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When God determined that the purpose of decreeing the law had been attained and that the law had been used to its full extent, that is, at the fullness of the time (Gal. 4:4), He became flesh, thus terminating the dispensation of law and inaugurating the dispensation of grace. At that time, God again changed the way of His work of the new creation on the man of the old creation by replacing the demand of the law with the supply of grace. The dispensation of grace is from Christ’s first coming to His second coming, which marks the beginning of the millennial kingdom. This is also the dispensation of the mystery of the church.
The dispensation of grace began with the Triune God becoming flesh in the Son. In eternity past, this One who became flesh was the eternal Word who was with God (John 1:1-2), the only begotten Son who expressed God (John 1:18), and the Author of life (Acts 3:15). In time, He was conceived of the Holy Spirit of God in the womb of a chaste virgin and was born as a God-man (Luke 1:35; Matt. 1:18, 20), who is both the complete God (Rom. 9:5) and the perfect Man (Matt. 1:1). On the one hand, His source is God, and on the other hand, His source is man. Hence, He was born with two natures, the divine nature and the human nature. This word “nature” not only indicates His nature, but even more, His essence. His essence consists of the divine nature plus the human nature, that is, the divine essence plus the human essence. He is the entire Triune God becoming the complete Man, bringing God into man, that is, bringing God Himself to man to be enjoyed as grace and to be received as reality (John 1:17), thus replacing the law of the previous dispensation.
The law makes demands upon man according to what God is, but grace supplies man with what God is to meet God’s demand. No one can partake of God through the law, but grace enables man to enjoy God. The law is only a testimony of what God is (Exo. 25:21); reality is the realization of what God is. Therefore, reality is God realized, and grace is God enjoyed. The law was given through Moses; grace and reality came through Jesus Christ.
The Triune God not only became flesh in the Son but also passed through human living in humanity. While Christ was living on the earth, the complete Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—was in Him, living a mingled life with Him as a perfect man. On the one hand, He experienced the hardships and sufferings of human living; on the other hand, He lived out God and expressed God in humanity. As a man, He grew up in the home of a poor carpenter and lived among men for thirty-three and a half years. He fully tasted the sufferings, sorrows, trials, and temptations of human life. He also contacted different kinds of people, such as 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), and He gave life to them to meet all their needs. In His human virtues He expressed the divine attributes, such as love, light, holiness, and righteousness. He lived as a man, yet He lived out God; He was the Triune God with all His virtues lived out in humanity and manifested in human form. He was the embodiment of the Triune God (Col. 2:9; John 16:15a), He was the tabernacle of God and the temple of God (John 1:14a; 2:21), He was coinherent with the Father (John 14:10a, 11a; 17:21), He was one with the Father (John 10:30; 17:22), He had the Father with Him (John 8:29; 16:32), He lived because of the Father (John 6:57a), He was anointed with the Spirit by the Father (Matt. 3:16-17; Luke 4:18a), He worked with the Father (John 14:10b; 5:17, 19), He did things in the name of the Father (John 10:25), He did the Father’s will (John 5:30; 6:38), He spoke the Father’s word (John 14:24; 7:16-17; 12:49-50), He sought the Father’s glory (John 7:18), and He expressed the Father (John 14:7-9). This was the living of the mingling of God and man that was lived out by the Triune God when He passed through human living in humanity.
In order to bring grace and reality to man, the Triune God needed not only to become flesh in the Son and to pass through human living in humanity, but also to pass through the death of the cross in humanity. His death was not the death of an ordinary man; it was the death of a God-man, and it was all-inclusive. He died on the cross with a sevenfold status to accomplish an all-inclusive death for all men and for everything that He redeemed. This death is of two aspects: the aspect of redemption and the aspect of life impartation, which are signified by the blood and water that came out of His side when He was pierced on the cross (John 19:34).
First, He died as the Lamb of God to deal with the totality of sin, including our sinful nature and sinful deeds (John 1:29; 1 Pet. 2:24; Heb. 9:26, 28; 1 Cor. 15:3).
Second, He died as One who became flesh (John 1:14), in the likeness of the flesh of sin, in the form of fallen man, to cause sin to be condemned and to deal with the flesh of sin (Rom. 8:3).
Third, He died as the last Adam (1 Cor. 15:45b), as a man in the old creation, for us, who are in the old creation, crucifying our old man on the cross (Rom. 6:6).
