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Scripture Reading: John 1:1, 14; 1 Tim. 3:16; Rom. 8:3; Isa. 9:6; Luke 1:35; Matt. 1:20
I. The move of God in man being unprecedented in history:
А. Before incarnation God moving only with men and among men.
B. From incarnation God moving mainly in man.
II. God’s move with men and among men:
А. Being not the direct move to carry out His eternal economy for Christ and the church.
B. But the indirect move in His old creation for the preparation of His direct move in His new creation for His eternal economy.
III. God’s move in His incarnation — John 1:1, 14:
А. Coming from eternity into time.
B. Coming with His divinity to enter into humanity.
C. To mingle divinity with humanity into one entity, keeping the two elements distinguishable in the one entity and without producing a third element.
IV. All the Divine Trinity participating in the incarnation:
А. Being the incarnation of Christ as God — 1 Tim. 3:16; John 1:1, 14.
B. Being the incarnation of the Son of God — Rom. 8:3.
C. God the Father having participated in the incarnation — Isa. 9:6.
D. God the Spirit having joined the incarnation — Luke 1:35; Matt. 1:20.
In this series of messages we want to see the move of God in man, which is God’s history in His union with man in the New Testament. In a previous series of messages entitled The History of God in His Union with Man, we have seen God’s move in the Old Testament from Genesis through Leviticus. God moved with men and among men in the Old Testament, but He never moved in man.
When we touch this matter, we have to be careful because in the Old Testament we do have some hints concerning God’s appearing to people. God appeared to Abraham in Genesis 18 in the form of a man. One day Abraham was sitting at the entrance of his tent when three men came to him. Two of them were angels, and the other was Jehovah, the very God. Thus, in Genesis 18 not only God but also the angels appeared in the form of men. Abraham prepared water for Jehovah to wash His feet, and Sarah prepared a meal. This shows that God’s appearing to man and God’s relationship with man are very mysterious.
But in principle, we need to see that God did not move in man in the Old Testament; He moved only with men and among men. It was not until the age of the New Testament that God came to move on this earth in man. His first step to move in the New Testament age was to enter into man. God took a definite step to enter into man, and this laid a foundation for His move in man throughout the New Testament. God entered into the womb of a human virgin and stayed there for nine months to be born of that virgin. This was His move to enter into man as a foundation for His further move in man.
The Old Testament was a preparation for God’s move in man in the New Testament. Strictly speaking, in the Old Testament God’s move was among men and through men but not in man. When the New Testament age came, God’s entire way changed. He was in the Old Testament working all the time with men and among men but outside of men. Samson is a good illustration of this. Samson was very strong and full of the power of God, but his personal life was a mess. This shows that God’s move in the Old Testament was outside of man and not something of an inward life. The New Testament is different from the Old Testament in the one fact that God entered into man. God was born of man. Matthew 1:20 says that what was begotten in Mary was of the Holy Spirit. God was born in Mary. One day God came out of eternity with His divinity and entered into a human virgin’s womb to be born there.
I have been studying the Bible for many years, and through my study I have come to the conclusion that there are ten main items in the eternal economy of God revealed in the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. The first five items are the steps of God’s move, and the last five items are the issues of God’s move. In the eternal economy of God in the New Testament, there are five steps and five issues of God’s move in man.
The five steps are incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. These are the steps that God took in His move in man on this earth. He was incarnated in man, and He lived in man. In incarnation He entered into the womb of Mary and remained there for nine months. After His birth He passed through a human living of thirty-three and a half years. Then He went to the cross to be crucified in man. Jesus was crucified on the cross as a man, but He was not just a man. He was God Himself. Then He was resurrected. He rose up from the dead in man and ascended to the heavens in man. These are the five steps of His move. The five issues of these steps are the church, the Body of Christ, the new man, the organism of the processed and consummated Triune God, and the New Jerusalem. These five steps and five issues cover the entire New Testament concerning the move of God in man. The first page of the New Testament is on incarnation, and the last page of the New Testament is on the New Jerusalem.
The move of God in man is unprecedented in history. Before the time of God’s incarnation in Matthew 1, there was not such a thing in history as God’s move in man.
Before His incarnation God moved only with men and among men in the Old Testament. The Old Testament has thirty-nine books. Most of these books are very long with many stories of God’s move. What a move God had with men and among men in the Old Testament! When He created all the things in the heavens and on the earth, what a move that was! What a move it was when He created man! Then from Genesis 3 to Malachi there are many stories of God’s move. But whatever God did in the Old Testament was just with men and among men. He never did anything by being in man. He never moved in man in the Old Testament.
Beginning from His incarnation, God moved mainly in man. In the New Testament whatever God did was mainly in man. The small preposition in may be considered as the greatest word in the New Testament. If you take this preposition away, the New Testament becomes empty. This is like taking the switch away from an electrical appliance. Without the switch, it will not work, because the electricity cannot flow into it. The phrase in Christ is repeated frequently in the New Testament. If we were not in Christ and Christ were not in us, there would be no Christian life or church life.
