(1)
Scripture Reading: Heb. 2:14a, Heb. 2:16-17a; Phil. 2:6-8; John 1:1, 14; 5:30; 6:38
The title of this message is “The Man-Savior’s God-man Living.” Have you ever considered this matter? Have you ever realized that when the Lord Jesus was on earth, His living was a God-man living? His living was not merely that of a man; rather, His living was the living of a God-man.
In order to save us, God had to live in a man for thirty-three and a half years. Have you ever thought about this? In creating the universe God used only six days, and on the seventh day He rested. Why, then, did God need to live on earth in a man for so many years in order to save us? Not only did the Lord become a man; He lived on earth as a man for thirty-three and a half years.
Shortly after I was saved, I began to consider God’s way of saving us. I said to myself, “God is almighty. If He wanted to, He could save us by snatching us out of hell and bringing us to heaven. Why did He become a man and live on earth?”
The Lord’s human living was genuine. Genuine human living is found not with the upper class but with the middle and lower classes. The Lord Jesus did not live His human life as part of the upper class of society. Instead, He was a member of a poor family and worked as a carpenter, living in the lower class of society. Even though He was a royal descendant of the family of David, He was born into a poor family and lived among the lower class for thirty years. At the age of thirty, He came forth to minister and ministered for three and a half years.
Since God is almighty, why did He not save us in the same way He created the universe? In His creation, God simply had to speak, and a certain matter came into being. For example, He said, “Let there be light,” and there was light (Gen. 1:3). Concerning creation, Psalm 33:9 says, “He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.” Since God created the heavens and the earth in this way, why was it necessary for Him to live on earth for thirty-three and a half years in order to save us?
Another question we have concerns the application of Christ’s redemption. The Man-Savior accomplished redemption more than nineteen hundred years ago. Why did He not immediately apply this accomplished redemption to all His chosen people and thereby not give the enemy the opportunity to do so many evil things?
Consider the situation from the time Christ accomplished redemption until now. Yes, Christianity has spread throughout the world, but actually there is little life. It seems that during the past nineteen centuries God has not accomplished very much. God has been working throughout the years, but there has been a great deal of opposition and attack. Satan, God’s enemy, has attacked God’s chosen people again and again. Why does this happen? Why did the Lord not apply His redemption immediately? If He did this, there might not be the need even for the millennium. After the application of redemption, everything would become new. There would be a new heaven, a new earth, and the New Jerusalem, where all God’s redeemed ones would be.
Have you ever considered matters such as these? Have you ever wondered why there is such a gap between the accomplishment of redemption and the application of redemption? I can testify that I have been thinking about these things for more than fifty years.
At the beginning of my Christian life, I wondered why God did not save us in a fast way, in a way like His work in creation. When I asked my pastor about this, he told me that because we are human beings it was necessary for our Savior to become a man. In creation, of course, there was no need for God to become a man. But in salvation it certainly was necessary for Him to become a man.
It was easier for God to create man than it was for Him to become a man. In creating man God had no difficulty; He simply did the work of creation. But God became involved with certain difficulties when He became a man. In His creation God merely did certain things. But in His salvation He not only did things — He became a man.
As I considered God’s incarnation for our salvation, I realized that it was logical for God to become a man in order to save us. But I still did not understand why He needed to live on earth for thirty-three and a half years. Why did He not become a man, stay on earth for a short period of time, perhaps a month, and then go to the cross to accomplish redemption? Why did He need to become a baby growing day by day? Luke 2:40 says, “And the little child grew and became strong, being filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon Him.” Here we see that the Lord Jesus grew in a normal way; He did not grow to full stature in a short period of time. Furthermore, instead of preaching for only several days and then dying for our redemption, the Lord Jesus ministered for three and a half years before going to the cross to accomplish redemption.
In the four Gospels we have a lengthy record of the Lord’s life and ministry. The Gospel of Matthew, for example, contains twenty-eight chapters. Instead of simply telling that the Lord Jesus was born and that He died for our redemption and was resurrected, Matthew records many other matters. In the Gospels we see that the Man-Savior did not grow up miraculously; on the contrary, He grew up in a normal way. But why was this necessary? Because we were fallen and sinful, we needed the Lord Jesus to die for us. He suffered a vicarious death for our salvation. But why did He need to suffer so many things during the thirty-three and a half years of His life?
Actually, only the last three hours on the cross were hours of vicarious suffering. During the first three hours He did not suffer vicariously. During the second period of three hours, God came in to judge the Man-Savior as our Substitute, “and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour” (Luke 23:44). Why, then, did He need to suffer during His first three hours on the cross, since that suffering was not for our sins?
For years I tried to find answers to these questions in books, but I failed to do so in full. Answers in full to these questions came only as a result of more than fifty years of personal, direct study of the Word, especially during the last ten years in which we have been carrying on the Life-study of the New Testament, a study that will be completed with the book of Acts.
Let us compare two possible ways of saving people. First, suppose God simply stretches forth His hand, snatches a sinner out of hell, and brings him to heaven. This way of saving a person would be easy. The second way, the way taken by God, is much more difficult. According to His way, God became a man and lived a human life on earth.
