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The gospel of Jesus Christ is simply Jesus Christ Himself (Acts 5:42b; Rom. 1:1-3), with His person, His accomplishments, His attainments, His obtainments, and His work in this age, in the coming age, and in eternity as the content.
The person of the Lord Jesus is multifaceted and all-inclusive.
The Lord Jesus is the Creator (Heb. 1:10). All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being which has come into being (John 1:3). All things were created in Him, through Him, and unto Him (Col. 1:16), and He also upholds all things by the word of His power (Heb. 1:3).
The Lord Jesus is God. Romans 9:5 says, “Christ, who is over all, God blessed forever.” John 1:1 and 14 also say, “In the beginning was the Word...and the Word was God....And the Word became flesh.” Therefore, the Lord Jesus is the complete God who became flesh. He is the Son of God (John 20:31; Rom. 1:4a); He is the embodiment of God, the One in whom all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily (Col. 2:9); and He is the effulgence of God’s glory, the express image of God’s substance (Heb. 1:3).
When the Lord Jesus came to the earth, outwardly He appeared very lowly. Because He used the flesh as a veil to conceal God’s glory, men could not see that He was God’s glory. Yet He was the very embodiment of the most high God of glory.
The Lord Jesus is a man (1 Tim. 2:5). He is the perfect man, the Son of Man who was born of the virgin Mary (Matt. 1:23; Luke 19:10), and who, becoming in the likeness of men (Phil. 2:7), lived as a man. Men saw Him as a carpenter (Mark 6:3). He hungered, thirsted, rejoiced, became angry, and also wept. He was loving, compassionate, sympathetic, condescending, patient, and forgiving toward people. He was without sin; even He knew no sin (2 Cor. 5:21). He was a genuine man. After His resurrection, He was still a man (Luke 24:39-43); in His ascension He is still a man (Acts 7:56); at His coming back He will still be a man (Matt. 26:64); and even in eternity He will still be a man (John 1:51).
The Lord Jesus is the Redeemer. Matthew 20:28 says, “The Son of Man came...to give His life a ransom for many.” All have sinned and come short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23) and are under God’s condemnation. According to the requirement of God’s righteousness, without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins (Heb. 9:22). The Lord Jesus took on a body of blood and flesh, and He gave His life and shed His blood on the cross to be the ransom for many. Thus He satisfied God’s righteous requirement and redeemed us from under the curse of the law (Gal. 3:13). With His precious blood He redeemed us (1 Pet. 1:18-19; Rev. 1:5). Therefore He is our Redeemer.
The Lord Jesus is not only the Redeemer but also the Savior (Luke 2:11). Man has a twofold problem: on the one hand, man has the problem of the charges of sin against him before God; on the other hand, he has the problem of the sinful nature. Therefore, man has this twofold need: first, concerning the problem of outward position, law, and the charges of sin, there is the need for the redemption of the blood of Christ; second, concerning the problem of the old life and sinful nature within man, there is the need for another life, a transcendent life, to enter into man to save him from his fallen life.
On the one hand, the Lord Jesus as the Redeemer accomplished redemption for us by His death; on the other hand, He rose from the dead to enter into us to be our Savior of life. Romans 5:10 tells us that while we were enemies of God, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, that is, through His redeeming death on the cross. This means that the charges of sin against us before God were removed, and we were redeemed. This is the redeeming aspect. Romans 5:10 also indicates that, since we were reconciled to God, we need to be saved much more in the life of the resurrected Christ. This is the saving aspect. To be redeemed is outward, objective, and once for all; to be saved is inward, subjective, and daily for our whole life long.
After the Lord Jesus was born, according to God’s ordination He was named Jesus, which means “Jehovah the Savior,” or “Jehovah the salvation.” This indicates that He is Jehovah God in the Old Testament becoming man’s Savior and man’s salvation to save God’s people from their sins (Matt. 1:21).
The Lord Jesus is also Christ (Matt. 16:16; John 20:31), the Messiah anointed by God (the anointed One, John 1:41), the Christ appointed by God (Acts 2:36) and commissioned by God to accomplish God’s plan (Eph. 3:11; 1:10).
The Lord Jesus is the Lord. While the Lord Jesus was on the earth, the Bible confirms that He was the Lord. When the Lord Jesus was born, the angel declared that “a Savior was born to you today in David’s city, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11). Moreover, when John the Baptist came, he was to prepare the way of the Lord and make His paths straight (Matt. 3:3). The “Lord” in the New Testament equals Jehovah in the Old Testament (compare Matt. 4:7 and Deut. 6:16). Jehovah is the divine title of the Triune God (Exo. 3:15). Therefore, the fact that Christ is called Lord proves that He is the Triune God (John 20:28).
