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Scripture Reading: John 3:5-6; 1:13; 1 Pet. 1:23; James 1:18; 1 Pet. 1:3; John 1:12; Heb. 2:10; 2 Pet. 1:4; Rom. 8:30c
In the Old Testament the thought of God being man’s life has six main points. First, God’s creating of living things indicates that God is the God of life. Second, God’s creating of man in His image indicates that God wants man to have God as his life so that man can express God. Third, God’s putting man before the tree of life indicates that God desires that man would take Him, signified by the tree of life, as man’s life. Fourth, Satan’s tempting of man to take the tree of knowledge indicates that Satan wants to keep man from taking God as his life. Fifth, God’s prohibiting of the fallen man, by the cherubim and the flaming sword, from taking the tree of life indicates that God’s glory (signified by the cherubim), holiness (signified by the flame), and righteousness (signified by the sword) do not allow sinful man to abuse the life of God. Sixth, through the redemption of Christ, as typified by the propitiation accomplished with the sacrifices, the Old Testament saints had the right to partake of God as the fountain of life for their satisfaction and enjoyment. These six items are the main points in the Old Testament concerning the matter of the divine life in its relationship to us.
In the New Testament the thought of God being man’s life begins with the incarnation. God came to be incarnated that man may receive Him as grace and reality, both of which are God Himself to be man’s life as man’s eternal portion (4, John 1:14, 16). God came to reach man. His journey, His coming, to reach man includes six steps, and the destination of His journey is man’s spirit. First, He came as life that man may have the divine life and have it abundantly (14:6a; 11:25a; 10:10b; 1 John 5:11-12). Second, He laid down His own human life for man and took it again to release His divine life that He may dispense it into His believers (John 10:11, 15b, 17-18a, 28a). Christ’s laying down of His life was His dying on the cross for our redemption. Christ’s redemption made a way through all the obstacles, just as a tunnel provides a way through a mountain. In order to impart His divine life into our spirit, Christ died for our redemption.
In the third step of His coming, Christ was lifted up on the cross in the form of the serpent so that His believers may have God’s eternal life—the uncreated, indestructible life (3:14-15; Heb. 7:16). In this aspect of His death, Christ died not only in the form of a man but also in the form of a serpent (John 3:14; Num. 21:8-9). In the eyes of God all fallen men are serpents (Matt. 12:34), because they all have the serpentine nature within them. Outwardly, we may appear to be ladies and gentlemen, but inwardly we are serpentine. Because we are serpents, Christ died on the cross in the form of the serpent. Because as fallen men we have the poison of sin within us, we are real serpents. But Christ, like the bronze serpent, had only the form of the serpent, because He did not have the poison of sin within Him (Rom. 8:3; 2 Cor. 5:21; Heb. 4:15). Christ’s coming in the form of the serpent was to deal with our serpentine nature in order to impart Himself as life to us. So, His dying on the cross in the form of a serpent was a further step in God’s coming to be our life.
Through His death on the cross, Christ accomplished God’s redemption, signified by the shedding of His blood, and released His divine life, signified by the flowing of water out of Him (John 19:34). This is the fourth step of His coming. In the fifth step of His coming, Christ, as the last Adam, became the life-giving, life-dispensing Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b) through His resurrection. Now, whoever believes into Him may have the eternal, divine life (John 3:16, 36a; 20:31). This is the sixth step of His coming.
In order for God to reach the destination of our spirit, many steps were required. The almighty God in the heavens came down from His heavenly dwelling and passed through many problems, obstacles, and hindrances in order to reach our spirit. He laid down His life in His human nature, dying in the form of a serpent in order to deal with our serpentine nature. He accomplished redemption, which solved the problems of Satan, the world, the sinful nature, the self, the old man, sin, and sins. Christ’s redemption was like the construction of a modern highway. The highways in the United States were built by straightening curves, leveling hills, and bridging gaps and rivers. Christ’s redemption has bridged all the gaps, leveled all the hills, and straightened out all the curves. The shedding of Christ’s blood has accomplished an eternal redemption for us (Heb. 9:12).
In addition to the shedding of His blood, water flowed out of Him (John 19:34). The flowing of the water out of Him indicates the release of His divine life through His death and resurrection. In resurrection Christ became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). The One who was incarnated, who lived a human life on the earth, who was crucified and buried, who went into Hades, and who walked out of death and was released from death, Hades, and the grave, became a life-giving Spirit. As the life-giving Spirit, He can now enter into man.
