This Christ is the complete God according to His divine nature and the perfect man according to His human nature. He is the complete God mingled with the perfect man.
Therefore, He is One who is both God and man; He is a God-man. This God-man was a mingling of the divine nature with the human nature, without a third nature being produced. This may be likened to soaking tea leaves in water to produce tea. Neither the nature of the tea nor the nature of the water is lost. Both natures still exist and are mingled together, without a third nature being produced. Some people misunderstand us and say that concerning the God-man, we teach that the divine nature disappeared, the human nature was changed, and a third nature was produced. This is a heresy which we have never taught. This is not what we have seen from the Bible. The Lord Jesus is the mingling of two natures as one entity, without a third nature being produced. He is One who is both God and man.
I hope that you, brothers and sisters, will apply the effort to study so that you may know how the Lord Jesus as God is all-inclusive and unlimited and how He as a man is also all-inclusive and unlimited. If He was merely a man and not the God-man, then He could neither be all-inclusive nor unlimited since, as we all know, man is neither all-inclusive nor unlimited. However, because as the God-man the Lord Jesus was God mingled with man, and since God is all-inclusive and unlimited, the Lord Jesus as such a man was also all-inclusive and unlimited. This may be likened to a glass of plain water which is without any flavor, but when tea is added, the flavor gets into the water. Man is finite, but when he has God mingled with him, he becomes infinite. Man is not all-inclusive, but when he has God mingled with him, he becomes all-inclusive.
Finally, Christ is the Redeemer. We all know that Jesus is the Redeemer, but what we know is too general, too vague, and too superficial. We must study in depth the statuses in which He came to be our Redeemer.
Who was the One who was crucified on the cross? Was He God? Some may not dare to answer this question. Can God be crucified? No one believes that man can nail God on the cross. God cannot be crucified. Who, then, was put to death on the cross? We should say that the One who was both God and man was crucified. On the cross, He was crucified in His humanity with His divinity. Strictly speaking, He did not die there, but He passed through death. Dying is one thing, and passing through death is another thing. When we humans die, we truly die. However, instead of dying, He passed through death. Even His death was His work; He did a great deal of work at the time of His death. What work did He do? He did a saving and redeeming work. His saving and His redeeming were accomplished through His death. Human death cannot accomplish anything, but the Lord Jesus’ death on the cross was His great work.
At that time the One whom the Jews arrested was not merely God but a man, yet that man had God inside of Him. Likewise, the One whom they crucified was not merely God but a man, but that man had God in Him. Therefore, the One who died on the cross was both God and man, and His death was a death in humanity with divinity. Furthermore, He did not die there, strictly speaking; rather, He passed through death. The Jews thought that when they killed Him, everything would be over. However, this was not the case with Him. On the contrary, His crucifixion offered Him the best opportunity to be exceedingly active and to do a great amount of work in His death. Therefore, He did not merely die but passed through death.
Second, He died on the cross as a created man. Since He had blood and flesh, He was truly a man, and since He was a man, He was a creature. Today some Christians oppose this truth, but Paul said that Christ is the Firstborn of all creation. He bore the sins of the world as a created man. If He were not a man, how could He have borne our sins and died for us? He tasted death on behalf of every created thing; that is, He died for everything. Since He was a created man, as such, He bore all our wrong doings, trespasses, and sinful acts and died on the cross for us. When He died there, He died on behalf of every created thing. When man sinned, he defiled every created thing. Hence, all created things needed Christ to taste death on their behalf.
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