Christ lived in His humanity on the earth to express God for thirty-three and a half years—He is God manifested in the flesh (1 Tim. 3:16). He is the faithful Witness of God (Rev. 1:5). He witnessed God.
He is also the tabernacle of God as God’s movable dwelling place among men (John 1:14). Most of the English versions say in John 1:14 that the Word became flesh and dwelt among men. This predicate, according to the Greek text, should be tabernacled. He is God’s dwelling place among men, but movable, like a tent, a tabernacle. Abraham brought his tent through many places. Christ was such a tent of God among men. Also, He is the temple of God as God’s established dwelling place on earth (John 2:19-21). Furthermore, Christ is the light of the world (John 8:12).
He died an all-inclusive death through which He crucified Satan—the old serpent (John 3:14; Heb. 2:14)—sin (Rom. 8:3; John 1:29), the world (John 12:31), the fallen man with his flesh (Rom. 6:6; Gal. 2:20), the old creation (represented by the old fallen man), and the law with its ordinances (Rom. 10:4; Col. 2:14; Eph. 2:15) for the accomplishment of God’s eternal redemption (Heb. 9:12). Through His death He also released His divine life from the shell of His humanity to be dispensed into His believers (John 12:24; 3:15). Christ’s death abolished all the negative things. On the positive side, He released His divine life from His human shell. He was the one grain who died to release His life and become many grains. The negative side of Christ’s death was for God’s redemption; the positive side is for life dispensing.
He resurrected from among the dead (Matt. 28:6-7; 1 Cor. 15:4b), and through His resurrection He in His humanity was designated to be the firstborn Son of God (Rom. 1:4; 8:29; Acts 13:33), became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45), and regenerated with His resurrection life all the people chosen by God before the foundation of the world (1 Pet. 1:2-3; Eph. 1:4). We were regenerated in His resurrection.
Christ ascended to the heavens, and in His ascension He was crowned and enthroned to be the Lord of all men and all things to rule over the whole universe (Acts 10:36), the Christ—the Anointed of God—to accomplish God’s economy (Acts 2:36), and the Ruler of the kings of the earth (Rev. 1:5) to arrange the situations of the world and the environment of God’s chosen people that they may be saved by Him as the Savior who will be received by all His believers as their everything (Acts 5:31). Christ rules sovereignly over the earth with His authority that the environment might be fit for God’s chosen people to receive His salvation. He needs to be the Ruler of all situations to save us. A person may live in a remote place where there is no opportunity for him to hear the gospel, so the Lord arranges the situation to bring him to another place where he can hear the gospel and be saved. I hate imperialism, but I thank the Lord that He used imperialism to save me. Without imperialism, the gospel could never have gone to China and to my hometown there.
In His ascension Christ is also the Head of the church to take care of the church as His Body (Eph. 1:22-23; 5:29-30), the Paraclete in heaven before God to take care of all the cases and needs of His members (1 John 2:1), and the One who is realized by His Spirit as the Paraclete in His members (John 14:16-20). He is the heavenly Minister to minister heaven into His believers to make them the heavenly citizens (Heb. 8:2; Phil. 3:20), the great High Priest in the heavens to take care of His believers’ needs, intercede for them, and save them to the uttermost (Heb. 4:14-15; 7:25-27), the Mediator of the new covenant, bequeathed by Him to His believers through His death, to execute it (Heb. 8:6; 9:15), and the surety of the better covenant to be its guarantee (Heb. 7:22). The above items are different aspects of Christ’s ministry in the heavens.
(The Ten Great Critical 'Ones' for the Building Up of the Body of Christ, Chapter 2, by Witness Lee)