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Scripture Reading: Isa. 53:10-11b; 1 Cor. 15:45b; 2 Cor. 3:17; John 14:17-20; Col. 1:18; Rev. 1:5a; Gal. 6:15; 2 Cor. 5:17; Acts 13:33; Rom. 8:29; 1 Pet. 1:3; Heb. 2:10-12; Eph. 2:19; Gal. 6:10; Eph. 1:11; John 12:24; 3:30a; Eph. 1:22-23; 1 Cor. 10:17; Rev. 1:18a; Eph. 1:5, 9; Phil. 2:13; Rom. 4:25b; Col. 3:4, 10-11
Prayer: Lord, we want You to know that we still need You. We need You as the life-giving Spirit. We need You as the anointing ointment. Lord, do speak in our speaking, and do be one spirit with us. Lord, cover us all against all the enemy's attacks. We hide ourselves in You. We believe that You are here with us. We are meeting into Your name. Lord, do honor Your name, and anoint everyone. Visit everyone, and touch every heart. Amen.
This message is the second in a series of four messages on the all-inclusive Christ in His four stages according to God's New Testament economy. In this message we will consider the stage of Christ's resurrection.
Isaiah 53:10b-11b says, "When He makes Himself an offering for sin, / He will see a seed, He will extend His days, / And the pleasure of Jehovah will prosper in His hand. / He will see the issue of the travail of His soul, / And He will be satisfied; / By the knowledge of Him, the righteous One, My Servant, will make the many righteous." In this portion of the Word there are four points: (1) Christ's making Himself an offering for sin; (2) His seeing a seed and extending His days; (3) His seeing the issue of the travail of His soul and being satisfied; and (4) His making many righteous by the knowledge of Him. The first item of the four belongs to the second stage, the stage of Christ's crucifixion. The remaining three points belong to the third stage, the stage of Christ's resurrection.
In Isaiah 53:11a, the words the issue have been inserted; they are not present in the Hebrew text. The issue is the outcome, the result, of the travail of Christ's soul. Christ suffered by pouring out His soul unto death (v. 12b). Surely there should be an issue, an outcome, of that travail. Isaiah said that Christ would see the outcome, that is, the issue, of the travail of His soul, and He would be satisfied.
Then, Isaiah 53:11b says, "By the knowledge of Him, the righteous One, My Servant, will make the many righteous." The phrase by the knowledge of Him does not mean by Christ's knowledge; it means by knowing Him, the righteous One, the resurrected Christ as God's Servant. By such knowledge of Him, Christ will make the many righteous. Many versions of the Bible translate this verse, "will justify the many." The Hebrew text can mean both. But we prefer to translate it, "will make the many righteous," because this refers to Christ in His resurrection. Justification is related mainly to Christ's death. However, for Christ to make us righteous is not merely to justify us through His death by His blood. It means primarily to make us righteous. It must be in resurrection that the living Christ lives in us so that He can be lived out of us as righteousness. Thus, Revelation 19:7-8 says that when the bride is ready for the marriage of the Lamb, she will be clothed in fine linen, which is the righteousnesses of the saints. The righteousnesses of the saints refer to the subjective righteousness lived out of us by our living of Christ. Christ in His resurrection will make us all righteous by Himself as the resurrection life being lived out of us.
Isaiah 53:12a says, "Therefore I will divide to Him a portion with the Great, / And He will divide the spoil with the Strong." This brief portion in Isaiah 53 refers to Christ's ascension. It is in His ascension that Christ brought us to the heavens as His captives. We were Satan's captives, but through His death and resurrection, Christ released us. Then, in a sense, He captured us. Now we are His captives. In His ascension He brought all of us as His captives with Him into the heavens. When He was ascending, Ephesians 4:8 says that "He led captive those taken captive and gave gifts to men." The Amplified New Testament renders this, "He led a train of vanquished foes." This means that Christ conquered Satan and captured Satan's captives, making them His captives. In His ascension Christ brought all these captives to the Father. There in the heavens He and the Father, who is the great One and also the strong One, shared the prey and divided the spoil.
