CHRIST BEING A MAN
The Son is the center with the Father in Him, and He is the Spirit. But there is something more. He is the Son of Man. One day He became a man. In His incarnation the Triune God, the Father in the Son as the Spirit, mingled Himself with man (John 1:14). Jesus the Nazarene, the man, is the very God. Do you believe this? If you do not believe this, you are not a Christian, but a Jew or a Muslim. The Jews and the Muslims believe God as the Creator, but they do not believe that God has ever been incarnated as a man. But we believe. If anyone does not believe this but claims that he is a Christian, he is an anti-Christ Christian. All sound, proper, and genuine Christians believe that this Triune God is a man, a God-man, a Triune God-man, the Triune God mingled with man.
When I was young, I had a wrong concept about the Lord. I thought that in His incarnation He put on man as a piece of clothing for thirty-three and a half years and that after His death and resurrection He put off the clothing which He had put on. Later, I realized that this is wrong. Christ is still a man today. After His resurrection, He came to His disciples with His physical body. Of course, that body was something wonderful which we cannot understand in a full way. It was a resurrected body, a spiritual body, yet it was physical. He showed the disciples His hands and His feet and asked them to touch Him because He had flesh and bones (Luke 24:39-40). Hence, after His resurrection, He is still a man.
Now let us read Matthew 26:63-64. "But Jesus remained silent. And 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. Jesus said to him, 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." The high priest asked the Lord if He was the Son of God, but He answered with "the Son of Man." After His ascension to the heavens, the Lord is still the Son of Man, and even when He comes back on the clouds of heaven, He will still be the Son of Man. He is not only the Triune God but also a man.
Now let us read Acts 7:55-56. "But being full of the Holy Spirit, he [Stephen] looked intently into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God; and he said, Behold, I see the heavens opened up and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God." This shows clearly that even after His ascension, the Lord Jesus today is in the heavens as a man. Furthermore, 1 Timothy 2:5 says, "For there is one God and one Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus." The Lord Jesus is and will be forever a man. He is the Triune God mingled with man, so He is the God-man, the Triune God-man. He is the complete God and the perfect man with His divinity and His humanity. He was incarnated with a specific purpose—to enter into humanity and put humanity on Himself as one of the main parts of His person today, and He will keep humanity for eternity. He will be man as well as God forever and ever.
CHRIST AS EVERYTHING
Therefore, what is Christ? Christ is the Son with the Father as the Spirit mingled together with man. In Christ are the Son, the Father, the Spirit, and the man. All the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him (Col. 2:9). All the fullness of the Father is in the Son, all that the Son has is in the Spirit, and all that the Spirit has is in the man. This is the very Christ in whom we believe, and this is the very Christ who dwells in us. This is the Savior in whom we believe, the Lord whom we serve, and the very God whom we worship. This is the Christ who is life to us. In this life we have the Father, the Son, the Spirit, and the man.
Here is a cup of plain water. Later, you add in some lemon juice. Then it is no longer just water, but water mingled with lemon juice. Before His incarnation, God was merely God. But after His incarnation, He is God mingled with man. Within Him is the human nature, the human essence, the human element in addition to His divinity. With our Christ there are both divinity and humanity, both the divine element and the human element. He is not only the Triune God but also the man. He is the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—the Triune God—and the man. He is everything. As God, He is the Creator, and as a man, He is a creature (Col. 1:15). So in Him we have the Creator and the creature.
But this is not all. It is wonderful that we can never exhaust telling what He is. Besides being the Creator and a creature, He passed through human living on this earth for thirty-three and a half years. Then He suffered death and conquered death. He passed through death and He came out of death. Thus, in Him there is the element of the effectiveness of His all-inclusive death. Although death is an awful thing, the death of Christ is a great blessing, a great deliverance, and a great release to us. The death brought in by Adam sent us into hell, but the death of Christ brings us out of hell. The death brought in by Adam was a real trouble to us, but the death accomplished and passed through by Christ is a real deliverance to us. We have to sing much about the death of Christ. We have to shout, even proclaim, that we have the death of Christ.
Moreover, the death of Christ is the killing power, the killing element. Today in some doses of medicine there is an element that kills the germs in your body and an element that nourishes your body. In Christ we have the killing power and the nourishing supply. The killing power is the element of the effectiveness of His death, and the supply is the resurrection life. Death kills, but resurrection supplies. Death solves the problems, but resurrection supplies us with the rich provision of life.
After resurrection, there is the ascension of Christ. Now He is in the heavens and He is transcendent. In this transcendency He is enthroned with authority and glorified. With Christ there is also the kingdom. We simply cannot exhaust all the items of Christ. In this one great "dose" we have the Creator, the creature, the human nature, the human living, the effective death, the resurrection, the ascension, the enthronement, the glorification, and the kingdom. This great dose is Christ Himself. The Christ who is life to us is such an all-inclusive Christ, and He is so much. He is the Son of God, the Father, the Spirit, and the man. Everything is with Him and in Him. We have to know Christ in such a full way. When we take Christ as our life day by day, we will experience Him in all of these aspects.
I hope that we would bring all these things to the Lord and pray much that the Lord, the Spirit, may reveal them to us, not just in the way of knowledge but in the way of revelation and vision, that we may see the rich reality of Christ in whom we believe and whom we serve. We have to know what kind of Christ we are experiencing as life day by day and how we can contact, experience, partake of, and enjoy such a Christ.
(The Life and Way for the Practice of the Church Life, Chapter 4, by Witness Lee)
