the millennium of a thousand years, there will be the third kind of resurrection — the resurrection of the dead and perished ones.
In John 12:24 the Lord Jesus told us that He was a grain of wheat who came to this earth not to live but to die. The Lord Jesus came to die, and He lived to die. Christ was born to live, and He lived to die. In Luke 12:50 the Lord told us that He was pressed until His death would be accomplished. This shows that He expected to die and that His goal was to die. The Word became flesh to die, and His death was not an end but an initiation. His death ushered in resurrection. Peter, James, and John treasured the Lord as a grain of wheat, and when the Lord Jesus told them that He was going to die, they were bothered. They were disappointed to the uttermost. After the Lord told the disciples that He was going to be killed, Peter said, “God be merciful to You, Lord! This shall by no means happen to You!” (Matt. 16:22). Peter was satisfied to have the Lord merely as a grain of wheat, but Jesus was not satisfied with this. He wanted to die. Death was His initiation because through death He entered into resurrection. Death brings in resurrection, and resurrection is the issue of life. If the grain of wheat did not have life and if it did not die, it would never resurrect. Because a grain of wheat has life, it dies, and this death releases the life in resurrection.
We must see that Jesus Christ was the Triune God-man. He was not only the God-man but also the Triune God-man. The constituents of this God-man were the Father, the Son, the Spirit, and the man Jesus. He was the Father-the Son-the Spirit-man. This man Jesus, who was likened to a grain of wheat, embodied God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. When the man Jesus was put to death, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit with this man rose up from death. The man Jesus was the shell of the grain, and within this man, this shell, were the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. While He was dying, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit were growing to rise up. What can restrict the Father, the Son, and the Spirit? What can put the Father, the Son, and the Spirit down? Nothing! Hallelujah! This wonderful Triune God-man died on the cross and resurrected.
After this fellowship some may ask how God could die. Actually, God only passed through death. Scientifically speaking, none of us will die. What dies is only our body. Our spirit and our soul never die. When I die, it does not mean that my entire being dies. It means that only one of the three parts of my being dies. After our body dies, our spirit and our soul go to Paradise to await the resurrection of our body. Even when unbelievers die, their body dies, and their spirit and soul go to Hades. Luke 16 shows that the body of the poor man Lazarus and the rich man died, but their spirit and their soul went to Hades (vv. 22-26). In Hades there are two sections — a pleasant section called Paradise and a section of torment. This section of torment is like a jail where criminals are retained temporarily.
When Christ died on the cross, the part of Him that died was His human body. The divine essence was not in His body but in His Spirit. When He was crucified on the cross, His entire being suffered death, but only His body died, not His Spirit. His Spirit only suffered death and passed through death. Strictly speaking, His Spirit never died. First Peter 3:18 says, “Christ also has suffered once for sins, the Righteous on behalf of the unrighteous, that He might bring you to God, on the one hand being put to death in the flesh, but on the other, made alive in the Spirit.” He was put to death in His flesh, in His body, but He was being made alive in His Spirit.
When Christ was dying on the cross, He was being put to death not in His entire being but only in His flesh. In His Spirit He was made alive. Man put Him to death in His flesh, but when the Roman soldiers were putting Jesus to death in His flesh, the Triune God was making Jesus alive in His Spirit.
Concerning the expression the Spirit in 1 Peter 3:18, footnote 3 in the Recovery Version says,
Not the Holy Spirit but the Spirit as the essence of Christ’s divinity (Rom. 1:4; cf. John 4:24a). The crucifixion put Christ to death only in His flesh — which He received through His incarnation (John 1:14) — not in His Spirit as His divinity. 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 after His death in the flesh and before His resurrection.
