We have seen that man has the highest life in God’s creation, a life with the image of God to express God and with the authority of God to represent God to subdue all the enemies of God. In this way man can bring satisfaction and rest to God. By the help of the New Testament, we can realize that the man created by God is a type, a figure, pointing to the real man, who is Christ (Rom. 5:14). The first Adam is a type, a figure, of the last Adam (1 Cor. 15:45b), who is the real Adam. He is the Son of God incarnated as a man by the name of Jesus Christ.
Most of the items of God’s creation are also types, figures, of Christ. The heavens, the earth, the plants, and the living creatures are figures of Christ. Eventually, man, the last item of God’s creation, is a figure of Christ. All the things created by God are not the real things. The real thing is Christ Himself. The real heaven, the real earth, and the real light are Christ. The real plant, the real beauty, and the real order are Christ. The real word is Christ; He is the Word. If you do not have Christ, all that you have is false. Christ is everything as reality to us.
We also have to realize that the man created by God was not an individual man. Adam was a corporate man, a collective man, a man including himself and all his descendants. In the same principle, Christ is not only an individual man. Christ is a collective man, a corporate man, composed of Christ Himself and all the members of Christ. Therefore, 1 Corinthians 12:12 says, “For even as the body is one and has many members, yet all the members of the body, being many, are one body, so also is the Christ.” Christ is not only the Head but also the Body. This means that Christ is a collective man, a corporate man. Just as the old man includes Adam and all his descendants, the new man includes Christ and all His believers.
We were made as parts of the first Adam, and now we have been regenerated as parts of the last Adam to be the expression of God in Christ. With the first Adam, everything is a figure and is not real. But with the last Adam, everything is real. If you are merely a person of the first Adam, you do not have anything real. After you have been regenerated to become a part of the last Adam, there is something real within you.
God also created a bride, a wife, to match man, to be the helpmate to man, the counterpart of man, and this counterpart was his increase. A wife is a counterpart and an increase to her husband. A man needs a wife to match him, to be his counterpart. A watermelon cut in two halves is a picture of a wife and a husband. One half is the husband and the other half is the wife, and when you put the two halves together, you have the whole person. As a man, you need a wife to match you to be your counterpart, to make you whole, to make you complete, and to be your increase. The man created by God is a figure of Christ. He needs a counterpart. This simply means that Christ, the new man in this universe, needs a counterpart. The church is the bride of Christ, the counterpart to match Christ.
The Scriptures reveal how much Christ loves the church and desires to have the church. This is why the enemy always does his best to spoil the church. The church is the desire of Christ’s heart. Ephesians 5:25 tells us that Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her. We may only have the thought that Christ loves sinners, so He died for us. We forget that Christ loved the church, so He died on the cross for the church, which is His counterpart.
Therefore, in the types in God’s creation, there are the man and the bride, the counterpart, to match the man. This counterpart is something out of man. She is not an addition but an increase. Similarly, the church is not something added to Christ but something increased out of Christ. A man needs a body to express himself and a wife to make him complete. A head without a body is frightening because it is not a real or proper man. Yet today many Christians have the thought that as long as we have Christ as the Head, everything is all right. However, Christ is not only the Head. He also includes the Body, the church. Our Christ must be the Head with the Body.
If we have only a Christian life, that is not good enough. We need the church life. We need to experience Christ as our life, and we also need the experience of the church life. A complete person is a person with a head and a proper body. We need a proper church life to match our Christian life. We need Christ as the Head and the church as the Body.
God created Adam, the husband, but God gave Adam an increase, which was Eve, his wife. Brothers, you cannot live just by yourself as a bachelor. Sooner or later you have to be married. Although some remain unmarried, that is an exception. That is not natural. Spiritually and naturally, you have to marry. This also means that as a Christian, living a proper Christian life, you need the church life. Your spiritual nature within says that you need the church life. A born-again Christian, a spiritual Christian, always longs to have a church life. If you do not have a church life, you have no rest. You are not satisfied. You need both Christ as the Head and the church as the Body.
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