THE STEPS OF THE PROCESS OF THE TRIUNE GOD
His Incarnation
Before incarnation, the first step of His process, the Triune God had divinity but not humanity. He was only divine but not human; He was only God but not man. But one day the Triune God entered into the womb of a human virgin and after nine months was born out of that womb to be the God-man, a divine-human person, a person with both the divine nature and the human nature.
His Human Living
This God-man lived on earth for thirty-three and a half years. Although He did not accomplish anything great in a material sense, He did something marvelous—He expressed God, He manifested God, in full, in His human living.
His All-inclusive Death
The next step of the process of the Triune God was the all-inclusive death of Christ. Through His death Christ redeemed God’s chosen people, terminated the old creation, and released the divine life from within the "shell" of His humanity.
His Resurrection
After dying an all-inclusive death, Christ entered into resurrection. Once again I would emphasize the fact that in resurrection Christ was begotten to be the firstborn Son of God (Acts 13:33; Rom. 1:3-4; 8:29) and became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b) to regenerate God’s chosen people (1 Pet. 1:3). Early in the morning on the day of His resurrection, He went to heaven to the Father secretly (John 20:17). On the evening of the same day, He came to the disciples and breathed Himself into them as breath, saying, "Receive the Holy Spirit" (v. 22). This is the essential Spirit.
His Ascension and Descension
After forty days Christ ascended openly and officially. In His ascension He was made the Lord of all and the Christ of God (Acts 2:36). Ten days later, on the day of Pentecost, He descended to pour out Himself as the economical Spirit on the disciples (vv. 1-4, 17, 33). In His descension three thousand were regenerated, issuing in the church. Today He is the One who is ascending and descending continually (John 3:13). He is in the heavens, and He is also on earth. As a result of all the steps of this process, God is no longer the "raw God," God before His process, but the "cooked God," God after His process.
(Life-Study of Job, Chapter 17, by Witness Lee)