First Peter 3:19-20 tells us that immediately after the death of His body, Christ was strong and active in His Spirit and went to proclaim His victory to those disobedient ones at Noah’s time. In the Spirit (v. 18) does not refer to the Holy Spirit but to the Spirit that is Christ’s spiritual nature (Mark 2:8; Luke 23:46). After He died, Christ in the Spirit went to proclaim something to the spirits in prison, to those once disobedient at Noah’s time. Throughout the centuries great teachers of different schools have had varying interpretations of these verses. The most acceptable interpretation of these verses according to the Scriptures is as follows:
The spirits here refer not to the disembodied spirits of dead human beings held in Hades but to the angels (angels are spirits — Heb. 1:14) who fell through disobedience at Noah’s time (v. 20 and Life-study of Genesis, Message 27, pp. 363-364) and are imprisoned in pits of gloom, awaiting the judgment of the great day (2 Pet. 2:4-5; Jude 6). After His death in the flesh, Christ in His living Spirit as His divinity went (probably to the abyss — Rom. 10:7) to these rebellious angels to proclaim, perhaps, God’s victory, accomplished through His incarnation in Christ and Christ’s death in the flesh, over Satan’s scheme to derange the divine plan. (footnote 3 on 1 Pet. 3:19, Recovery Version)
Based on this interpretation, I realized that the Spirit in verse 18 does not refer to the Holy Spirit. It refers to the Spirit as Christ’s divinity. While Christ was being crucified on the cross, the Roman soldiers were putting Him to death in His flesh, and the Triune God — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit — was making Him alive, strengthening Him, and empowering Him in His Spirit. In the conception of Christ, in the human living of Christ, and in the death of Christ, the Triune God was fully involved. The Lord must grant us a clear view of how the Triune God — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit — was fully involved not only in Christ’s conception and His human living on this earth but also in His death. The One dying on the cross was the Triune God-man. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit passed through the death of the man Jesus on the cross.
The crucifixion put Christ to death only in His flesh, which He received through incarnation (John 1:14), not in His Spirit. His Spirit did not die at the cross when His flesh did; rather, His Spirit was made alive, enlivened with new power of life, so that in this empowered Spirit He made a proclamation to the fallen angels after His death in the flesh and before His resurrection. Death never put the Lord Jesus down in His Spirit. Death only put His body down.
While the Roman soldiers were killing Him, His resurrection was going on. While a grain of wheat is dying under the earth, the life inside is growing. On the one hand, the grain dies outwardly. On the other hand, the inner life of the grain rises inwardly. Two things are going on simultaneously in two directions. Death is taking place in the shell of the grain, and life is growing within the shell. At the same time that a grain of wheat is dying, resurrection is taking place. First Peter 3:18 is a crucial verse in the New Testament unveiling to us what was happening when Christ was dying on the cross. He was dying in the flesh on the cross, and at the same time He was rising up in His Spirit. This rising up was the beginning of His resurrection. His resurrection did not take place suddenly early in the morning on the third day after His death. It began when He was on the cross, when He was under the killing.
When Jesus as the grain of wheat was dying outwardly on the cross, inwardly He was rising up. The killing was carried out by the Roman soldiers, and the rising up was carried out by the Triune God. Two things were going on at the same time. All the people standing by, viewing the crucifixion, saw the soldiers killing Jesus outwardly, but they did not have the inner sight to see that while the Roman soldiers were killing Him outwardly, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit were inwardly making His Spirit to rise up. While a team of Roman soldiers was killing Him, another team, a team of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, was rising up from within Him. This was the beginning of the resurrection.
In the previous chapter we saw the Son’s death in His humanity with His divinity. In this chapter we are seeing His resurrection in His divinity with His humanity. He resurrected first in His Spirit, and to be in His Spirit means to be in His divinity. Then He resurrected in His body with His humanity. He resurrected first in His Spirit as His divinity and then in His body with His humanity.
Romans 1:3-4 says, “Concerning His Son, who came out of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was designated the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness out of the resurrection of the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.” Notice that in these two verses according to is used twice. Verse 3 talks about Christ as the seed of David according to the flesh, and verse 4 talks about Him as the Son of God according to the Spirit of holiness. According to the flesh, He was the Son of Man out of the seed of David, a descendant of David. This is His human nature, His humanity. However, according to the Spirit of holiness, He was the Son of God. This is His divine nature, His divinity. In the flesh He was the Son of Man. In the Spirit He was the Son of God. His humanity is in His flesh, and His divinity, the Spirit, as His divine essence, is in His spirit. In His flesh was man, and in His spirit were the Father, the Son and the Spirit, the Triune God.
