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Scripture Reading: Exo. 3:14-15; John 1:14, 29; 2 Cor. 5:21; Rom. 8:3; Gen. 3:15; John 3:14; Num. 21:8-9; Heb. 2:14; John 12:31; 1 Cor. 15:45; Rom. 6:6; Col. 1:15, 20; Heb. 2:9; Eph. 2:14-15; John 12:24; 1 Pet. 1:3; Acts 2:36; Eph. 1:22-23; Acts 2:33; 1 Cor. 12:13
In this series of messages we will consider the factors that are vital to the recovery of the church life. The New Testament reveals to us that God has an eternal purpose. God’s eternal purpose is to have the church for the expression of Himself in Christ (Eph. 3:10-11). Hence, the church is the central revelation of the New Testament. Ephesians 5:25 tells us that the Lord Jesus died for the church, and Matthew 16:18 tells us that He is now building the church. The church is the main subject of all the Epistles. The last book of the New Testament, the book of Revelation, reveals to us the local churches in many localities (1:11). Today in the Lord’s recovery the main item to be recovered is the church. Therefore, it is crucial that we see the factors that are vital to the recovery of the church life.
In this chapter and in the following five chapters we will cover six factors that are vital for the church life. The first three form a group consisting of Christ, the Spirit, and the divine life. Christ, the Spirit, and the divine life are the basic and crucial factors of the church life. If we are going to fulfill the desire of God’s heart, surely we must practice the church life; and for us to practice the church life, we all need to see Christ, the Spirit, and the divine life.
Christ is the focus of the entire Bible. Concerning Christ, the Bible reveals to us two main things: His person and His work. The Bible first tells us who Christ is and what Christ is. It then goes on to tell us what Christ has done, what He is still doing, and what He will do in the future. The revelation of Christ’s person and work in the Bible is exceedingly rich and profound. In this chapter we will consider six main items concerning the person and work of Christ.
The first item concerning Christ’s person is that He is the very Jehovah, the Triune God. This fact is revealed in Exodus 3. In Exodus 3 we are told that when God came to call Moses, He appeared to him in a burning bush as the Angel of Jehovah (v. 2). The Angel of Jehovah denotes the One sent by Jehovah. However, in Exodus 3 the Angel of Jehovah was actually Jehovah God Himself. According to Exodus 3:3-4, when Moses turned to see the burning bush, it was Jehovah God who called to him out of the midst of the bush. Then God told Moses, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (v. 6). The fact that God is the God of three generations indicates that He is triune. In verse 13 Moses asked God what His name is. God answered that His name is Jehovah (vv. 14-15). The divine title Jehovah in the ancient Hebrew language literally means “to be,” or “to exist.” God’s name is simply To Be. This means that everything will cease to be, but God will ever continue to be. God is the great To Be.
Most English translations of Exodus 3:14 render this title “I AM WHO I AM.” In this verse God told Moses that His name is I AM WHO I AM. This name implies that He is the One who exists, the One who is, the One who remains, and the One who is everything we need. In John 8 the Lord Jesus used the name I Am in reference to Himself. In verse 24 He told the Pharisees, “Unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.” The Pharisees knew that the name I Am referred to Jehovah. This was the reason they condemned the Lord Jesus, saying that He blasphemed God by considering Himself the same as Jehovah (10:33). Yes, Jesus is Jehovah. The name Jesus is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word Joshua (Num. 13:16), which means “Jehovah the Savior,” or “the salvation of Jehovah.” Jesus is the One who is. Nothing is but Jesus. Do not think that I am something, for I am nothing. You also are nothing. We are all nothing, but Jesus is. Jesus is everything. He is life (John 14:6), He is light (8:12), He is love (1 John 4:16), and He is grace (John 1:17). He is the real food (6:51), He is the real water (7:37-39), and He is even the door (10:9). Jesus is all-inclusive. He is the great I Am.