After the Lord Jesus died and was resurrected (1 Cor. 15:3-4), the disciples saw Him and called Him Lord (John 20:18, 25, 28); at this time He was the resurrected Lord. Eventually, in His ascension, standing in the position of a man, He was made Lord by God (Acts 2:36); that is, God made Him the Lord of all things, to whom are all things, and the Lord of all men, unto whom are all men (Acts 10:36).
First Corinthians 15:45b says, “The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit.” The Lord Jesus is this last Adam who became the life-giving Spirit in resurrection to enter into His disciples to be their life (1 John 5:12) and to be joined to them as one spirit (1 Cor. 6:17). Today He is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17) to dispense God’s life to all who believe in Him.
In John 11:25 the Lord Jesus said, “I am...the life.” This life is God’s eternal life. The Lord Jesus came that man may have life, the eternal life of God, and may have it abundantly (John 10:10). When man receives Him, He enters into him to be his life (John 3:15).
In John 11:25 the Lord Jesus also said, “I am the resurrection.” The Lord Jesus is the resurrection. Resurrection is in contrast to death in particular; resurrection is that which passes through death and triumphs over death. The Lord Jesus passed through the death of the cross and entered into Hades, and then He came out of Hades and triumphed over the power of death (Acts 2:24). Therefore, He is the resurrection. Today the life within all the believers is the resurrection life which has the power of resurrection (Phil. 3:10).
The first major step in the Lord Jesus’ accomplishments was incarnation (John 1:14; Heb. 2:14a). He was conceived of the Holy Spirit, who is God Himself reaching man, and who entered into the womb of the virgin Mary to be mingled with humanity (Matt. 1:18, 20). After remaining there for a period of nine months, He was born. At that time there was an extraordinary man, a God-man, on the earth. He was God yet also man; He was both God and man. In Him was not only humanity, but also divinity. Therefore, through His incarnation He brought God into man.
The second major step in the Lord Jesus’ accomplishments was His experience of human life. As a man He lived in a lowly home (cf. Isa. 53:2) and lived among the human race for over thirty years. He came in contact with various kinds of people: the moral (John 3:1), the immoral (John 4:17-18), the dying (John 4:47), the sick and impotent (John 5:5), the hungry (John 6:26-27), the thirsty (John 7:37), those under the bondage of sin (John 8:3, 34), the blind (John 9:1), and even the dead (John 11:39). He also experienced human sufferings, sorrows, despisings, rejections (Isa. 53:3), trials, and temptations (Heb. 2:18; 4:15), and He even wept (John 11:35). He passed through all these tests. It is in His humanity with divinity that He passed through all the things of the human life.
The third major step in the Lord Jesus’ accomplishments was death (1 Cor. 15:3). His death was the death of a God-man, an all-inclusive death. He died as One with a sevenfold status: the Lamb of God (John 1:29), a man in the flesh (Rom. 8:3), the brass serpent (John 3:14), the old man in Adam (1 Cor. 15:45a), the Firstborn of all creation (Col. 1:15), the Peacemaker (Eph. 2:14), and a grain of wheat (John 12:24). His death terminated all the negative things in the universe: sins, the flesh, the Devil—the old serpent—with the world belonging to him, the old man, the old creation, and all the separating ordinances and customs; His death also released His divine life to us. Thus He accomplished His eternal redemption (Heb. 9:12; 10:12).
The fourth major step of the Lord Jesus’ accomplishments was that He rose from the dead (1 Cor. 15:4). His resurrection was God’s vindication and approval of Him and His work to be a proof of our justification before God (Rom. 4:25); it was also a mark of His universal success. His resurrection demonstrated that He triumphed over Satan, death, Hades, and the grave (Heb. 2:14; Acts 2:31). Through His resurrection He became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b) to impart God’s life to us (John 3:15) and regenerate us (1 Pet. 1:3). Thus, having nullified death through His death, He brought life and incorruption to light through the gospel in His resurrection (2 Tim. 1:10).
The fifth major step of Christ’s accomplishments was that in resurrection He came back to the disciples and breathed into them that they might receive the Holy Spirit essentially (John 20:22), who is the Spirit of life (Rom. 8:2), the life-giving Spirit whom He has become in resurrection (1 Cor. 15:45b), to be their life and the essence of the new creation (1 John 5:12; 2 Cor. 5:17).
