The incarnation of Christ brought God into man. God was begotten in a virgin. The child who came out of this virgin’s womb was a God-man. He was not an ordinary man but a perfect man who was also the complete God. The God-ordained name given to this God-man was Jesus.
The meaning of the name of Jesus is Jehovah the Savior or the salvation of Jehovah. Jehovah in the Old Testament was Jesus, and Jesus in the New Testament is Jehovah. Jehovah and Jesus are one person. We need to know all these wonderful items about this wonderful person. He is wonderful, and His name is “Wonderful” (Isa. 9:6). Therefore, His biography, His history, His story, is altogether wonderful. Jesus is Jehovah becoming a man to be our Savior.
Although His name given by God was Jesus, the people called Him Emmanuel, which means God with us (Matt. 1:23). Jesus is God with us. He is God incarnated to dwell among us (John 1:14). He is not only God but also God with us. The title for His divine commission is Christ, the Messiah, God’s anointed One.
Christ is the Word of God who was God in eternity past. In time man was created in His image to be His photo. After man fell, God promised that a seed of the woman would come to bruise the head of the serpent. About two thousand years later, God came to Abraham and promised him a seed, telling him that this seed would become a blessing to the whole earth. This seed was Jesus. One day He came in incarnation to be a man. He came as the Word of God and as the image of God begotten in the virgin Mary’s womb. He came out of that womb to be Jesus, Jehovah our Savior, for our salvation, and Emmanuel, God with us. He is God’s anointed One, the Christ, to accomplish God’s will, God’s desire.
This wonderful One is the Son who embodies and expresses the Father. In John 14 Philip asked the Lord to show him and the other disciples the Father. The Lord Jesus responded in this way: “Have I been so long a time with you, and you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father.…Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me” (vv. 8-9, 11a). The Lord revealed to His disciples that He was the embodiment and expression of the Father. He is both the Father and the Son (Isa. 9:6).
He is the Word of the Father, describing and defining the Father. Since He is the embodiment and expression of the Father, when He was with His disciples, that was also the Father with the disciples. Although the Father and the Son are one, They are still distinct, as indicated by the fact that the Son prayed to the Father.
John 14 says that He asked the Father to send another Comforter (v. 16), indicating that He was the first Comforter from the Father. According to John 14, another Comforter was needed. The second Comforter is the Spirit of reality who is the realization of the Son. The Spirit of reality came not only to be with us but also to be in us. The Spirit of reality within us is the realization of the Son, who is the embodiment of the Father. We have the Triune God within us. The Father is embodied in the Son, the Son is realized as the Spirit, and the Spirit is within us as the Son who is the embodiment of the Father.
The Father is the source, the Son is the embodiment of the Father, and the Spirit is the realization of the Son who is the embodiment of the Father. When we have the Spirit, we have the Son. When we have the Son, we have the Father. In other words, when we have the Son, we have the Father who is the source and also the Spirit as the realization of the Son, who is the embodiment of the Father. This is all a part of the biography of Christ.
Our Lord Jesus Christ is the Word of God and the image of God, according to which we were made. When man became fallen, the Father promised that a seed of the woman would come. This seed of woman is the seed of Abraham to be the blessing for the whole earth. This seed came through a woman, a virgin named Mary. God came into her womb and came out of her womb as a God-man named Jesus, Jehovah the Savior to be our salvation. People called Him Emmanuel, God with us. Later, He told His disciples that He was the embodiment and the expression of the Father. He went on to tell them that He would ask the Father to give them another Comforter to come as His realization.
This fellowship should help us to realize how rich Christ is. He is the Word of God, the seed of woman, the seed of Abraham, a God-man, Jehovah, the Savior, Jesus, and Emmanuel. He is the embodiment and expression of the Father, and the Spirit is His realization. Now He is within us as the Spirit.
(Five Emphases in the Lord's Recovery, Chapter 2, by Witness Lee)