Fourth, as the brass serpent, having the serpent’s form but not the serpent’s poison, He was lifted up, and through His death on the cross He bruised the head of the ancient serpent (Gen. 3:15; Rev. 12:9), destroying Satan (Heb. 2:14) and his world (John 12:31), thus causing all those who believe in Him to have eternal life (John 3:14-15).
Fifth, as the Firstborn of all creation (Col. 1:15), He died on the cross in the old creation to terminate the entire old creation, thus reconciling all created things to God (Col. 1:20).
Sixth, as the Peacemaker, He abolished, through the cross, all the regulating and separating ordinances of the law, such as those concerning circumcision, keeping the Sabbath, and eating certain foods, and including the different ways of living, different customs, different habits, and different ways of worship, which cause separations in human society. Thus He created all His believers, both Jews and Gentiles, in Himself into one new man (Eph. 2:14-16).
The six items above are on the negative side, the side of redemption, and solve all problems for us, the fallen sinners.
Seventh, on the positive side, the side of life impartation, He, as a grain of wheat, fell into the ground and died to release the divine life (John 12:24) for multiplication and increase that we, like Him, may become the many grains of wheat to be formed into one loaf as the Body of Christ (1 Cor. 10:17a), which is the church, to be God’s corporate expression. Thus, He accomplished an all-inclusive death.
Not only did the Triune God pass through the death of the cross in humanity, but He was also raised from among the dead with a resurrected body in humanity. The constituents of this God-man are the Father, the Son, the Spirit, and the Man Jesus. When He was put to death on the cross, His spirit was not put to death, but His flesh was put to death (1 Pet. 3:18). He was likened to a grain of wheat (John 12:24). The Man Jesus was the shell of the grain of wheat, within which were the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. While He was suffering death, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit were doing the work of resurrection in Him. This was the beginning of the resurrection of Christ. Then, His divine resurrection power set His soul free from Hades and enabled His body to leave the tomb; hence, His whole being—spirit, soul, and body—was resurrected. Therefore, His resurrection began with His spirit, passed through His soul, and consummated in His body.
Thus, through death and resurrection God caused His only begotten Son to be born as the Firstborn of God (Acts 13:33; Rom. 8:29) in His humanity in resurrection. Christ was the only begotten Son of God; then in His incarnation He was born of a virgin to be the Son of Man (John 1:14; Matt. 1:23; Luke 19:10). According to His divinity, He was the Son of God; according to His humanity, He was the Son of Man. His humanity was not a part of Him as the Son of God; it was a part of Him as the Son of Man. Therefore, His humanity needed to be begotten as the Son of God through death and resurrection that He might be the firstborn Son of God among many brothers. At the same time, in the resurrection of the firstborn Son of God all those who believed into Him were regenerated to become the many sons of God to form the house of God for the kingdom of God and to constitute the Body of Christ as the corporate expression of the Triune God in the Son.
Through resurrection Christ became the life-giving Spirit; then He breathed Himself into those who believed in Him to make them His members. On the night of His resurrection He came to the disciples and breathed Himself, the resurrected Christ, the pneumatic Christ, as breath into them (John 20:22). This breath was the holy breath, the Holy Spirit, the life-giving Spirit, whom Christ had become in resurrection (1 Cor. 15:45b). He breathed Himself into the disciples to be the reality of their spiritual life for their spiritual existence and living. Such a Christ, who passed through death, entered into resurrection, and became the Spirit, is the ultimate consummation of the Triune God. Because He breathed Himself into the disciples, He is with them forever.
Through resurrection Christ became the life-giving Spirit. Moreover, His resurrection was His glorification. Through His resurrection, His divinity was released from the shell of His humanity, which concealed His glory, enabling Him to enter into the divine glory with His humanity (Luke 24:26; 1 Cor. 15:43); that is, He was glorified by God in resurrection (Acts 3:13, 15a).
This resurrected and glorified Christ appeared to the disciples for forty days. Afterwards, on Mount Olivet, outside of Jerusalem, He ascended into heaven in a cloud before the eyes of the disciples (Acts 1:9-11). In His ascension, through the surpassingly great power of God (Eph. 1:19), Christ ascended above all the heavens (Eph. 4:10) and sat down on the right hand of God, the Majesty on high (Psa. 110:1a; Heb. 1:3b). He was exalted by God to the throne of God’s dominion (Rev. 3:21) to rule over and administrate the universe for God and was crowned with glory and honor (Heb. 2:9). Furthermore, God made Him both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:33-36) that He might possess all and that He might carry out God’s commission and accomplish God’s plan. God also made Him a Leader and Savior (Acts 5:31) to give repentance and forgiveness of sins to man and to exercise His sovereign rule over the world, that the environment might be fit for God’s chosen people to receive Him as their Savior and enjoy His salvation. Thus, according to the eternal redemption which He accomplished, He is able to save those who repent and turn to God and who believe into Him, that they may enjoy His salvation.
