Today, because of the convenience in transportation and the developments in communication, the globe seems to be much smaller. I can testify to this. Fifty-two years ago when I first began to serve the Lord, I took a boat from my hometown Chefoo in the province of Shantung to Shanghai. Such a short distance took me forty-eight hours. Since the boat was small and the waves were high, I became very sick. However, today, it takes only twelve and a half hours to come to Taiwan by airplane from Los Angeles, and it takes only one and a half days to make a round trip. It is very convenient. In addition, twenty years ago I often spent a great amount of time writing and answering letters. Sometimes I spent half a day without finishing even two or three letters. Today, however, there is no need to go to all that trouble. All I need to do is to pick up the phone. In just one phone call I can have a clear discussion of a certain matter and get an answer in five minutes. Sometimes I have called Brazil, Stuttgart, and Taipei; within an hour a certain matter related to America, Europe, and Asia was settled. People in the world claim that all these conveniences are for the advancement of civilization and the elevation of human living, but we have to say that these conveniences are for the spreading of the gospel.
Moreover, no one ever imagined that today’s American English would have become a language that is commonly used throughout the whole earth. Similarly, before the Lord Jesus was born, the Roman Empire ruled over the world surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. The Lord arranged the environment that He might be born in Bethlehem to fulfill the prophecy in Micah 5:2 in the Old Testament. At that time, Greek was commonly used within the Roman Empire, and the transportation by land or by sea could take people wherever they wanted to go. Therefore, after the Lord’s death and resurrection, the disciples traveled throughout the world, and they preached the gospel wherever they went. We thank and praise the Lord that even though there are all manner of oppositions on the earth, history has proved that all the situations on the earth are for the facilitation of the preaching of the gospel. Who did this? This was done by the ascended Jesus. These five major steps-being incarnated, passing through human living, dying for the creation, resurrecting from the dead, and ascending to the heavens-are concerned with the accomplishments and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
In the previous message, we saw the meaning of the name Jesus. Je- stands for Jehovah, and -sus means Savior. Therefore, Jesus means Jehovah the Savior. The meaning of Christ in Greek is the anointed One. Anointed is a biblical term; the common expression is to be commissioned, to be sent, or to receive a charge. Jesus Christ is the complete God becoming a perfect man to carry out God’s commission. The carrying out of His commission is His work, which is also His move.
His initial work was to create the heavens and the earth. John 1:3 says, “Apart from Him not one thing came into being which has come into being.” Therefore, the first step of His work was creation. Perhaps some may ask why, since the first step of God’s work is creation, I did not include this point in the outline of this message concerning His work. This is because the creation of all things was His preliminary work. Even though we regard the heavens and the earth as being very vast and all the creation as consisting of many items, they are not very important in God’s economy. The creation of all things is just the preliminary work to gain a group of people, that the Triune God may work Himself into them so that they can have the same life and nature as He has. This does not mean that since we have been saved and have God’s life and nature, we become God with His Godhead to be worshipped by men. This is a great heresy, and it is blasphemous and offensive to God. However, if we say that as the saved ones we have been born of God to be His children and that we possess His Spirit and His life but not His nature, this is also a wrong teaching because 2 Peter 1:4 tells us clearly that God has made us partakers of His divine nature. This is an extraordinary matter. What does it mean to be saved? To be saved is to have God come into us so that His life becomes our life, and His nature becomes our nature, because we have been born of God. If we are born of man, but we say that we do not have man’s life and nature, are we not talking nonsense? We partake of the life and nature of whatever we were born of. Since our natural, physical man was born of human parents, of course, we have man’s life and nature. When we were saved by believing in the Lord, we were regenerated. This is to be born not of man but of God. Since we were born of God, how can we not have God’s life and nature? Hallelujah, we have God’s life, and we also have God’s nature! The creation of all things was not God’s primary work but His preliminary work. Today God’s main work is to work Himself into man.
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