The process of Christ’s becoming the life-giving Spirit may be likened to the process whereby a melon becomes juice. Some years ago in Taiwan, I brought a large melon home for my children. In a joking way, I asked them to tell me how they could get that big melon into them. They were puzzled by my question and were unable to tell me how the big melon could get into them. Eventually, I cut the big melon into small slices. Because the melon was in small slices, my children could easily eat it. Although my children enjoyed the slices, I went further and pressed the slices until the juice of the melon came out. Everyone could then drink the juice. This made everyone very happy. Eventually, the entire melon was processed, and it soon disappeared within the stomachs of my children. After a few hours the big melon reached every part of their being.
In a similar way God has been processed in order to reach man’s spirit. All the steps of God’s coming are the processes needed for Him to become the “juice” for man to drink. Christ was “cut into slices” on the cross and “pressed” through death and resurrection until He became “juice.” As the life-giving Spirit, He is like melon juice. Now we can drink Him. The New Testament gives a strong charge to the believers to drink Christ. In John 7:37 the Lord Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink,” and in Revelation 22:17 the Spirit and the bride say, “Let him who is thirsty come...take the water of life freely.” As the Spirit, the Lord is ready for all of us to drink Him. By believing in the Lord Jesus, exercising our spirit to call upon His name, He reaches our spirit. How marvelous! This is the initial step through which God becomes man’s life in the New Testament.
After God came in incarnation that we may have Him as life, God in Christ as the Spirit enters the believers in Christ to be their life through regenerating them (John 3:5-6; 1:13). The phrase God in Christ as the Spirit indicates the Triune God. God refers to God the Father, Christ to God the Son, and the Spirit to God the Spirit. The Triune God enters into the believers as the Spirit because the Spirit today is the consummation of the Triune God. Thus, when the Spirit comes, all three of the Divine Trinity come. The Triune God enters the believers in Christ. In order for the Triune God to enter into us, we must be people who are in Christ. Outside of Christ, there is no possibility for God to enter into us. In Christ, we are rightly positioned and qualified for God to enter into us to be our life.
God enters into us to be our life because our first need is life. If He entered us first to be our food, this would not be right. Food is the life supply. However, our first need is life. As the embodiment of God and the life-giving Spirit, Christ enters us by regenerating us. His regenerating of us is more meaningful and significant than His being our life supply. The processed and consummated Triune God enters us to regenerate us. Thus we have a new birth. This new birth is not a small thing. Every life depends on a birth. If there is no birth, there is no beginning of life. We had a beginning in Adam, but we now have a new beginning in Christ. Our first birth, our human birth, was somewhat poor, but our second birth, our divine birth, was wonderful.
After being consummated, the Triune God comes into us to be the generating factor and element. God has regenerated us. Regeneration is more than having a new life put into us. Regeneration means that a life has come into us to germinate, to generate, in order to change our being and to give us a new start. In other words, a life has come into us that has given us a new beginning of a different kind of being. Formerly, we were one kind of being. Now through regeneration we have the beginning of a new being. This is the way God enters into us.
God enters into us to regenerate us through the living word of God (1 Pet. 1:23; James 1:18). First Peter 1:23 says that we were “regenerated not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, through the living and abiding word of God.” When I read this verse as a young man, I was bothered because my experience of regeneration did not seem to match what it reveals. It seemed that at the time of my regeneration I did not receive any word or verse from the Bible at all. I had only heard a message concerning God based on the record in the book of Exodus. Since my regeneration, I have checked with many other believers, and only a few have had the experience of being regenerated through a particular verse from the Bible. One such person was a young man who got saved through the help of a brother who used John 3:16. The brother helped the young man to read John 3:16. First, they read it together as it was in the New Testament. Then the brother asked the young man to read it by substituting “me” for “the world.” So he read, “For God so loved me.” Through this kind of reading, the young man was saved. However, most of us were saved in a general way by listening to a message.
In 1 Peter 1:23 the living word of God refers to the gospel message that we heard at the time we were saved. The central thought of the gospel of God is that God became a man by the name of Jesus Christ, that He died for our sins and for us, that He resurrected from the dead, and that He became our living Savior. Hearing such a gospel, we believed and were regenerated. This gospel is the living word through which we were regenerated.
On the day of Pentecost, Peter stood up and spoke a message to more than three thousand people (Acts 2:1, 14, 41). In his message he spoke of Christ’s incarnation, His death, His resurrection, and His ascension. His message was the living word of God, and through it three thousand were regenerated. The center and reality of Peter’s message was the resurrected Christ in all of His steps from incarnation to becoming the life-giving Spirit. That was the living word of God.