The divine title To Be implies that He is the self-existing and ever-existing One. The word self-existing refers to something that exists of or by itself without beginning. God is self-existing, having no beginning. The word ever-existing refers to something that exists forever, without ending. Jesus, who is Jehovah the Savior, is the very To Be. He exists by Himself without beginning, and He exists forever without ending.
Furthermore, this self-existing and ever-existing One is the Triune God. In Exodus 3:6 God told Moses that He is the God of Abraham the father, the God of Isaac the son, and the God of Jacob the grandson. The fact that He is the God of three generations, not of one, two, or four generations, implies that He is the Triune God. He is the unique God, yet He is triune. He is the Father in His relationship to Abraham the father, He is the Son in His relationship to Isaac the son, and He is the Spirit in His relationship to Jacob the grandson. Here we can see the Triune God applied to three generations, yet He is still one God.
This great To Be, this self-existing and ever-existing Jehovah, the Triune God, was the very One sent by God to call Moses. As the sent One, He was the Angel of Jehovah. He is both the Sender and the sent One. This same One was sent again in the New Testament to call us. In the Gospel of John Jesus said many times that the Father sent Him. He was the One sent by God. The sent One is simply the Angel. In the New Testament the Angel of Jehovah is Jesus, and Jesus is God Himself. He is the very Jehovah, the Triune God. He is the complete God. Colossians 2:9 says that the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him bodily. Jesus is the very embodiment of God. He is nothing less than the complete God.
Paul says in Romans 9:5 that “Christ...is God over all, blessed forever.” Our God is Jesus. Jesus, our Redeemer and our Savior, is our God. We should not think that Jesus and God are separate. No, our Jesus is our God. In his Epistles to Timothy and Titus, Paul uses the titles our Savior God (1 Tim. 2:3; Titus 1:3; 2:10; 3:4), our Savior Christ Jesus (2 Tim. 1:10), and Jesus Christ our Savior (Titus 3:6). Furthermore, in Titus 2:13 he refers to our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Paul’s use of these divine titles is strong proof that Jesus is our Savior and our God.
A number of people who claim to be Christians do not believe and confess that Jesus is God. Many of these so-called Christians say that Jesus was a great man and that because of this people worship Him as God. Surely we must reject this as heresy. Jesus is God! He is the self-existing and ever-existing God. He is the eternal God, and He is the complete God—the Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. He is nothing less than the very God, the God who is one yet three—triune. Hallelujah! We all must declare that our God is Jesus.
This very God became incarnated in the flesh (John 1:1, 14). One day He entered into the womb of a virgin named Mary, and He accomplished a wonderful conception in that human womb. This happened nearly two thousand years ago. According to the record of the Bible, God created Adam approximately six thousand years ago. Then, after two thousand years God came in to call Abraham. God then waited for another two thousand years, and He came to visit a young virgin by the name of Mary. The very God as the Holy Spirit came upon Mary and entered into her womb to conceive the child Jesus. In Luke 1:35 and Matthew 1:18 and 20 we are told that a child was conceived in the virgin Mary, not of any man but of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, who is the very God reaching man, entered into Mary’s womb and accomplished a marvelous conception. He remained in that womb for nine months and was finally born out of that womb as a little child. After His birth that little child was put into a manger.
