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III. The glorification of Christ's divine life
IV. The designation of Christ's humanity
V. His transfiguration into the Life-giving Spirit
VI. His producing of the church
In the last lesson we saw two aspects of Christ's resurrection. First, Christ's Person and His redemptive work were fully vindicated and accepted by God. Second, Christ won a full victory over death, Hades, Satan, and the world. Let us see four more aspects of His wonderful resurrection.
When Christ was on earth, He was God concealed within a physical body. Inwardly there was God, but outwardly there was the flesh. When others looked at Christ, they could not see anything special about this One (Mark 6:3; John 10:33). But through Christ's death and resurrection, the God who was concealed within Him was released and made known. This display is what we call Christ's glorification. This is what He was praying for just before His death when He said, "Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son that the Son may glorify You" (John 17:1).
Suppose we have a flower seed. Although much beauty is in the life of that seed, how can that beauty be manifested? The seed has to die. If the seed falls into the earth, dies, and grows up, the full beauty within it will be manifested. That is its glory, the glorification of the life in the seed. Likewise, at one time God was confined within the flesh of the Lord. The Lord had to die so that God within Him might be released, manifested, and glorified in resurrection.
When Christ was in the flesh during His thirty-three and a half years on the earth, He was exactly like the flower seed. Although the Son of God was in Him, no one could recognize this easily. By being sown into death and growing up in resurrection, He blossomed — that is, the divine life within Him was fully displayed, glorified.
Romans 1:3 and 4 say: "Concerning His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, Who came out of the seed of David according to the flesh, and was designated the Son of God..out of the resurrection of the dead." In resurrection, Christ was designated the Son of God in His humanity. Before His incarnation, Christ, as a divine Person, was already the Son of God (John 1:18). He was the Son of God before His incarnation, and even Romans 8:3 says, "God sending His own Son." Since Christ was already the Son of God, why did He need to be designated the Son of God through resurrection? Because by incarnation He had put on the flesh, the human nature that had nothing to do with divinity. As a divine Person, Christ was the Son of God before His incarnation; but that part of Him which was Jesus with the flesh, born of Mary, was not the Son of God. That part of Him was human. By His resurrection, Christ has sanctified and uplifted His human nature, His humanity; He was designated out of this resurrection as the Son of God with this human nature. So, in this sense, the Bible says that He was begotten the Son of God in His resurrection (Acts 13:33; Heb. 1:5).
In His resurrection, Christ is still a man; as such He has been designated the Son of God. This is not an insignificant matter. The incarnation brought God into man, but the resurrection brought man into God. Because of the process Christ went through, a man has been brought into the Godhead. Yes, there is now a man in the Godhead! Christ in His human nature has been designated the Son of God.
Next we would like to see that in His resurrection Christ became a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). Although the Lord Jesus was resurrected with a physical body, a body with flesh and bones (Luke 24:39), He was also resurrected spiritually. This means that in His resurrection He was transfigured into the Spirit (John 7:37-39; 1 Cor. 15:45; 2 Cor. 3:17). We cannot explain how He could both have a body and at the same time become the Spirit, but that is what the Bible says. This is a major point in the Bible. We see that Christ is sitting on the throne in the heavens with a physical body, yet at the same time, He is dwelling in us as the life-giving Spirit. God's economy is to dispense Himself into us. His death redeemed us, but without His resurrection He could not dispense His life into us. We were not only sinful, we were also dead (Eph. 2:1). As the Lamb of God, Christ can redeem us. But as the life-giving Spirit He can enliven us and regenerate us to become the children of God. Now, day after day, we can enjoy the rich supply of life that is in the Spirit. We can pray, call on His name, and pray-read the Word. Christ is now so available to us because of His resurrection. Christ's resurrection is not just a historical event; it is very much for our inward experience and enjoyment of Christ.
The death and resurrection of Christ were very productive steps in God's economy: He released His divine life and propagated (spread) Himself into many people to make them the church. According to the Gospel of John, prior to His resurrection, the Lord never called His disciples "brothers." The most intimate term He used was "friends." But after His resurrection, His "friends" were regenerated to become His "brothers" (John 20:17; 1 Pet. 1:3). In the evening of the day of His resurrection, Christ came back to His disciples as the Spirit and breathed Himself into them to be their life. It was through His resurrection that the Lord was able to impart Himself as the life-giving Spirit into all His disciples. By receiving His life, they were regenerated and became His brothers. Therefore, in His resurrection, the only begotten Son became "the Firstborn among many brothers" (Rom. 8:29).
Through Christ's resurrection, the divine life of the Father has been imparted into us. Thus, we all have become sons of God and brothers of Christ. Praise the Lord that Christ, the God-man, is our elder Brother! He is not ashamed to call us His brothers (Heb. 2:11). What a wonder! Do you realize who you are? You are a brother of Christ! This is the same principle as that of the grain of wheat in John 12:24. The many brothers are the many grains of wheat, and these many grains are blended together to form the church. Therefore 1 Corinthians 10:17 tells us that "we who are many are one bread, one Body." The many grains have become one loaf, one Body. The one Body, of course, refers to the church as the Body of Christ (Eph. 1:22-23). The church is just the duplication and multiplication of Christ.
Praise the Lord for His resurrection! Many Christians speak a great deal about Christ's death on the cross, but rarely do they talk about Christ's resurrection. When they do, they only speak about how the Lord rose up from the grave. They consider His resurrection to be only a historical event that happened two thousand years ago. They celebrate it one day of the year. That is too shallow! In just two lessons we have seen some of the tremendous items of Christ's resurrection. We must be thankful for the wonderful riches that the Lord has shown us from His Word in these days. We encourage you to dig into these matters even more and to enjoy Christ as the resurrected One in us.