God moved in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy with Moses. Then God moved in the books of Joshua, Judges, and Samuel. Then He moved to a certain extent with all the kings of Israel and the prophets. But that was not God’s direct move to carry out His eternal economy for Christ and the church.
God’s move with men and among men was just the indirect move in His old creation for the preparation of His direct move in His new creation for His eternal economy. This is why the church is not mentioned in the Old Testament. The church was a hidden mystery. God’s eternal economy was never directly touched in the Old Testament. God’s economy in the New Testament is absolutely unique. In the Old Testament you cannot see God’s move for His eternal economy directly. God did a lot indirectly to prepare for the day when He could come to do the direct work.
The New Testament opens with the genealogy of Jesus Christ in Matthew 1, and His genealogy is of forty-two generations. Each generation was a preparation for Jesus’ coming. We need to consider the Old Testament as a preparation for God’s move in man in the New Testament. If God had not created the heavens and the earth with billions of items, how could man exist? The heavens are for the earth, the earth is for man’s existence, and man’s existence in the Old Testament was for the generations to bring forth Christ. Thus, we may say that the forty-two generations in Matthew 1 represent the entire Old Testament.
Fifty-seven years ago in 1936, I wrote a book entitled Gleanings of the Genealogy of Christ, and much of what I wrote there has been included in the footnotes of the Recovery Version. To write concerning the genealogy of Christ, you need to know the entire Old Testament. The genealogy of Christ in Matthew 1 is a brief abstract of the Old Testament, which in itself is the detailed genealogy of Christ. To understand the genealogy in Matthew, we need to trace the origin and history of every incident. We must not forget that the Old Testament was a preparation for the direct move of God in man in the New Testament.
We need to see the great significance of God’s move in His incarnation (John 1:1, 14). Many of those in Christianity today do not see this significance. When they think of Christ’s birth, they may think only of the manger or of the pagan things associated with the celebration of Christmas. Today’s Christianity has lost the genuine essence and genuine character of God’s economy. It has become absolutely an outward, formal religion. We need to abandon our traditional, unscriptural concepts in order to see the pure revelation of the incarnated Triune God from the Holy Scriptures.
In God’s incarnation He came from eternity into time. This is the first intrinsic significance we have to pick up. In eternity God was unlimited. With Him everything was eternal. But when the day of incarnation came, He came out of eternity and entered into time. Eternity has no limit. Time is limited. In eternity He could be everywhere, but in time He could not be in Nazareth when He was in Jerusalem. As a finite man, He was greatly limited.
In John 7 His brothers challenged Him by telling Him to manifest Himself to the world (vv. 3-4), but He told them, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always ready” (v. 6). Although the Lord is the eternal, infinite, unlimited God, He lived here on earth as a man, being limited even in the matter of time. As the unlimited God, He entered into the limiting factor of time.
God created everything by speaking. He said, “Let there be light,” and there was light (Gen. 1:3). But He was not incarnated in this instant way. Instead, He came out of His eternity to enter into time and stay in a virgin’s womb for nine months. This is very meaningful. We all know how difficult it is to make a believer of Christ spiritual, sanctified, victorious, and heavenly. God is omnipotent, and His power is unlimited. Why would He not produce millions of spiritual persons in an instant? In His New Testament economy God does not do things instantly. He does everything in the principle of incarnation. God’s incarnation brought Him out of His eternity into the limit of time.
God came out of eternity into time and with His divinity to enter into humanity. In the Old Testament the divine nature and essence never came into any human being. But one day the unique Divine Being, God, brought His divinity into the womb of Mary. From that day God put humanity upon Himself. He never had anything human before that time, but in His incarnation He entered into humanity and put on humanity as a part of His being. He was only divine in eternity, but through incarnation He became both divine and human.
God’s move in His incarnation was to mingle divinity with humanity into one entity, keeping the two elements distinguishable in the one entity without producing a third element. A heretical teaching in the past said that when divinity and humanity were mingled together, a third element was produced. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary defines the word mingle in this way: “to bring or combine together or with something else so that the components remain distinguishable in the combination.” Thus, in God’s incarnation the elements of divinity and humanity were mingled into one entity, and the two elements remained distinguishable in the one entity without producing a third element.
The truth concerning divinity being mingled with humanity was present in the early days of the church with the church fathers. But because of the heretical and wrong teaching concerning mingling, few Christian teachers have dared to touch it again. We have to see the pure truth in the Bible concerning the mingling of divinity with humanity as a great significance of God’s move in His incarnation.
Such a divine thing is very spiritual and mysterious because it is invisible. But in the Old Testament there is the marvelous type of the meal offering to show us the mingling of divinity with humanity in the person of Jesus Christ. Leviticus 2:4-5 says that the meal offering was of “fine flour mingled with oil.” The oil is a sign of the Holy Spirit, and the fine flour is a sign of humanity. The Holy Spirit mingles Himself with man to produce a meal offering that is good for food both to God and to His priests.