According to Isaiah 9:6, that little child born to us is called Mighty God. Do you believe that a child born out of a virgin and put into a manger two thousand years ago was the mighty God? Most of the Jews do not believe this. They say that their God, who is the very Creator of heaven and earth, could never become a little child who was born out of a human virgin and put into a manger. Therefore, the Jews deny that Jesus is their God. Even today, after twenty centuries, the Jewish people still reject Christ as God. Nevertheless, a small number of Jews were called by this Jesus. When Jesus came out to minister at the age of thirty, He called four disciples, Andrew, Peter, James, and John (Matt. 4:18-22). These four disciples were all Jews. Eventually, they believed that Jesus is God. Later, a strong one among the Jews by the name of Saul was opposing and persecuting the people who declared that Jesus was God. But one day, while Saul was on the way to Damascus to arrest all the people who believed that Jesus was God, all of a sudden a great light shone around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice from heaven say, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” (Acts 9:1-4). That was a great surprise to Saul. After hearing the voice from the heavens, he may have thought, “I never persecuted anyone in the heavens. I persecuted Stephen and other followers of Jesus, and I am going to Damascus to arrest all those who believe in Jesus. All these people are on the earth, not in the heavens. Why does someone in the heavens come to me and tell me that I am persecuting him?” In his bewilderment Saul said, “Who are You, Lord?” The answer was, “I am Jesus, whom you persecute” (v. 5). In Saul’s concept Jesus was crucified and buried. How could this Jesus now be in the heavens? The answer is that Jesus is actually the very God of Saul’s forefathers (22:14), the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Through this encounter Saul was converted; Saul believed. He had no choice but to confess that Jesus is God. If Jesus were not God, how could it be that after He was crucified and buried, He spoke to Saul from the heavens? Saul, who was also Paul (13:9), became the strongest among the Jews not only to believe that Jesus is God but also to preach this fact. Wherever he went, he told the Jews that the very Jesus whom they rejected is the very Christ, the Son of God (9:20-22).
In Genesis 18, one day Jehovah came to visit Abraham with two angels. While Abraham sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day, all of a sudden three men came to him, and he welcomed them (vv. 1-5). One of these three was Jehovah in the form of a man. We know that Jehovah had a human body because Abraham prepared water that He might wash His physical feet (v. 4). Furthermore, Abraham asked his wife Sarah to prepare a big meal for them, and Jehovah ate that meal (vv. 6-8). Eventually, Jehovah talked with Abraham as a man would talk with a friend (vv. 17-33). Who was that man who visited Abraham? Yes, He was Jehovah, but He appeared to Abraham in a human body. Was He merely God, or was He a man? Whether you dare to say that He was a man or not, still He was in a man’s body. In John 13 Jesus washed the feet of the disciples. I do believe that while He was washing the feet of Peter and John, He still remembered how Abraham prepared the water for Him to wash His feet. You may say that this could not be true, because at the time of Genesis 18 Jesus was not yet born. The fact that God appeared to Abraham as a man before the birth of Jesus is indeed a mystery. This mystery points us to the fact that Jesus is Jehovah, the very eternal God.
One day Jesus was born of a human virgin to be a God-man. After His birth He lived on this earth for thirty years in a carpenter’s home. How mysterious it is that God became a man and lived as a man in a poor home for thirty years! Then He came out to preach and to do things for God and for man.
The four Gospels present us a portrait of a wonderful person. This person had all the divine attributes. He had the divine power, He had the divine authority, including the authority to forgive people’s sins, and He had the divine wisdom. Furthermore, He was omnipresent, and He was omniscient. He was everywhere, and He knew everything. Jesus lived as a God-man with the Godhead. People worshipped Him as God because He actually was God. He was God in the Godhead, and He was God with all of God’s divine attributes.
The people who were around Jesus often wondered who He was (Matt. 13:54-56; Luke 7:49; 8:25). He was God, yet He lived as a man in the human nature with all the human virtues. He was humble, kind, and merciful, and He was always full of sympathy. He was a genuine man, a man with the highest morality and with the highest standard of ethics. He was God living in man. He was God expressing all His attributes in the human virtues. He was the complete God and the perfect man. He was perfect, not only in the human virtues but also in all the human makeup. He had skin, bones, flesh, and blood. He ate as a man, and at times He even wept as a man. He was a genuine man, yet at the same time He was the real God. He was both the real God and a true man at the same time. It was not that at one moment He was God, then at a later time He was no longer God but a man, and then after another period of time He became God again and was no longer a man. No, at all times He was both God and man. In John 11, while He was weeping as a man, He was also God. Hence, it is difficult to say whether God was weeping or man was weeping. We may say that both God and man were weeping, but actually it is better to say that a God-man was weeping there, because at that time God and man were one.