The sixth major step of the Lord Jesus’ accomplishments was that He ascended and sat at the right hand of God, far above all in the universe (Mark 16:19; Eph. 1:20-21), was made both Lord and Christ by God (Acts 2:36), and became the Head over all things and the Head of the church (Eph. 1:22; Col. 1:18).
The seventh major step of the Lord Jesus’ accomplishments was that He poured out the Spirit of power economically after His ascension (Acts 2:33), first on the day of Pentecost, baptizing the Jewish believers into the Spirit (Acts 2:4), and later in the house of Cornelius, baptizing the Gentile believers into the Spirit (Acts 10:44-45). By these two steps He baptized all the believers once for all into the Spirit and into His one Body (1 Cor. 12:13).
All these seven items of His accomplishments were accomplished once for all and have become accomplished facts.
God raised Christ to the highest position, far above all rule and authority and power and lordship and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in that which is coming (Eph. 1:21). Christ ascended to the height of the universe far above all things, transcending time and space.
Christ is the God-man, having both the divine nature and the human nature. In His divine nature are the divine attributes, and in His human nature are the God-created human virtues (Phil. 4:8). Human virtues are the image of the divine attributes (Gen. 1:26-27) to express what God is. Christ was God; therefore, He possessed the divine attributes. Then He became a man; hence, He also possessed the human virtues. While He was on the earth, He as the God-man lived out the divine attributes in His human virtues, thus expressing what God is in humanity (Heb. 1:3a). Then in His resurrection He uplifted the human virtues that the divine attributes might be expressed in an uplifted way in this resurrected Man (Rom. 1:4). Finally, when He, as the God-man in resurrection, was exalted by God to the height of the universe, far above all, He attained the peak where He expresses the divine attributes in His human virtues to the highest degree, expressing what God is in His humanity in the universe unto all the generations of the age of the ages.
In His ascension, the Lord Jesus was seated at the right hand of the throne of God (Heb. 12:2). His throne is forever and ever (Heb. 1:8). In eternity He will be sitting with God on this throne (Rev. 22:1) forever and ever. This throne is the throne of authority for God’s administration and also the throne of grace (Heb. 4:16). Authority is for Him to rule over all things for the church, and grace is for Him to dispense Himself into us. When we pray, we come before Him at this throne to contact Him.
The Lord Jesus was glorified in resurrection (Luke 24:26) and crowned with glory in ascension (Heb. 2:9). Before His death He prayed to the Father, saying, “Glorify Your Son,” and also, “...that they [the disciples] may behold My glory which You have given Me” (John 17:1, 24). This prayer was fulfilled in His resurrection and ascension. His glorification was the manifestation of the God of glory from within Him to become His glory, thus making His person full of splendor.
The Lord Jesus in His ascension was also crowned with honor (Heb. 2:9). Glory refers to the splendor related to His person; honor refers to the preciousness related to His worth and the dignity related to His position. In His ascension He has obtained both.
In the Lord Jesus’ ascension, God bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue should openly confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:9-11). The Lord’s person is glorious, His worth is precious, His position is dignified, and His name is the highest, that God may be glorified.
Acts 2:36 and 10:36 tell us that after the Lord’s ascension God made Him Lord and gave Him the lordship over all things that He may be the Lord of all things and all men. This is for the salvation of the believers, the building of the church, and the accomplishment of God’s eternal plan.
Acts 5:31 says that God has exalted the Lord Jesus to His right hand as a Leader, a Prince. Revelation 1:5 also says that after His death and resurrection He became the Ruler of the kings of the earth. Revelation 19:16 further says that He is Lord of lords. In His ascension the Lord Jesus received the kingship from God to be the highest Leader in God’s administration, ruling over all the kings. This is for the spread of His gospel that God’s chosen ones may be saved and that the church may be built, in order to accomplish God’s New Testament economy.
The first thing Christ did after His ascension was to give repentance and forgiveness of sins to men (Acts 5:31) that they might believe and be saved (Acts 16:31).
Christ saves sinners in this age to make them His members for the building of the church (Matt. 16:18), His Body (Eph. 1:22b-23), that God may be manifested in Him and through the church (1 Tim. 3:15-16).
In building the church in this age Christ is establishing the kingdom of God in the church (Matt. 16:18-19). The church life is the kingdom life (Rom. 14:17). As the kingdom of God in this age, the church is the place in which God rules and carries out His will on the earth (Matt. 6:10).