Through His incarnation God brought the divine attributes into the human virtues, filling, restoring, recovering, sanctifying, and transforming them. Consider how much time it required for man’s virtues to be uplifted and transformed in this way. In His salvation, God does not simply snatch people out of hell and bring them into heaven. Rather, for our salvation the saving God became a man and lived the kind of life on earth that qualified Him to save us. This life also became the basic factor of the Man-Savior’s dynamic salvation. The procedure that qualified the Man-Savior required a long period of time.
The first step of God’s salvation was to become a man, live on earth, die on the cross, and be resurrected. In the second step, the Man-Savior comes into the saved ones, lives in us, and grows in us, repeating His life in us.
Not only does the Lord grow gradually in the believers; He has also been spreading gradually throughout the world. Instead of suddenly spreading everywhere, the Lord has spread gradually from place to place. At first, His spread was only in the area of the Mediterranean Sea, and eventually He spread to North America and to China. One day, He came into me and you. Fifty-nine years ago, in 1925, the Man-Savior came into me. From that time onward, He has been living in me and growing in me.
How shall we speak of the Lord’s saving us by coming into us and living in us? We may say that this is salvation in life. However, the term “salvation in life” has been damaged by some Bible teachers who actually do not know adequately what it means to be saved in life (Rom. 5:10). According to the Bible, life is God Himself coming into us to live in us. It takes time for us to be saved in this way.
The Man-Savior went through a long process not to save us by snatching us out of hell, but to carry out His dynamic salvation. The term “dynamic salvation” means that God became a man and lived a man’s life to express God. Although He lived a man’s life, He did not express man — He expressed God. As the Man-Savior lived such a life on earth, the angels and demons could testify that He was man living a human life for the expression of God. This is the Man-Savior’s God-man living. The four Gospels tell us of the One who lived the life of a God-man.
In Luke 2:40-52 we see the Man-Savior growing and advancing. When He became twelve years old, He went with His parents to Jerusalem at the feast of the Passover according to custom (vv. 41-42). Luke also tells us that the Lord Jesus began His ministry when He was about thirty years old (3:23). Only in the Gospel of Luke are we told what happened to the Lord Jesus at the ages of twelve and thirty. The reason is that Luke presents the Lord Jesus as a genuine and typical man. In the Gospel of Luke we see that the Lord was a real man, a normal man; He was not a magical person. The Lord grew in a normal, human way. Eventually, at the age of thirty, He had come to maturity for the divine ministry. According to the Old Testament, a Levite had to be thirty years of age before he could enter fully into the priesthood. Likewise, the Man-Savior was fully grown when He entered into His ministry.
The Man-Savior’s living was a God-man living. When He was on the earth, the Lord Jesus lived a God-man. This living is a fact recorded in the Bible. We thank the Lord that we can study the account of the Lord’s God-man living recorded in the Gospels. The more I study the four Gospels and the more messages I give on them, the more convinced I become that the Lord Jesus truly was the God-man.
We have seen that the Man-Savior did not live a life expressing man. He lived a man’s life, yet this life expressed God. Hence, the Lord’s living was a God-man living. He lived a life in which God was expressed through man.
We have used the illustration of a hand and a glove to show how God was expressed through the Man-Savior’s humanity. A glove contains the hand and expresses the hand. When the hand in the glove moves, the glove also moves. But as the glove moves, it does not express the glove; it expresses the hand. In a similar way, the Lord Jesus lived on earth as a man, but He did not express man; He expressed God. He lived a life expressing God. When people saw Him, they saw a genuine man. Nevertheless, what they saw in Him was the expression of God. They did not see a man expressing man; they saw a man expressing God.
Concerning the expression of God in the Lord Jesus, John says, “We beheld His glory, glory as of an only begotten from a father” (John 1:14). Glory is the expression of God. Therefore, when the disciples saw the Lord’s glory, they saw the expression of God.
The Apostle John was one of the sons of thunder (Mark 3:17). Although he was bold and impetuous, he was attracted to the Man-Savior and followed Him. He and his brother James were the second group attracted to the Lord Jesus. (The first group was composed of Peter and Andrew.) When the Lord called John and James, they were “in the boat with Zebedee their father mending their nets” (Matt. 4:21). But they were attracted to the Lord and left the boat and their father and followed Him (Matt. 4:22). For the next three and a half years they saw the God-man’s living, although they did not understand what they were seeing. But after the Man-Savior’s resurrection, their eyes were opened, and they began to understand the Man-Savior’s God-man living.
When John wrote his Gospel, he was very old, probably in his nineties. He testified that God became flesh and that they beheld His glory. A man was living and walking with them, and in this One they saw the glory of God. When He was with them in the flesh, they did not understand that the Lord was a man living a human life to express God. But after His resurrection they came to realize that they had seen God expressed in Jesus the Nazarene.
The Gospels record the history of the Man-Savior’s God-man living. Now this history needs to be written into our being. In a forthcoming message we shall see that God’s desire is to reproduce in us the Man-Savior and His God-man living.
