In this message we shall begin to consider Christ’s attributes and virtues. We use “attributes” in relation to God and “virtues” in relation to man. The Lord Jesus possesses both the divine nature with its divine attributes and the human nature with its human virtues. The divine attributes are related to what God is and has. Because the Lord Jesus was conceived of the Holy Spirit with the divine essence, He possesses the divine nature with the divine attributes. Because He was born of a human virgin with the human essence, He possesses the human virtues. Therefore, while He was on earth, He lived a life that was both human and divine. He lived a human life, but in that life the divine attributes were expressed.
Christ is the God-man, a person who is the mingling of divinity with humanity. In Him we see all the attributes of God and all the human virtues. The makeup of Christ’s being, His constitution, is a composition of the divine nature with its divine attributes and the human nature with its human virtues. In the Lord Jesus man and God, God and man, are mingled to form a composition full of the divine attributes and the human virtues. Furthermore, in Christ the divine attributes strengthen and enrich the human virtues.
In His incarnation Christ, the very God, was born in such a way as to have the human virtues. He was conceived of God to have the divine attributes, and He was born of mankind to have the human virtues. With Him the divine attributes filled the human virtues, and the human virtues contained the divine attributes. In Christ the divine attributes and the human virtues are one; that is, the divine attributes and the human virtues are mingled together as one. With Christ the divine attributes are in the human virtues, and the human virtues contain the divine attributes. Therefore, possessing the divine nature and the human nature, He lived a life on earth with the attributes of God expressed in the virtues of man.
Today the Christ who lives in us is still the One who possesses the human virtues strengthened and enriched by the divine attributes. The Christ who is being dispensed into us is a composition of the divine nature with its divine attributes and the human nature with its human virtues. While He was on earth, He lived a life that was a composition of these two. From the time of His resurrection He has been seeking to live in the believers the kind of life He lived on earth. This means that within us today Christ is still living a life that is a composition of the divine nature with its divine attributes and the human nature with its human virtues. If we see this, we shall say with Paul, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20).
One of Christ’s attributes is glory (Heb. 2:9; Rev. 5:12). According to the Bible, glory is God expressed. Whenever God is expressed, that is glory. Hebrews 2:9 says that Christ has been crowned with glory. This glory is the splendor, in the expression of God, related to His person. After He accomplished redemption by suffering death, the Lord Jesus was glorified in His resurrection (Luke 24:26), and in His ascension to the heavens He was crowned with glory. Man crowned Him with thorns to shame Him (John 19:2), but God crowned Him with glory to show forth the splendor of His person in God’s glory.
The Lord’s word in John 17:5 indicates that He and the Father are the same in glory: “Glorify Me with Yourself, Father, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.” This reveals that the Son is exactly the same as the Father in glorification. The Son is glorified along with the Father and with the same glory that the Father has. This word shows that Christ had the divine glory along with the Father before the world was, that is, in eternity past, and that He should be glorified with the Father with that glory now. The Lord Jesus participates in the divine glory, not separately by Himself, but along with the Father, for He and the Father are one (John 10:30). Therefore, Christ and the Father are the same in the divine glory.
Before His incarnation, Christ as the only begotten Son of God was with the Father in glory and enjoyed this glory with the Father. But when He put on flesh through incarnation, this glory was concealed in His flesh. His humanity was a shell that covered and confined the divine life and nature, along with the divine glory, that were within Him. The divine glory, the expression of the divine life and nature, was therefore confined and concealed within the Lord’s humanity. Christ’s divine element was confined in His humanity much as God’s shekinah glory was concealed within the tabernacle. Outwardly, the Lord Jesus appeared to be a Jew, even a despised Galilean and a Nazarene. This was the appearance of the shell of His humanity. But within this shell the divine glory was confined and concealed. As the Lord lived, walked, and worked among the people, His disciples saw in Him something that had never been seen by men before. Although the Lord lived among them as a man, He lived in such a way that He expressed God. What the disciples saw in the Lord Jesus was the expression of the divine glory that was within Him. Once, on the mountain of transfiguration, Christ’s divine element was released from within His flesh and expressed in glory, being seen by three of the disciples (Matt. 17:1-4; John 1:14). But it was concealed again in His flesh. Therefore, it was necessary for Him to pass through death so that the concealing shell of His humanity might be broken for His divine element to be released. He also had to be resurrected so that He might uplift His humanity into the divine element and that His divine element might be expressed so that His entire being, both His divinity and His humanity, might be glorified.
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