After Christ established the new covenant on the earth through His death (Matt. 26:28), He ascended to the heavens to be the Mediator of the new covenant (Heb. 8:6). Today He is executing the bequests in this new covenant, such as the efficacy of His all-inclusive death, the power of His resurrection, and His divine life with the law of this life, causing them to be our supply and enjoyment.
In the heavens today Christ is also the Minister of the true tabernacle, ministering to all the believers the heavenly life and the heavenly supply of the divine riches (Heb. 8:1-2).
In the heavens today Christ is also our High Priest (Heb. 4:14), interceding before God for us that we may be saved to the uttermost (Heb. 7:24-26). He is also like Melchisedec (Heb. 6:20), supplying the bread of life and the wine to us who are still on the earth living and fighting for Him (Gen. 14:18).
In the heavens today Christ is also our Advocate before the righteous God (1 John 2:1-2). He is our propitiation. If we sin, He pleads for us by this propitiation to restore our interrupted fellowship with God, that we may once again abide in the divine fellowship, enjoying God as light and love.
When the Lord comes again, descending from the heavens, He will transfigure the body of our humiliation according to the operation of Him who is able even to subject all things to Himself (Phil. 3:20-21), so that our body may be redeemed and we may enjoy the full sonship (Rom. 8:23). Our spirit has been regenerated and our soul is being transformed; when the Lord comes again He will transfigure our vile and corrupted body, conforming it to the body of His glory, that we may enter into His glory to enjoy God’s full salvation (Eph. 1:5).
When the Lord comes again He will restore all things. Because of Satan’s rebellion and man’s fall, God’s entire creation has come under the slavery of corruption and is subjected to vanity, and it is eagerly expecting that it will be freed into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. Furthermore, we who have enjoyed the firstfruit of the Spirit also groan in ourselves, eagerly expecting sonship, the redemption of our body, that we may enter into His glory (Rom. 8:20-23). In His second coming the Lord Jesus will not only redeem our body that we may enter into God’s glory, but will also free the creation from the slavery of corruption that it may enjoy the freedom of glory that we will enjoy. Although the creation cannot share in the glory that we will enjoy, it will enjoy the freedom brought to it by our enjoyment of the glory in the restoration to be brought in by the Lord.
The Lord was resurrected and ascended to the heavens to receive the kingdom (Luke 19:12). At the end of this age, the Lord will receive the kingdom from God (Dan. 7:13-14) and will come back to the earth with God’s kingdom (Luke 19:15). At that time the kingdom of this world will become the kingdom of God and of Christ (Rev. 11:15; 12:10), which will be the millennial kingdom in the coming age, in which the overcoming saints will reign with Him for one thousand years (Rev. 20:4).
In eternity at the center of the holy city, New Jerusalem, is the throne of God and of the Lamb (Rev. 22:1). God and the Lamb are sitting on one throne, showing that the Lamb and God are one. In eternity He will be the Lamb-God, the redeeming God, to His redeemed people.
In eternity all the redeemed people will be the wife of the Lamb, and the Lamb will be their Husband (2, Rev. 21:9). This indicates that all the redeemed ones throughout the ages came out of Him and return to Him to become His counterpart that He may gain His beloved, just as Eve came out of Adam and returned to Adam to be his counterpart (Gen. 2:21-24).
In the New Jerusalem God and the Lamb are the temple in the city (Rev. 21:22). In the Old Testament God’s chosen people first served Him in the tabernacle, then in the temple. In eternity the New Jerusalem will be the tabernacle of God (Rev. 21:3) as God’s dwelling place, and the temple therein, which is just God and the Lamb, will be the place where the redeemed serve Him.
The holy city has no need of the sun nor of the moon that they should shine in it, for the glory of God illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb (Rev. 21:23). In the holy city the Lamb is the lamp and God is the light shining from within to manifest God’s glory.
In the holy city a river of water of life proceeds out of the throne of God and of the Lamb in the middle of its street. And on this side and on that side of the river is the tree of life, producing twelve fruits, and yielding its fruit each month (Rev. 22:1-2). The river of water of life signifies the Spirit of Christ saturating the holy city, and the tree of life signifies Christ as the life and life supply to the entire city.
In eternity, the leaves of the tree of life, which signifies Christ, are for the healing of the nations around the holy city (Rev. 22:2), that their restored natural man may live forever. In the Bible leaves are a symbol of man’s deeds (Gen. 3:7). The leaves of the tree of life symbolize the deeds of Christ. The nations on the new earth will take the deeds of Christ as their guide and regulation outwardly, that they may live the human life forever.
