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I. The name of God:
А. Jehovah, meaning “I am who I am” — self-existing and ever-existing — Exo. 3:14.
B. Elohim (“God”), implying the faithful strong One — Gen. 1:1; 2:4.
II. God is eternal:
А. From eternity to eternity — Psa. 90:2b.
B. Uncreated (as the creating One) — Gen. 1:1.
C. Without beginning and without ending — self-existing and ever-existing — Heb. 7:3.
D. Eternal in His Trinity:
1. The Father is eternal — Isa. 9:6.
2. The Son is eternal — Heb. 1:12b; 7:3.
3. The Spirit is eternal — 9:14.
III. God is triune:
А. Elohim (“God” — Gen. 1:1) is plural, indicating that God is triune — three-one, as confirmed by the pronouns Us, Our, and He in Genesis 1:26-27; 3:22a; and 11:7.
B. The name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit — one name implies three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, indicating the Divine Trinity — Matt. 28:19:
1. The Father as the source of the Triune God.
2. The Son as the expression of the Triune God — John 1:18.
3. The Spirit as the reaching, the application, of the Triune God — 2 Cor. 13:14.
4. The three coexist and coinhere at the same time from eternity to eternity — John 1:1-2; 14:10-11; 8:29; 15:26; Rev. 1:4-5a:
а. The Son came from with the Father and in the Father’s name — John 6:46; 1:14; 5:43a; cf. 1 John 2:23b.
b. The Spirit was sent from with the Father in the Son’s name — John 15:26; 14:26.
5. Among the three of the Divine Trinity, there is distinction, but there is no separation.
IV. God made an eternal economy — Eph. 3:9-10; 1:10:
А. The economy of the mystery hidden in God throughout the ages.
B. To produce the church for the showing of God’s multifarious wisdom.
C. To head up all things in Christ.
V. God in His Divine Trinity held a council in eternity — Acts 2:23 and footnote 1:
А. To make the determination concerning the crucial death of Christ.
B. For the carrying out of God’s eternal economy.
VI. The second of the Divine Trinity was preparing to carry out His “goings forth” from eternity into time to be born in Bethlehem as a man — Micah 5:2.
VII. God blessed the believers in Christ with the spiritual blessings in the heavenlies before the foundation of the world — Eph. 1:3-6:
А. Choosing them to be holy, to be sanctified unto Himself with His holy nature — v. 4.
B. Predestinating them, marking them out, unto sonship, making them sons to Himself with His divine life — v. 5a.
C. According to the good pleasure of His will — v. 5b.
D. To the praise of the glory of His grace, with which He graced us in Christ, His Beloved — v. 6.
In this series of messages, I will be speaking concerning the Christian life from another angle, from the angle of God’s history. The living, purposeful, active, and acting God surely needs a history, a biography. Recently, we published a biography of Brother Watchman Nee, Watchman Nee — a Seer of the Divine Revelation in the Present Age. Should there not also be a book concerning the biography of God? We need to realize that there is such a book. This book took approximately fifteen hundred years to complete through more than forty writers. The first writer was Moses, and the last writer was John. This book is the Bible. The Bible is the biography of God, the history of God. Actually, we may say the Bible is the autobiography of God, because it is a book about God written by God Himself through a number of writers moved by the Holy Spirit. Through His servants, God wrote His autobiography. The entire Bible is a history of the Triune God.
We have to know God’s history because His history has everything to do with us. This is why this series of messages is entitled The History of God in His Union with Man. This means that God’s history has become our history because He is in union with us. We can illustrate this with the union between a husband and wife. In my book about Brother Nee, there is a photograph of him with his wife. A history of Brother Nee could not be written without speaking about his wife. In like manner, the Bible is God’s history in union with us. He is our Husband, and we as His chosen and redeemed people are His wife.
The Christian life is a life in union with God. The New Testament says that Christ as the embodiment of God is the Husband and that the church is the wife (Eph. 5:25-32; 2 Cor. 11:2). The New Testament also says that Christ will have a wedding. Revelation 19 speaks of the marriage of Christ and His marriage dinner (vv. 7-9). Revelation 21 and 22 show us the marriage life in eternity between God embodied in Christ and His chosen, redeemed people. The New Testament is a book concerning the Triune God with His wife. Thus, when we touch God’s history, we touch our Christian life. The Christian life is a marriage life. We are the wife, and Christ is our Husband. The Christian life is the life of a wife who is married to the Triune God.