The subject in Romans 1:3-4 is the Son of God, Jesus Christ; these verses tell us that this One is constituted with two natures — humanity and divinity. One nature is according to flesh, and the other nature is according to the Spirit. The Spirit of holiness is in contrast with the flesh in verse 3. As the flesh in verse 3 refers to the human essence of Christ, so the Spirit in this verse does not refer to the Holy Spirit of God but to the divine essence of Christ, which is “the fullness of the Godhead” (Col. 2:9). This divine essence of Christ, being God the Spirit Himself (John 4:24), is of holiness, full of the nature and quality of being holy.
We must realize that when Christ was dying on the cross, He was dying as both the Son of Man and the Son of God. This wonderful person was both the Son of Man and the Son of God. In His flesh He was the Son of Man. In His spirit with the Spirit He was the Son of God. He had two natures with two essences — the human and the divine. On the cross the man Jesus was dying. And at the same time the Triune God — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit — was dying. The Son of Man was the man Jesus, and the Son of God was the embodiment of the Triune God. All the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him bodily (Col. 2:9). If we say that the Son of God was dying on the cross, this implies that the entire God — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit — was dying on the cross. Remember that Christ has these two parts: the flesh and His spirit with the Spirit, humanity and divinity. According to the flesh, He was out of the seed of David, the Son of Man. According to the Spirit who was in His spirit, He was the Son of God. The Spirit in Romans 1:4 is related to the Spirit in 1 Peter 3:18. Christ had a body, which was His flesh, and Christ had a spirit with the Spirit as His divine essence, which was the divine part of His being. His flesh was His human part with His human essence, and His spirit had the Spirit as His divine part with His divine essence.
First Peter 3:18 shows that while Jesus was being killed on the cross, the Triune God as His divine essence was rising up in His spirit. This happened before His body was resurrected. In this way His resurrection was going on until the morning of the third day, when His entire body was resurrected (1 Cor. 15:4). By this time the inward moving of His resurrection by the Triune God was manifested. This was His designation in power according to the Spirit of holiness out of the resurrection of the dead (Rom. 1:4). His resurrection began from His spirit and was accomplished in His body. While He was being killed on the cross, His resurrection began in His spirit. His resurrection was a process that lasted for about three days, beginning from the time when He was being killed on the cross and fully accomplished at the time of His body’s resurrection. When His body was resurrected, He was fully designated and manifested to be the Son of God.
There was no need for Christ to be designated as the Son of Man, because when people saw Him, they immediately recognized that He was a man. However, there was a need for Him to be designated the Son of God because the Son of God was concealed in Him as the Son of Man. His divinity was concealed in His humanity. People could easily recognize His humanity but not His divinity. This concealed divinity needed to be designated, made manifest, by the resurrection. His resurrection was a designation, a making manifest. When Christ was resurrected, even in His body He was designated, or manifested, to be the Son of God.
When I was young, I used to think that when the Lord Jesus was crucified on the cross, the Father was sitting in the heavens and the Spirit was standing by waiting for some orders. Then when He was killed, He was taken down from the cross and buried. Eventually, He was raised from the dead on the third day. This concept, however, is not according to the revelation of the Scriptures. While Jesus was being killed on the cross, the Triune God — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit — was making His Spirit alive and strengthened. When His body was buried in the earth, His Spirit went to proclaim God’s victory over His enemy to the spirits in prison. Eventually, this resurrection saturated His body and “invaded” His body to raise it up. Then His resurrection was completed. By this He was fully designated the Son of God in power according to the divine Spirit out of the resurrection of the dead. Hallelujah! This was the procedure, the process, of the Son’s resurrection in His divinity with His humanity.