The gospel revealed in the New Testament is not a kind of doctrine or ism, nor is it a theory or a philosophy; neither is it any kind of blessing or benefit. The gospel is concerning a living person, the God-man, concerning what He is and does, and all that He has attained and obtained. In the early days the apostles and believers preached this mysterious and wonderful One as the gospel (Acts 5:42; 8:5). Therefore this gospel is not only called the gospel of Jesus Christ (Mark 1:1) and the gospel of Christ (Rom. 15:19; 2 Cor. 10:14), but also the gospel of the glory of Christ (2 Cor. 4:4). This gospel of glory, which is Christ Himself, is also called the gospel of God (Rom. 1:1; 2 Cor. 11:7), because it is planned and accomplished by God; the gospel of the kingdom of the heavens (Matt. 4:23; 24:14), because it brings in the reality of the kingdom of the heavens; the gospel of grace (Acts 20:24), because it brings to us the grace of life of the Triune God; the gospel of peace (Eph. 2:17; 6:15), because it brings peace between us and God and between man and man; and the gospel of salvation (Eph. 1:13), because it brings us salvation that we may be saved. This gospel is also called the glad tidings (Rom. 10:15) and is worthwhile for us to preach at every time and in every place throughout our whole life.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is simply Jesus Christ Himself, with His person, His accomplishments, His attainments, His obtainments, and His work in this age, in the coming age, and in eternity, as the content. His person is multifaceted. He is the Creator of all things. He is God who is over all and blessed forever, the complete God, the Son of God, the embodiment of God, the effulgence of God’s glory, and the express image of God’s substance. He is a man, the Son of Man, who was born of a virgin, possessing the human nature, a human body, and the human form, and who lived a human life on earth; after His resurrection He is still a man, and in eternity He will still be a man. He is the Redeemer who died and shed His blood to redeem us outwardly, objectively, once for all by His precious blood. He is also the Savior who resurrected from the dead to save us inwardly, subjectively, day by day, by His divine life. He is Jesus, who is Jehovah God coming to be our Savior and our salvation. He is Christ, the Messiah who was anointed by God to accomplish God’s plan. He is also the Lord, who is Jehovah in the Old Testament, the very Triune God. After He died and was resurrected, men called Him Lord; hence, He is the resurrected Lord. When He ascended to the height of the heavens, as a man He was made Lord by God, that is, the Lord of all things, to whom are all things, and the Lord of all men, unto whom are all men. He is the life-giving Spirit who enters into His disciples to be their life and to be joined to them as one spirit. He is the life, God’s eternal life, entering into us to be our life. He is the resurrection and He has overcome death to be the resurrection life and the resurrection power within us. He was incarnated and born as a God-man; He passed through all the experiences of human life; He died to accomplish redemption; He resurrected to give life; He breathed the Spirit of life into the believers to be their life; He ascended to heaven, was made both Lord and Christ, and became the Head of all things and of the church; and He poured out the Spirit of power upon the believers, baptizing them into His one Body. In ascension He attained to the height of the universe, far above all; He also attained to the peak of the divine attributes with the human virtues, expressing what God is in His humanity in the universe through all eternity. Furthermore, in His ascension He has obtained the throne, glory, honor, the name which is above every name, the lordship, and the rulership. Today in the heavens He gives repentance and forgiveness of sins to save sinners for the building of the church and the establishment of God’s kingdom. Moreover, in the heavens He is also the Mediator of the new covenant, executing the bequests of the new testament; the Minister of the true tabernacle, ministering the heavenly life and the heavenly supply to the believers; the High Priest of the believers, interceding for them that they may be saved to the uttermost; and the Advocate of the believers, pleading for them before God to restore their interrupted fellowship with God. At His coming back He will redeem the believers’ body, conforming it to the body of His glory, and He will also restore all things and bring in God’s kingdom. In eternity He will be the Lamb who is one with God, the Husband of the redeemed, and the temple in which they serve God; He will also be the lamp shining in the holy city, the supply nourishing the holy city, and the healing of the nations on the new earth for eternity. The early apostles and believers preached such a Christ as the gospel. This gospel is not only called the gospel of Jesus Christ and the gospel of Christ, but also the gospel of the glory of Christ; moreover, it is called the gospel of God, the gospel of the kingdom of the heavens, the gospel of grace, the gospel of peace, and the gospel of salvation. Therefore, the gospel is called the glad tidings and is worthwhile for us to preach at every time and in every place throughout our whole life!
(This lesson may be divided into two sections and taught in two sessions on the same day.)