After thirty-three and a half years of living as a God-man, Jesus went to the cross to die. It is important to realize that the One who died on the cross was a God-man, and that the blood shed on the cross was the blood of a God-man. Two verses, 1 John 1:7 and Acts 20:28, give us the biblical ground to say that the blood shed on the cross was the blood of a God-man. First John 1:7 says, “The blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from every sin.” Jesus no doubt refers to man, and His Son refers to God Himself. This verse shows us that the very blood shed on the cross was the blood of Jesus the Son of God. This blood is exceedingly precious (1 Pet. 1:18-19). Because Jesus died for man, the blood that He shed had to be the blood of a genuine man. The blood that washes away our sins must be the genuine blood of a genuine man. Only man’s blood can wash away man’s sins. Yet, if it is only man’s blood, it does not have the guarantee of eternal efficacy. In the One who died on the cross and shed His blood, there was the divine nature. When Jesus died on the cross, He died not only in the human nature but also in the divine nature. Therefore the blood that He shed was not merely the blood of a genuine man; the divine nature was also involved. The divine nature ensures the effectiveness of that human blood.
Then Acts 20:28 refers to “the church of God, which He obtained through His own blood.” The blood of Jesus was man’s blood, but in Acts 20:28 this blood is referred to as the blood of God. In this verse we are told that God obtained the church through His own blood. When I read this verse as a young man, I asked myself, “How could God have blood?” In Himself God could never have blood, but in Jesus God did have blood.
Jesus is the God-man. In Him we have both the human nature and the divine nature. In Him we have both God and man. At the same time He is both God and man. Hallelujah! This is our God. The Jews believe in God according to the Old Testament, and the Muslims follow the Jews in this matter. The God of both the Jews and the Muslims does not possess the human nature. He is merely God, having nothing to do with the human nature. However, as Christians, we need to realize that our God today does have the human nature. The Jews condemned the Lord Jesus to death because He claimed that He was the Son of God. Again and again Jesus declared before the Jews that He was the Son of God. When Jesus said that He was the Son of God, the Jews understood the Lord to mean that He was equal with God (John 5:18). In John 10:33 they accused the Lord of blaspheming because He considered Himself the same as God. The Lord Jesus considered Himself God because He was God. Outside of Him we cannot find God. God is altogether embodied in Jesus (Col. 2:9).
Jesus is God, but the Jews arrested Him and condemned Him to be crucified because they thought He blasphemed by saying that He was God. In Matthew 26, when Jesus was judged by the Sanhedrin, the highest council of the Jews, the high priest said to Him, “I charge you to swear by the living God to tell us if You are the Christ, the Son of God” (v. 63). The Lord Jesus did not deny that He was the Son of God. When He was asked about other things, He did not say anything, but when He was asked whether He was the Son of God, He said, “You have said rightly. Nevertheless I say to you, From now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (v. 64). The Jewish high priest asked the Lord Jesus whether He was the Son of God, but the Lord answered that He was not only the Son of God but also the Son of Man. If He were not the Son of Man but merely the Son of God, how could He be judged by them? Jesus could be judged by the Jews only because He was the Son of Man. Moreover, the Lord’s response indicated that not only was He the Son of Man on that day as He stood before them, but after they put Him to death, and after He rose from the dead, He would still be the Son of Man in the heavens. Furthermore, they would see Him as the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven.