First Peter 1:3 says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has regenerated us unto a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” In the writings of the apostle Peter, there are many hidden riches. In 1 Peter 1:3, Peter says that we were regenerated through the resurrection of Christ. But in verse 23 of the same chapter Peter says that we were regenerated through the living word of God. It seems that there are two ways to be regenerated: through the resurrection of Christ and through the living word. Although they seem to be two different ways, they are actually one way. Christ’s resurrection is conveyed in the word. The living word that regenerates us is the word that conveys the resurrection of Christ. The resurrection of Christ is a fact revealed in verse 3. Through the wonderful fact of Christ’s resurrection, we all were regenerated by God. We were regenerated by God through the resurrection of Christ, but how do we know the fact of Christ’s resurrection? We know it through the living word of God, through the word of the gospel. In the preaching of the gospel, the main thing we must tell people is that Christ today is resurrected and that He is the Savior in resurrection.
The resurrection of Christ is the fact, and the living word of God is the description of that fact. These two things are actually one thing. Without the resurrection of Christ, the gospel has no content. But without the preaching of the gospel, the speaking of the living word that conveys the resurrection of Christ, no one would know about this resurrection. Therefore, we must go out to reach people, to speak to people, to tell them of the resurrection of Christ. The more we preach, the more people will be regenerated.
Regeneration makes the believers the children of God and the sons of God (John 1:12; Heb. 2:10). Life by itself, without the action of regeneration, does not make us a child of God. Life must pass through the action of regeneration in order to make us a child of God. Regeneration by the divine life makes us a child of God. First, we become children of God; then we become sons of God (v. 10).
It is for us to be partakers of the divine nature that we were made children of God and sons of God so that we may be glorified with the divine glory (2 Pet. 1:4; Rom. 8:30c; Heb. 2:10). Every day we should partake of the divine nature. When we partake of beef, we partake of the nature of a cow. If every day we partake of beef, not only our skin but also our clothing will eventually begin to smell like a cow. Likewise, if we eat salmon every day continually, our entire body will smell like salmon. Our partaking of the divine nature must be constant. Being partakers involves more than partaking in an occasional way. We must partake of the divine nature every minute. We must eat, drink, and even breathe the divine nature. In our human life we breathe more often than we drink, and we drink more often than we eat. In our Christian life we must breathe, drink, and eat the divine nature.
We partake constantly of the divine nature so that we may be glorified. To merely improve ourselves does not involve us with a different element. However, to be glorified, we must be involved with the element of God’s glory, with the element of God’s glorifying nature. When metal is heated until it becomes red hot, as in welding, it is “glorified.” The element of electricity enters into the metal and makes it hot. Thus, we may say that the electricity glorifies the metal.
By partaking of God’s divine nature, we are glorified with the divine glory. We were regenerated through the resurrection of Christ unto a living hope (1 Pet. 1:3). This hope is for our coming glorification. We have been justified, and we will be glorified (Rom. 8:30c). Since we are now on the way to glory, Hebrews 2:10 tells us that God is leading us, His many sons, into glory.
As a young Christian, I was taught that to be glorified is to have our physical defects removed. With this understanding, I thought that for a crippled person to be brought into the Lord’s glory means that his being crippled would be removed at the Lord’s coming back. I held this understanding for quite a time. Eventually, I came to realize that this is not the proper understanding of being glorified. When we received the divine life and were regenerated, we became a new being. This new being is a partaker of the divine nature. Day after day we must partake of the divine nature, and this divine nature is the glory. Eventually, this divine nature will glorify us, causing us to shine with God’s element.
Regeneration includes our upcoming glorification. Thus, it is correct to say that our regeneration has not yet been completed. We have had a beginning, and now we are on the way. There is still much of our being that has not yet been regenerated. We may think that the process we undergo after our initial regeneration should be called sanctification or transformation. This is certainly true, but in Romans 8:30 Paul mentions only justification and glorification. These are only two of the steps in the long process from regeneration to glorification. Paul seems to skip sanctification, transformation, and conformation. Actually, the steps of sanctification, transformation, and conformation are included in the ultimate step of glorification, for these steps consummate in glorification. Regeneration begins with justification and consummates in glorification.
Although we have been regenerated, we may still lose our temper. Our losing of our temper indicates that we have not yet been fully regenerated. When we lose our temper, we may wonder whether or not we have been regenerated at all. Yes, we have been regenerated but not fully. We have been regenerated, but we will not be thoroughly regenerated until we have been glorified.