Our God has a history, and the most wonderful part of His history is His history in His union with man. Even in the Old Testament, God referred to Himself as the Husband and to His people as His wife (Isa. 54:5; 62:5; Jer. 2:2; 3:1, 14; 31:32; Ezek. 16:8; 23:5; Hosea 2:7, 19). The marriage life God desired with His people in the Old Testament is realized in the New Testament. In this series of messages, we want to teach and interpret the Bible with the view of the history of God in His union with man.
To teach the Bible is to teach people about God’s history. The Bible is not merely a book of stories but a living history of a living God. The Bible is written in a particular sequence from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22 to show us the biography of this wonderful living person. We need to know the Bible according to the view of God’s history.
The first thing we have to let people know in a biography is the name of the person about whom the biography is written. This is why we need to know the name of God.
There are many divine titles of God, but in this chapter I want to refer to only two of them. God’s name is first Jehovah. Jehovah means “I am who I am,” the self-existing and ever-existing One. Exodus 3:13-14 says, “Then Moses said to God, If I come to the children of Israel and say to them, The God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they say to me, What is His name? what shall I say to them? And God said to Moses, I AM WHO I AM. And He said, Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, I AM has sent me to you.” God called Moses and charged him to say to Israel that His name is I Am. Jehovah means “I am who I am.”
We can also say that Jehovah means “I was, I am, and I will be.” Revelation 1:4 refers to God as the One “who is and who was and who is coming.” He is the One who was in the past, who is in the present, and who will be in the future. In other words, He is self-existing and ever-existing, implying that He has no beginning and no ending.
In John 8 the Lord referred to Himself as the “I Am” three times. In verse 24 He said, “Unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.” He said in verse 28, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am.” Finally, the Jews challenged Him by asking, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?” (v. 57). Then the Lord Jesus responded, “Truly, truly, I say to you, Before Abraham came into being, I am” (v. 58). Strictly speaking, it is wrong grammar to say that before Abraham came into being, “I am.” Grammatically, He should have said that before Abraham, “I was,” or “I have been.” But this would be wrong theologically. He is the great I Am without beginning and without ending, from eternity to eternity.
His being the I Am means “I am whatever you need” and “I am everything.” We have a signed check with the space for the amount left blank, and we may fill in whatever we need. After the name “I Am” we can fill in the amount. The heavenly bank will cash this check. The Lord is whatever we need. If we need salvation, light, life, power, wisdom, holiness, or righteousness, Jesus Christ Himself is all these things to us. He is Jehovah God, the great I Am.
Another name for God is the Hebrew title Elohim, implying the faithful strong One (Gen. 1:1; 2:4). The word Elohim is plural in number. This indicates that God is triune. Genesis 1:1 says that in the beginning God (Elohim) created the heavens and the earth.
After God’s creation and restoration of the universe, He came to the creation of man. In Genesis 1:26 God said, “Let Us make man in Our image.” There is one God, but the pronouns here are Us and Our, indicating that there is a plurality with God. The words let Us imply that God is triune and that the three of the Godhead had a conference among Themselves. Thus, the Divine Trinity is fully implied at the beginning of the Bible in Genesis 1. Scofield points out that the word Elohim is composed of two Hebrew words, implying strength and faithfulness. Thus, God, Elohim, is the faithful strong One. He is strong and He is faithful, so He can do everything to keep His word.
The Triune God is eternal. No one can adequately explain what eternal means. The word eternal first implies the element of time. According to time, God is forever and ever, eternal. God’s being eternal also implies quality. His being eternal means that He is altogether complete and perfect, without defect. Concerning time He is eternal. He has no ending and no beginning. Concerning His quality He is complete and perfect. When the Bible says that God is life, this means that this life is without beginning and without ending. It also means that this life is complete and perfect. Our human life is not eternal but temporary. Also, our human life is not perfect or complete. God, however, is eternal both in time and in quality.
Psalm 90:2b says that from eternity to eternity, He is God.
God, as the creating One, is uncreated (Gen. 1:1). The first sentence in the Bible says, “In the beginning God created.” This means that God Himself is the beginning. With Him there is the beginning because He is the beginning.
Hebrews 7:3 reveals that Christ as the Son of God is without beginning and without ending — self-existing and ever-existing.
God is eternal in His Trinity. Isaiah 9:6 speaks of the eternal Father. Hebrews 1:12 and 7:3 indicate clearly that the Son is eternal, self-existing, and ever-existing. Hebrews 9:14 refers to the eternal Spirit. This shows us that in totality the Triune God is eternal.
God is triune. Triune is from Latin. Tri means “three,” and une means “one,” so triune means “three-one.” Our God is three yet one and one yet three.