In Acts 7, while Stephen was being stoned to death, he saw the heavens opened up and Jesus standing there in the heavens as the Son of Man (v. 56). Hallelujah, today there is One who is both the Son of God and the Son of Man! This is our Savior. This is our God. Today our God and our Savior is the God-man. As such a God-man, He lived on this earth for thirty-three and a half years. Then He went to the cross and died there as a God-man. In the first stanza of a well-known hymn, Charles Wesley wrote, “Amazing love! how can it be / That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?” (Hymns, #296). When I first read these words, I was perplexed and wondered how God could die for me. In another stanza of the same hymn, Wesley wrote, “’Tis mystery all! The Immortal dies!” As I read this line, I wondered how God, the immortal One, could die. However, today I must boldly and strongly declare that my God did die for me. He died for me in the humanity of Jesus. Without humanity God could not die for me even if He wanted to do so. God in Himself could never die, but He died in the humanity of Jesus. He was the very Creator crucified for us by His creatures. The Jews and the Roman soldiers who crucified Him were all creatures. When they put Jesus on the cross, they crucified their Creator. The Creator was crucified on the cross by His creatures.
The death of Jesus was not a simple death; it was an all-inclusive death. Many who have been Christians for years may not realize that Jesus died on the cross with seven qualifications. In this chapter I am burdened to point out to you the seven qualifications with which Jesus died on the cross.
The first qualification is that Jesus died as the Lamb of God. John 1:29 says, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” Jesus died as the Lamb of God to take away the aggregate, the totality, of sin and sins.
The second qualification of Jesus in dying on the cross is that He died in the likeness of the flesh of sin. In dying in the likeness of the flesh of sin, He was made sin for the believers (2 Cor. 5:21), and God condemned sin in the flesh through His death (Rom. 8:3).
The flesh of sin is just we, the fallen human beings. As fallen human beings, we all are the flesh of sin. If you were to ask me what I was before I was saved, I would answer that I was nothing but the flesh of sin. Now I would ask you to consider what you were before you were saved. You, too, need to realize that before you were saved, you were nothing but the flesh of sin. When the Lord Jesus became flesh, He became a man like us. But within Him there was no sin. He was only in the likeness of the flesh of sin. He was not in the actuality, the reality, of the flesh of sin as we are. We are in the reality of the flesh of sin, but He was not. Romans 8:3 says that God sent His Son in the likeness of the flesh of sin. Being in the likeness of the flesh of sin was the second qualification of Jesus in dying on the cross.
The third qualification is that Jesus died on the cross in the form of the bronze serpent. In John 3:14 the Lord Jesus said that He would be lifted up on the cross as Moses lifted up the bronze serpent on a pole in the Old Testament (Num. 21:8-9). In dying on the cross in the form of the bronze serpent, the Lord Jesus bruised the head of the old serpent, Satan (Gen. 3:15), and destroyed him (Heb. 2:14).
The fourth qualification is that Jesus died on the cross as the last Adam (1 Cor. 15:45b). The last Adam denotes the last man, the last of mankind. Hallelujah, Jesus is the last of mankind! When He died as the last Adam, the old man was crucified with Him (Rom. 6:6).
The fifth qualification is that Jesus died as the Firstborn of all creation (Col. 1:15). This means that He was the first item of all the creatures. Some Christians would insist that the Lord Jesus is the Creator but that He is not a creature. But this is not logical. Since Jesus is a man, is He not a creature? As God, He is the Creator, and as man, He is surely a creature. A man who has blood, bones, skin, and flesh is certainly a creature. In dying as the first item of all creation, the Lord Jesus terminated the old creation and tasted death on behalf of everything (Heb. 2:9). Thus, He redeemed all created things (Col. 1:20).
The sixth qualification is that the Lord Jesus died as the Peacemaker. As the Peacemaker, He abolished all the ordinances and made peace for the creation of the new man (Eph. 2:14-15). He is our peace, and He made peace for us. He is the Peacemaker.
The seventh qualification is that the Lord Jesus died as a grain of wheat to release the divine life for His propagation (John 12:24).
