GOD’S ETERNAL GOOD PLEASURE OF HIS WILL
Before God created anything, He had a good pleasure within Him (Eph. 1:5, 9). This pleasure became His will, which eventually became His purpose. This purpose then became His economy through His counsel (vv. 9-11; 3:9). Through a council held among the three of the Trinity (Gen. 1:26), God made a counsel to create man and even to become a man. Hence, God created man according to His good pleasure. After creating everything, He looked on what He had made, including man, and said that it was very good (Gen. 1:31). God created man with a body and with a spirit and placed him before the tree of life. This was the first step. But man still did not have God. Thus, God had to take a further step, the step of becoming a man.
GOD’S PROMISE TO COME TO BE THE SEED OF MAN
Do not think that it was easy for God to enter into man. He first created man, and then He waited. God is a God who is patience; therefore, He can be patient. After creating man, He waited four thousand years before He came to be a man. The first promise that He would come was given to Adam (Gen. 3:15), and the second promise, two thousand years later, was given to Abraham (22:18). Still, He did not come; rather, He waited another two thousand years. Then one day, two thousand years ago, He came, not in the way of coming down from the third heaven and appearing suddenly as a man on the earth, but by entering into the womb of a human virgin. He was born there and remained in that womb for nine months (Matt. 1:20). Then He was delivered out of the womb of that virgin, and He became a child in the manger at Bethlehem (Luke 2:16). This child was called the Mighty God and the Eternal Father (Isa. 9:6). He was also called Emmanuel—God with us (Matt. 1:23). He is God with man, and He is a man.
To Be the Seed of Woman
After the first step of God’s creation of man, man became fallen (Gen. 3:1-6). Then God came in, not to condemn man or to curse man, but to give man a promise that the seed of the woman would come to bruise the head of the damaging serpent (v. 15; Isa. 7:14; Gal. 4:4; Matt. 1:20, 16). That promise indicated that God Himself would come to be the seed of woman.
To Be the Seed of Abraham
After the promise given to Adam, God waited two thousand years until the time of Abraham. He then made a further promise to Abraham, saying, "And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed" (Gen. 22:18; Gal. 3:16; Matt. 1:1). According to Galatians 3:14, the promise given to Abraham was that God Himself would come to be the seed of Abraham, and this seed would be a blessing to all the nations by becoming the all-inclusive Spirit for mankind to receive.
THE FULFILLMENT OF GOD’S
GOOD PLEASURE AND PROMISE
The Word as the Defined and
Explained God Becoming Flesh
After His promise to Abraham, God waited another two thousand years before coming to be a man named Jesus Christ, who was also called Emmanuel—God with us. Through His incarnation He as the Word, the defined and explained God, became flesh (John 1:1, 14a; Rom. 8:3m).
Since that time two thousand years have passed. A total of six thousand years have passed since the creation of Adam: two thousand years from Adam to Abraham, two thousand years from Abraham until the day God became incarnated to be a man, and two thousand years from that day until today.
(The Organic Union in God's Relationship with Man, Chapter 2, by Witness Lee)