Christ, who was resurrected to become the life-giving Spirit and was glorified, after His exaltation in ascension, poured Himself out as the consummated Spirit of the Triune God, baptizing all His believers, who became His members, into one Body in the Spirit (1 Cor. 12:13). First, on the day of Pentecost, He baptized the Jewish believers into Himself as the consummated Spirit (Acts 2:4); then, in the house of Cornelius, He baptized the Gentile believers also into Himself as the consummated Spirit (Acts 10:44-45). Thus, by these two steps He baptized all the believers in Christ once for all into Himself as the consummated Spirit and into His one Body as His fullness, enlargement, and continuation to express Him. This outpouring is economical, not essential; it is for power and administration, not for life and existence. Therefore, the ascended Christ as the consummated Spirit poured Himself out upon the believers to clothe them as their outward power and authority that they might testify of Him and spread forth the gospel to carry out God’s New Testament economy and accomplish God’s eternal plan.
The above seven items include mainly the Person and work of Christ, that is, what this living person, the God-man, is, what He does, and all that He has attained and obtained, all of which constitute the gospel. Therefore, this gospel is the gospel of the forgiveness of sins (Luke 24:47) because it brings forgiveness of sins to those who believe in Him. It is the gospel of grace (Acts 20:24) because it brings the Triune God as grace to man. It is the gospel of life (2 Tim. 1:10; 1 Cor. 4:15) because it manifests life and incorruption and regenerates man, imparting the divine life into man. And it is 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 early apostles and disciples preached to sinners this mysterious One as the multifaceted gospel, calling those who were chosen by God to believe into Him, to be saved, and to be regenerated.
God is constituting all those who have believed into this gospel and are saved and regenerated to be the churches in different places. God’s eternal desire is to gain a group of people in the universe, the saved ones throughout the generations, that they may be the Body of Christ as a vessel to express Christ and that He Himself also may be expressed in Christ. This is the purpose that God desires to achieve in the universe. In order to achieve this purpose, God establishes the churches in different places, first in Jerusalem, then in such places as Samaria, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, and Rome, each place having one church. God’s intention is that every local church should be a miniature of His universal church, being exactly the same as the universal church in nature and in principle. Each of these churches in the different localities represents the universal church locally, expressing Christ and bearing His testimony according to the principle of the universal church, that the Body of Christ may be completely built up.
In the dispensation of grace God obtains all those who believe into Christ in the New Testament as the third part and the majority of the new race in God’s new creation, signified by the sun with which the universal woman is clothed in Revelation 12, for the accomplishment of the constitution of the New Jerusalem to be God’s ultimate and full expression in eternity.
When God determined that the purpose of decreeing the law had been attained and that the law had been used to its full extent, the Triune God became flesh in the Son; He was born of a woman to become Christ, who possessed both the divine nature and the human nature, bringing grace and reality. He passed through human life in humanity, experiencing every hardship and suffering, and He also lived out the Triune God in humanity. Furthermore, He passed through the death of the cross in humanity, accomplishing an all-inclusive death with a sevenfold status and releasing the divine life for multiplication and increase to constitute the Body of Christ, which is the church. Moreover, the Triune God was raised from among the dead with a resurrected body in humanity, that the only begotten Son might be born as the firstborn Son in His humanity in resurrection; at the same time, those who believed into Christ were regenerated to become His many sons. This Christ, who was resurrected to become the life-giving Spirit, breathed Himself into those who believed in Him to be the reality of their spiritual life for their spiritual existence and living. Then this resurrected and glorified One was exalted in ascension. He was made both Lord and Christ to be a Leader and Savior, that He might give repentance and forgiveness of sins to God’s chosen people. Moreover, in ascension He poured Himself out as the consummated Spirit of the Triune God, baptizing those who believed and became His members in this consummated Spirit into one Body, that they might be His fullness to express Him. The above seven items mainly include the person and work of Christ and constitute the gospel of God to be preached to sinners, calling those who were chosen of God to believe, to be saved, and to be regenerated. God then constitutes them to be the churches in different localities that the Body of Christ may be fully built up. Thus God obtains all those who believe into Christ in the New Testament to be the third part of the new race in God’s new creation.