To consider Christ's resurrection and all the items produced in and through Christ's resurrection, we need to be calm and also to have a sober mind. The seed and the issue mentioned in Isaiah 53:10 and 11 imply a great deal. Because of this we need to include many items in the definition of Christ's resurrection in the New Testament. In his writings Paul explained and defined Christ's resurrection to the uttermost. In Paul's definition of Christ's resurrection, many items concerning the produce of Christ's resurrection are unveiled to us.
In His resurrection, as the processed Christ, the last Adam, Christ became a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b; 2 Cor. 3:17). After Christ's resurrection, His being processed was consummated. Originally, Christ was the very God in eternity past (John 1:1; Phil. 2:6). He was only God; with Him there was only divinity and all the attributes of this divinity. John 1:1 indicates this, saying, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Then, four thousand years after man was created, almost two thousand years ago, the unique God became incarnated. That was the first step of His process. When He was incarnated, He entered into the "tunnel" of His process. By so doing, He became a man, a God-man. Outwardly, He was a man; inwardly, He was nothing less than God. After His incarnation, He was no longer merely God. As a little child born of Mary and lying in a manger, He was not only God but a God-man. It is wrong to say that only God was lying there in the manger, because He was lying there not only as God but also as a little boy. Likewise, it is wrong to say that only a boy was lying in the manger, because within that little boy there was God.
In His incarnation Christ lived as a God-man for more than thirty years. He traveled all around the holy land from north to south, mainly from Galilee to Jerusalem, on the west side of the Jordan. In such a narrow strip of land the Lord Jesus traveled back and forth for three and a half years. Although as a God-man He was very great, only once did He do anything to manifest His greatness. In Matthew 17:1-8, He ascended with His disciples, Peter, James, and John, to Mount Hermon and was transfigured before their eyes. Six days before, He had told His disciples that some among them would not taste death until they saw the Son of Man coming in His kingdom. In His transfiguration on the mount, His appearance was still that of a man, but His face shined like the sun, and His garments became as white as the light. At that moment He was a man in glory. This was altogether a part of His process.
At the end of His incarnation, that is, at the end of His human life, He went voluntarily into death. Christ's death was wonderful in three aspects. In the human aspect, He was murdered. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter (Isa. 53:7), and He was slaughtered by man for three hours, from nine o'clock in the morning until noon. Then from twelve o'clock to three o'clock in the afternoon, God came in. When God put all our sins upon Him, He counted Him as the unique sinner in the universe. Thus Christ died a vicarious death for us, the sinners. On the cross God wounded Him, crushed Him, cut Him off from the land of the living, and judged Him (vv. 5, 6, 8, 10a). Because of this, His death was counted by God as a vicarious death for us.
During those three hours from twelve o'clock until three o'clock in the afternoon, the universe became dark, and the veil in the temple was split in two from the top to the bottom (Matt. 27:45, 51a). This means that Christ tore the separation between God and man through His death. Not only so, the earth was shaken and the tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had died were raised (vv. 51b-52). They were not resurrected yet, but they waited for some time. At the time that Christ resurrected, they also resurrected, and they came out of the tombs and entered into the holy city and appeared to many (v. 53). Where they went after this we have no way to trace. All these things indicate that Christ's death was not just a death caused by man, but a death carried out by God directly, according to His righteousness.
Then, in the third aspect, He Himself was willing to die. He was not forced or compelled to die, but He poured out His life, His soul, to die for us (Isa. 53:12b).