Elohim (“God” — Gen. 1:1) is plural, indicating that God is triune, three-one, as confirmed by the pronouns Us, Our, and He in Genesis 1:26-27; 3:22a; and 11:7.
Matthew 28:19 tells us that we baptize people into one name of three persons: into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. One name implies three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, indicating the Divine Trinity. Before the Lord spoke this word, no one knew that God is the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The Old Testament did point out in some verses that God is the Father, in other verses that God is the Son, and in some verses that God is the Spirit. The three were there in the Old Testament, but they were never put together as one until the time of Matthew 28:19.
Matthew 28:19 was spoken after Christ’s resurrection. The Triune God was consummated in resurrection. Before resurrection the Triune God was in a process of being consummated. When God came into time, He entered into a process, and His process can be illustrated by a tunnel. That tunnel was from incarnation to resurrection. When He was resurrected, He came out of that tunnel, so resurrection is the consummation of His process. After the consummation of His process, the Lord Jesus revealed the Triune God. In the Gospels the Lord Jesus charged the disciples to go and baptize people into the Triune God, but in Acts the disciples baptized people into the name of the Lord Jesus (8:16; 19:5). This indicates that the Lord Jesus equals the Father, the Son, and the Spirit — the Triune God.
The Father is the source of the Triune God, the Son is the expression of the Triune God (John 1:18), and the Spirit is the reaching, the application, of the Triune God (2 Cor. 13:14). These are simple, clear, and wonderful expressions. The Father is the fountain, the source, and the Son is the spring as the course to express the source. This course, this spring, issues in a flow, which is the Spirit as the reaching, the application, of the Triune God.
The three of the Godhead coexist and coinhere at the same time from eternity to eternity (John 1:1-2; 14:10-11; 8:29; 15:26; Rev. 1:4-5a). The Father, the Son, and the Spirit coexist. They are distinct. They also coinhere. To coinhere is to live within one another. While the three of the Godhead are coexisting, They are also mutually indwelling one another. In Their coexistence, the three of the Godhead are distinct, but Their coinherence makes Them one.
We believers and the Triune God also coinhere. Christ is in us, we are in Him, the Father is in Him, He is in the Father, and He with the Father and the Spirit is in us (John 14:10a, 17, 20). Thus, we are one with the Triune God. In John 15 the Lord Jesus said, “Abide in Me and I in you” (v. 4a). Christ and we become a mutual abiding place. We abide in Him, and He abides in us.
In eternity past, in the present, and in eternity future, the three of the Godhead are coexisting and coinhering. John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” This verse says that the Word was with God and that the Word was God. The Word and God coexist, but the Word also is God. Thus, the Word and God are “two-one.”
Verse 2 says, “He was in the beginning with God.” This confirms that He was with God not only in time but also in the beginning. In the beginning, that is, from eternity past, the Word was with God. Christ’s deity is eternal and absolute. From eternity past to eternity future He is with God and He is God.
John 14:10-11 says, “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak from Myself, but the Father who abides in Me does His works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me.” This shows that the Son is in the Father and that the Father is in the Son. When the Son speaks, the Father works. The Son’s speaking is the speaking of the Father because They are coinhering. The Son and the Father are not separate. They are two, yet They are also one. In existence They are two, but They are coinhering, so They are one. The first is in the second, and the second is in the first, so when the second One speaks, the first One does the work.
In John 8:29 the Lord Jesus said, “He who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone.” God the Father sent Christ, but the Lord said that He who sent Him was with Him. When the Son came, the Father came with Him. When the Lord Jesus was traveling on the earth, He was traveling with the Father. He said that the Father had not left Him alone. Thus, when He was praying in Gethsemane, the Father was there. When He was dying on the cross, He was dying there with the Father. Jesus the man was dying on the cross with God. Charles Wesley wrote a hymn with a line that says, “Amazing love! how can it be / That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?” (Hymns, #296). This means that our God died for us. When Christ died on the cross, that was God dying for us. Christ died with God because God never left Him alone. Even in His crucifixion, God was with Him.
John 15:26 says, “When the Comforter comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of reality, who proceeds from the Father, He will testify concerning Me.” The Greek word for from, used twice in this verse, is literally “from with.” The Spirit of reality, who is sent by the Son from the Father, comes not only from the Father but also with the Father. John 8:29 shows that the Father was with the Son. Then John 15:26 shows that the Father was with the Spirit. Thus, the three are one. When the Son came, He came with the Father. When the Spirit comes, He comes with the Father. Thus, the Father was and still is with the Son and with the Spirit.
The Son came from with the Father and in the Father’s name (6:46; 1:14; 5:43a; cf. 1 John 2:23b).