All the Divine Trinity — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit — participated in the incarnation. Many Christians are accustomed to saying that the incarnation was merely the incarnation of Christ, but we must realize that this was the incarnation of Christ with the Divine Trinity.
The incarnation was the incarnation of Christ as God. First Timothy 3:16 says that Christ was God manifested in the flesh. John 1:14 says that the Word became flesh. This was the incarnation of the Word. But verse 1 says that the Word was God, and God here is the complete God — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The incarnation was the incarnation of Christ, who is the embodiment of the Triune God (Col. 2:9). Therefore, the incarnation of Christ was the incarnation of the Triune God.
God’s incarnation was the incarnation of the Son of God (Rom. 8:3). In His essence God is one, but in His economical move God is three. This is why we do not say that God the Father accomplished redemption. We say that God the Son accomplished redemption. Acts 20:28, however, says that God obtained the church through “His own blood.” Thus, the blood of Christ is the blood of God. This implies that the Lord Jesus is God. This shows that we have to be very careful when we talk about the Divine Trinity in His person and in His work. The safest way is to just follow the Bible. Whatever the Bible says, we should say. The Bible reveals the economical aspect of the Divine Trinity, and it also reveals the essential aspect. Our redemption was accomplished by God the Son economically, but God the Father and God the Spirit also took part in this accomplishment. Whatever the Son did was with the Father and by the Spirit because the three are essentially one.
God the Father participated in the incarnation. Isaiah 9:6 says that a Son is given to us. This was the incarnation. According to Isaiah 9:6, the Son given to us in incarnation is called the eternal Father. Is this One the Son or the Father? John 5:43a says that the Son came in the name of the Father. We need to consider what this means. If a person goes to the bank to cash a check signed by another person, he must go there in the name of that person. To go to the bank in the name of another person is to go there as that person. The Son coming in the name of the Father means that He came as the Father. This is equivalent to the Son being the Father; hence, He is called the Father in Isaiah 9:6.
In the Divine Trinity, the Son, the Father, and the Spirit are all one. The Son came, but the Son and the Father coinhere. To coinhere is to mutually indwell each other. The Son is in the Father, and the Father is in the Son (John 14:10). The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are really one. No one can divide Them. There is a distinction among Them, but there is no separation. In the Lord’s prayer in John 17, He revealed that He and the Father are one (vv. 21-22). From all of this we can see that the Father participated in the incarnation.
God the Spirit also joined the incarnation. In Luke 1:35 the angel told Mary that the Holy Spirit would come upon her as the power for her to conceive the holy child. Matthew 1:18 and 20 tell us further that Mary “was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit” and that “that which has been begotten in her is of the Holy Spirit.” This indicates that the divine essence out of the Holy Spirit had been begotten in Mary’s womb before she delivered the child Jesus. The incarnation was of the Son of God, but it was carried out by the Spirit. The Spirit also participated in the incarnation.
Now we can see that the entire Triune God — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit — was incarnated. All three participated in the incarnation. When we say “God’s move in man,” we mean the Triune God’s move in man, the move of the three of the Divine Trinity. God’s incarnation was the start of God’s direct move in man. The Triune God — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit — came out of eternity with divinity to enter into a human being to be one with man, to make Himself a man, and to participate in man’s nature (Heb. 2:14a). This is great and is far beyond our natural thought and understanding. God came in a silent way, in a secret way, and even in a small way. He came in His Divine Trinity to enter into a human being and be born there. By this He made Himself one with man and a part of man. From the time of His incarnation, He began not only to be in man but also to be a man.
According to the New Testament record, God’s move on earth in man is always in the principle of incarnation. Our salvation is the move of God in man and is the move of God to be a part of man. If God had never become us in the sense of coming into us to be our very life, we could never have been saved. Every time a person is saved, the incarnation is repeated again. What is salvation, or regeneration? It is God coming into a man in His divinity to make Himself a part of that man and to make that man a part of Him. Salvation brings God into man and brings man into God. Salvation makes God man so that man may be made God (but not the Godhead). This is incarnation, and this principle of incarnation should be applied to our entire Christian life.
In the Christian life the husbands and the wives should love each other, but in their natural life they are not capable of doing this. What husband can love his wife, and what wife can love her husband? If a Christian husband really loves his wife, that is not him. This means that he is living in the principle of Galatians 2:20 — “I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” For a husband to love his wife in this way is in the principle of incarnation. Unless God is made you and you are made God, you can never really love your wife. We have to realize that we can never be really humble. Real humility is in the principle of incarnation. If I am really humble, this means that God has made Himself me, and He has also made me Himself. This is the strong principle of incarnation, and this is God’s move. Without Christ making Himself us and without us being made Christ, we cannot be humble, and we cannot have any kind of Christian virtue. Every Christian virtue we have is a part of the incarnation. Every day as we live the Christian life, the Triune God is being incarnated by being made us and by making us Him. God is being made man, and man is being made God. When a brother really loves his wife, at that time he is God in God’s life and nature but not in His Godhead. In other words, God has been made him, and he has been made God. This is the move of God in man in the principle of incarnation.