In His resurrection Christ as the processed One, that is, the last Adam, became the life-giving Spirit. In John 7:37-38, at the end of the Feast of Tabernacles, the Lord Jesus stood and cried out, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes into Me, as the Scripture said, out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water." This word indicates that His believers would receive the Spirit. However, at that time the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified (v. 39). The Holy Spirit of God was there, but He was not there as the Spirit, because before Christ's resurrection the Holy Spirit of God had not been consummated. The Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified. Jesus was glorified when He was resurrected. When Jesus entered into resurrection, He was immediately glorified. Thus, on the day of His glorification, that is, the day of His resurrection, He came back to His disciples as the Spirit. He did not come back to teach them; rather, He breathed on them and told them to receive Him as the Spirit (John 20:19-22). Before Christ's resurrection, such a Spirit was not yet.
Because many Christians know little concerning the produce of Christ's resurrection, they have not seen that in Christ's resurrection, He as the last Adam became a life- giving Spirit. Many do not even believe that today Christ is the Spirit. They consider this a heresy. In their consideration, the three of the Trinity are separate — the Father is the Father; the Son is the Son; and the Spirit is the Spirit — and it is wrong to say that the Son is the Spirit. To say that the Son one day became the Spirit is heresy. However, if we say that Christ is not the Spirit, we annul 1 Corinthians 15:45b and 2 Corinthians 3:17, two verses that indicate clearly and confirm strongly that the Lord is the Spirit. Jesus became such a Spirit by passing through the process of death and the process of resurrection. When He reached the stage of resurrection, He became a life-giving Spirit. This is the first item of the produce of Christ's resurrection. Christ's resurrection produced the life-giving Spirit.
This life-giving Spirit is the reality of the pneumatic Christ. The word pneuma in Greek means "spirit." Thus, the word pneumatic actually means "spiritual." Christ is the pneuma; therefore, He is very pneumatic. The English word pneumatic means "of or pertaining to air." Thus, to be pneumatic is to be full of air. Our Christ today is pneumatic, full of the heavenly, divine, spiritual air. Today we may go to a gasoline station to get gasoline, air, and water. Let us come to Christ as our "gasoline station" to get the spiritual gasoline, the spiritual air, and the spiritual water. We need these things in order to "drive" our spiritual "car." The life-giving Spirit is the reality of such a pneumatic Christ. Our Christ today is not physical but spiritual. He does have a physical body (Luke 24:39-43), but His body is spiritually physical (1 Cor. 15:44). Today Christ is pneumatic; He is the life-giving Spirit.
This is for propagation, for producing, for spreading, through life-imparting. We are all parts of Christ. Before we were saved, we were not parts of Christ. Then the life-giving Spirit went along with the preaching of the gospel to impart Christ into us, and we were regenerated and became parts of Christ. This is Christ's spreading; this is Christ's propagation. In a real sense, we are not Americans, Chinese, Japanese, or Koreans. We are Christ's propagation; we are parts of Christ.
In His resurrection Christ, as the preeminent One, the One who has the first place in all things, became the Firstborn from among the dead (Col. 1:18; Rev. 1:5a). In 1 Kings 17 Elijah raised a widow's son, and in John 11 the Lord Jesus raised Lazarus. Since at least these two were resurrected before the Lord Jesus was, how could Jesus be considered the Firstborn from among the dead? The answer is that Elijah's raising of the widow's son and even the Lord Jesus' raising of Lazarus cannot be counted as resurrection in full, because after being resurrected, both of these resurrected ones died. However, the Lord Jesus was resurrected to live forever (Rev. 1:18). Not only so, in resurrection the Lord today is in glory. Neither Lazarus nor the one resurrected by Elijah entered into any kind of glory. But Jesus, when He came out of the tomb, entered into glory. He was not only resurrected, but His physical body was transfigured to become a spiritual physical body. This is a resurrection that is up to the standard. Before Jesus, no one experienced such a resurrection. Thus, He is the Firstborn from among the dead. This is the second item of the produce of Christ's resurrection.
Christ's resurrection, in which He became the Firstborn from the dead, was for the germination of God's new creation (Gal. 6:15; 2 Cor. 5:17) and also for Christ to be Head of the Body. In His resurrection, Christ became the Germinator of the new creation, and He also became the Head, the top One, of the Body. This too is the produce of His resurrection.