The Spirit was sent from with the Father in the Son’s name (John 15:26; 14:26). Thus, the Son came in the Father’s name, and the Spirit came in the Son’s name. This shows that the three came as one. The Son came with the Father, and the Father’s name is His name. He came with the Father as the Father. Then the Spirit came with the Father, and the Son’s name is His name. He came with the Father as the Son. Thus, the Son is the Father (Isa. 9:6) and the Spirit is the Son (2 Cor. 3:17), so the three are one.
Among the three of the Divine Trinity, there is distinction but no separation. The Father is distinct from the Son, the Son is distinct from the Spirit, and the Spirit is distinct from the Son and the Father. The three of the Godhead coexist in Their coinherence, so They are distinct but not separate. In the Triune God there is no separation, only distinction. The Triune God exists in His coinherence. On the one hand, the three are coinhering; on the other hand, at the same time they are coexisting. Thus, They are one. They are not separate.
In eternity past God made an eternal economy (Eph. 3:9-10; 1:10). This is God’s history in eternity past. Ephesians 3:9 and 10 say, “To enlighten all that they may see what the economy of the mystery is, which throughout the ages has been hidden in God, who created all things, in order that now to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenlies the multifarious wisdom of God might be made known through the church.” The economy of God’s mystery is to have a church for the manifestation of God. The first thing that God may have done before the foundation of the world in eternity past was to make an economy to produce the church to manifest God. The economy of the mystery hidden in God throughout the ages was to produce the church for the showing forth of God’s multifarious wisdom.
Ephesians 1:10 says, “Unto the economy of the fullness of the times, to head up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things on the earth, in Him.” This verse shows that God’s economy is to head up all things in Christ. The above portions of Ephesians show us that God in eternity past made an eternal economy to produce the church for the manifestation of God and for the heading up of all things in Christ. Therefore, this economy is all-inclusive. In the whole universe two things are most crucial: (1) to produce the church for God’s manifestation; and (2) to head up all things in Christ. These two things were determined in an economy made by God in eternity. This might have been the first item of God’s history, the first thing He did in eternity past.
God in His Divine Trinity held a council in eternity (Acts 2:23 and footnote 1, Recovery Version). Acts 2:23 says that Christ was “delivered up by the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God.” God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit held a council, a conference, in eternity to make the determination concerning the crucial death of Christ for the carrying out of God’s eternal economy. God made an economy, but God had to make a decision regarding how to carry out His economy. For the carrying out of God’s economy, Christ had to die an all-inclusive death.
The second of the Divine Trinity was preparing to carry out His “goings forth” from eternity into time to be born in Bethlehem as a man. Micah 5:2 tells us that Christ was going to be born in Bethlehem, and that was a part of His “goings forth.” Thus, in eternity past the Triune God was preparing to be incarnated, and that preparing was a part of His goings forth. His goings forth are His coming forth. Before God as the second of the Divine Trinity came to be born in Bethlehem in time, He was preparing to come in eternity past.
God blessed the believers in Christ with the spiritual blessings in the heavenlies before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:3-6). In eternity past God blessed us before we were created. Before we were created, He blessed us in two things.
In eternity past God chose us to be holy, to be sanctified unto Himself with His holy nature (v. 4). In eternity past God chose us to have His nature, indicating that He would be one with us, that is, that His nature would become our nature. With this nature we are being sanctified, separated unto God. He is holy in nature, and we are being made the same as He is in nature (Heb. 2:11; 2 Pet. 1:4).
In eternity past God predestinated us, marking us out, unto sonship, making us sons to Himself with His divine life (Eph. 1:5a). Thus, God blessed us in eternity past with two things — with His nature and with His divine life. This is the top blessing, which was given to us in eternity past before we were born.
God’s blessing us in eternity past with the spiritual blessings in the heavenlies was according to the good pleasure of His will (v. 5b) to the praise of the glory of His grace, with which He graced us in Christ, His Beloved (v. 6).
This is God’s history in eternity past and this involves us. In eternity past God made an economy to produce the church for His manifestation and to head up all things, including us, in Christ. He also held a council to determine that the second of the Divine Trinity should come to die for us to carry out His economy. Then in eternity past He chose us to have His nature and to have His divine life so that we could be holy as He is and be His sons as His children to express Him. This is God’s history in eternity past, and this history is our history. The Christian life began from God’s choosing us and predestinating us in eternity past before the foundation of the world.
We need to know God in such a way from a deeper angle. Our God has a marvelous history, which includes us. Actually, whatever He has done, whatever He is doing, and whatever He will do in His history are all for our Christian life. His history builds up our Christian life.