If we would understand the all-inclusive death of Christ, we need to realize that Christ died on the cross with these seven qualifications: He was the Lamb of God; He was in the likeness of the flesh of sin; He was in the form of the bronze serpent; He was the last Adam, the last of mankind; He was the first item of all the creatures; He was the Peacemaker; and He was the grain of wheat. He was not simple; rather, He was all-inclusive. He died on the cross with these seven qualifications because He had to deal with a number of negative things. As the Lamb of God, He took away the totality of sin and sins. In the likeness of the flesh of sin, He was made sin for us. On the cross, in the eyes of God, Christ was made sin for us. He did not know sin, yet He was made sin for us, and through His death God condemned sin in the flesh. This is a profound matter. To take away sin is one thing, but to be made sin and to have sin condemned is another thing.
Christ had to deal with sin, and He also had to deal with Satan, the old serpent. Therefore, in the form of the bronze serpent He destroyed Satan. Then, when He died as the last Adam, our old man was crucified with Him. Furthermore, as one of the creatures, He terminated the old creation. When He died on the cross, at the very moment of His death, the veil of the temple was split in two (Matt. 27:50-51). On the veil cherubim were embroidered, representing all the creatures (2 Chron. 3:14; Ezek. 1:1-10; 10:14-15). When the veil was split, all the creatures were also split. This indicates that when Jesus died on the cross, all the creatures died with Him.
Jesus also died on the cross to make peace. He took away all the partitions and abolished all the ordinances, habits, and customs between different nations, especially the ordinances that separated the Jews from the Gentiles. Through His death on the cross Jesus abolished all these differences to make all peoples one Body in Christ to be the new man (Eph. 2:14-16). He also died as a grain of wheat to release the divine life within Him, that He might be multiplied, that He might be increased and propagated. How wonderful this is!
We all need to see that Christ died on the cross such an all-inclusive death with all His qualifications. He dealt with sin and sins, He caused sin to be condemned, He destroyed Satan, He had the old man crucified, He terminated the entire old creation, and He abolished all the differences between the nations. On the negative side He solved all the problems. Then on the positive side He released the divine life from within the shell of His humanity in order to produce many grains. These many grains are His multiplication, His propagation, in order to produce a Body for Himself. This is what He accomplished through His death.
After He died and was buried, on the third day He rose from the dead (1 Cor. 15:3-4). In His resurrection He accomplished two main things: first, He imparted the divine life into His believers for their regeneration (John 12:24; 1 Pet. 1:3), and second, He became a life-giving Spirit to impart the Triune God essentially into His believers as their life and life supply (1 Cor. 15:45b). This is a profound matter. After He completed everything through His death, in His resurrection He became the life-giving Spirit to enter into His disciples to bring the processed Triune God into them as their life and life supply. Hallelujah! Today the resurrected Christ as the life-giving Spirit indwells us to impart the processed Triune God into our being as our life and our life supply.
Forty days after His resurrection He ascended to the heavens (Acts 1:9-11). He died, He rose, and He ascended.
He ascended to the heavens to be made the Lord and Christ (2:36). He was made the Lord in His ascension to possess the universe. Jesus is the Owner of the entire universe. We all need to realize that He is our Lord. He is our Possessor, and He is our Owner. He is also God’s Christ to carry out God’s commission and to fulfill God’s purpose. Today in the heavens Jesus is the Lord of the entire universe, and there in the heavens He is carrying out God’s commission. He is the Lord, and He is the Christ.
In the heavens Christ was also made the Head over all things to the church (Eph. 1:22-23). What He is as the Head over all things is for the formation of the church, which is His Body.
In His ascension Christ poured out Himself as the all-inclusive Spirit upon His Body (Acts 2:33). By the outpouring of the all-inclusive Spirit, all His believers were baptized into one Body (1 Cor. 12:13). Thus, the issue of the six items in this chapter concerning the person and work of Christ is that He has obtained a Body for His expression.