In His resurrection Christ as the God-man, in His humanity, was begotten of God (Acts 13:33). Before His resurrection Christ was the Son of God already. Why then did He need to be begotten of God? The answer is that before His resurrection, Christ was the only begotten Son of God (John 1:18). Not only so, when He was the only begotten Son, He was only divine; He was not human. He had only divinity; He did not have humanity. He had only the divine nature without the human nature. Through incarnation He became a God-man. In the aspect of His being God, He no doubt was divine. But in the aspect of His being a man, He was not divine before His resurrection. In His resurrection He "sonized" His humanity. Before His resurrection He was the Son of God in His divinity, but He was not the Son of God in His humanity. However, Acts 13:33 tells us that Christ's resurrection was a birth. In His resurrection He was begotten of God to be the firstborn Son of God (Rom. 8:29b). Christ's resurrection was a great birth, a great delivery, of a corporate child, which includes Christ and all His believers (John 20:17). He as the Son of Man was born of God to be the firstborn Son of God. Now, as the firstborn Son of God, He is both divine and human. He possesses two natures: the divine nature and the human nature. Hebrews 1:6 says that when the Lord Jesus comes back, He will not come as the Only Begotten but as the firstborn Son of God. This also is the produce of Christ's resurrection. Christ's resurrection produced the firstborn Son of God.
Christ as the firstborn Son of God is a model for conforming many sons to His image (Rom. 8:29a). If He were not human, how could we, who are human, be conformed to His image? If He were not human, He would not have a human image. But today He is both divine and human. He is God in God's form, in God's image, and He is also man in man's form, in man's image. He is divine and human, and we are human and divine. Thus, we can be conformed to His image. He is the model; we are the mass production, the many sons of God. Hence, Christ's resurrection also produced many sons of God.
In His resurrection Christ as the resurrection life regenerated all His believers (1 Pet. 1:3). Christ's believers are His brothers, and His brothers are the many sons of God (Heb. 2:10a, 11b-12; Rom. 8:29b). In this way Christ has become our inner life. He is the firstborn Son of God, and He has made us the many sons of God.
The many sons of God are the members of God's household to be God's kingdom (Eph. 2:19; Gal. 6:10) and God's precious inheritance (Eph. 1:11). Before Christ's resurrection God had a home, but in that home there were no children. Before Christ's resurrection, God, in a sense, was childless. It was through Christ's resurrection that God begot the firstborn Son and the many sons. Thus, from that time God began to have a family, a household. Eventually, this household becomes God's kingdom, and the children of God, the household of God, become God's precious inheritance. As God's many sons, we are God's inheritance. God considers only us, His sons, as His inheritance.
In His resurrection Christ, as the one grain of wheat, bore many grains (John 12:24). Through Christ's death and resurrection the one grain, Christ, became the many grains. When a single grain of wheat is sown into the earth, it grows and eventually produces many grains. In a sense, the original grain ceases to exist; it becomes the many grains. All the many grains together equal the original grain. Since Christ is in us, the many grains, He is wherever we are. Thus, He has become us. He is the aggregate grain, and we are the many grains produced by His resurrection.
The many grains produced by Christ's resurrection are His increase (John 3:30a). Farmers make a living by the increase of their seed. They sow a relatively small quantity of seed into the earth, and after three months they reap a large harvest. That harvest is the increase of the seed. When Jesus was on the earth traveling in the holy land, He was the unique grain. But today, consider how many "Christs" there are on this earth. There are not only thousands but millions around the globe. This is the vine mentioned in John 15. This great vine covers the entire globe. The church, which is Christ (1 Cor. 12:12) as His increase, is the true vine. This too is a product of Christ's resurrection. This is Christ's increase, propagation, and surplus.
The fourth stanza of Hymns, #203 reads:
In this verse a number of words are used to express the fact that the church is Christ's increase and expansion.
Furthermore, the many grains as the increase of Christ are the components of His Body, that is, the one bread, the church (Eph. 1:22-23; 1 Cor. 10:17). Every Lord's Day we take the Lord's table to participate in the bread. That bread signifies, first, Christ's physical body, which He gave up for us on the cross, and, second, Christ's mystical Body, which is the one bread, the church.
Through His life-releasing death and with His life-imparting resurrection, Christ produced a corporate seed as the issue of the travail of His soul, whom He saw in His resurrection and was satisfied (Isa. 53:10c-11b). Isaiah 53:10b says, "When He makes Himself an offering for sin, He will see a seed." As we mentioned previously, Christ's making Himself an offering for sin is related to His crucifixion. It is the "cause," and the "effect" is His seeing a seed in His resurrection. Here seed is singular, indicating that the seed is a corporate seed. This corporate seed implies all the many grains, all the members of Christ's Body, all Christ's brothers, and all the sons of God. The great "delivery" of Christ's resurrection still has not ceased. This delivery is continuing; it has produced millions of saints, and it is still producing. We, the gospel preachers, are the midwives. When we go out to contact sinners, we help to speed up the delivery.
All those brought forth through the gospel are the components of this corporate seed. This was accomplished through Christ's life-increasing and life-releasing death with His life-imparting resurrection, which produced a corporate seed as the issue of the travail of His soul, whom He saw in His resurrection and was satisfied. I believe that, even today, when the Lord Jesus looks at us, He is satisfied. We are a part of the seed; we are a part of the issue, the outcome, of His travail.
This seed is Christ's continuation for the extension of His days (Rev. 1:18a). Because Christ continues to live by living in us, we are the extension of His days.
This is for the pleasure of Jehovah (Eph. 1:5, 9; Phil. 2:13), which will prosper in His hand. This is the fulfillment of God's economy. Ephesians 1:5 and 9 are two verses that mention God's good pleasure. God's economy comes out of God's good pleasure. God's dispensing is to fulfill God's good pleasure, which is to produce many sons to be the components of the Body of Christ, the church. This is God's good pleasure. In the whole universe nothing but the church could be God's good pleasure.
In our gospel preaching, merely to save souls is inadequate. We need to realize that our preaching of the gospel is to produce something to be God's pleasure, something to make God happy. When one soul is saved, thousands of angels in heaven rejoice (Luke 15:10). The angels are so happy because this is God's good pleasure.
Isaiah 53:10c says that the pleasure of Jehovah will prosper in the resurrected Christ's hand. Christ's hand today is still moving, working, and operating to produce more and more believers for God's good pleasure.
Isaiah 53:11b says that Christ will make the many righteous, who will know Him as the righteous One. Today as long as a person would say, "Lord Jesus, You are the righteous One," this righteous One will enter into him to make him righteous. This is not merely to justify us objectively but to make us righteous subjectively, to live in us and live out of us to make us righteous. This is a subjective righteousness produced from within us, not by us but by Christ as the resurrection life living in us.
As the life of the believers, the resurrected Christ is all the members and in all the members of the new man (Col. 3:10-11). Before Christ's resurrection the life-giving Spirit, the firstborn Son of God, the Firstborn from the dead, the many sons of God, the many grains, the church, the Body of Christ, the new creation, and the new man did not exist. All these items were produced through Christ's resurrection.
As one of the items produced through Christ's resurrection, the new man is God's new creation, that is, the church. This new man carries out God's New Testament economy according to God's good pleasure.
As we have seen in this message, Christ's resurrection issued in the following items:
All these things were produced by the resurrection of Christ. This is the revelation of the all-inclusive Christ according to the holy Word. Although Isaiah wrote only a few lines concerning Christ in His resurrection, his writing comprises all the above-mentioned items as the explanation, the definition, of Christ's resurrection given by the apostle Paul.
