Message Six

The Full Ministry of Christ in Three Stages—
Incarnation, Inclusion, and Intensification

1. The first stage of the full ministry of Christ is the stage of His incarnation, the stage of Christ in the flesh, from His human birth through His human living to His death:
   1. In His incarnation, Christ brought the infinite God into the finite man; He also united and mingled the Triune God with the tripartite man.
   2. In His human living, Christ expressed in His humanity the bountiful God in His rich attributes through His aromatic virtues:
      1. Christ expressed the bountiful God in His human living, mainly expressing God in His rich attributes.
      2. Christ attracted and captivated people through His aromatic virtues:
         1. Not by living His human life in the flesh.
         2. But by living His divine life in resurrection.
   3. In His death, Christ accomplished His all-inclusive judicial redemption:
      1. He terminated all things of the old creation.
      2. He redeemed all the things created by God and fallen in sin—Heb. 2:9; Col. 1:20.
      3. He created (conceived) the new man with His divine element—Eph. 2:15.
      4. He released His divine life from the shell of His humanity—John 12:24.
      5. He laid a foundation for His organic salvation and set up the procedure to attain His ministry in the stage of His inclusion.
2. The second stage of the full ministry of Christ is the stage of His inclusion, the stage of Christ as the life-giving Spirit, from His resurrection to the degradation of the church:
   1. In His resurrection, Christ was begotten as God's firstborn Son—Acts 13:33:
      1. From eternity past without beginning, Christ was God's only begotten Son, possessing only divinity, without humanity, and not having passed through death into resurrection.
      2. In incarnation the only begotten Son of God became flesh to be a God-man, a man possessing both the divine nature and the human nature.
      3. Through death and resurrection Christ in the flesh as the seed of David was designated to be the firstborn Son of God—Rom. 1:3-4:
         1. In death His humanity was crucified.
         2. In resurrection His crucified humanity was made alive in the Spirit of His divinity (1 Pet. 3:18) and was uplifted into the sonship of the only begotten Son of God.
         3. Thus, He was begotten by God in His resurrection to be the firstborn Son of God.
   2. In His resurrection, Christ as the last Adam became the life-giving Spirit—1 Cor. 15:45b:
      1. Christ, the Son of God as the second of the Divine Trinity, after completing His ministry on the earth, became (was transfigured into) the life-giving Spirit in His resurrection.
      2. Christ's becoming the life-giving Spirit was for the release of the divine life that was confined in the shell of His humanity and for the dispensing of this life into His believers, making them the many members which constitute His Body—John 12:24.
      3. This life-giving Spirit who is the pneumatic Christ is also called the Spirit of life (Rom. 8:2), the Spirit of Jesus (Acts 16:7), the Spirit of Christ (Rom 8:9), the Spirit of Jesus Christ (Phil. 1:19), and the Lord Spirit (2 Cor. 3:18).
   3. In His resurrection, Christ regenerated the believers for His Body—1 Pet. 1:3:
      1. The pneumatic Christ became the firstborn Son of God and the life-giving Spirit for the regenerating of the believers, making them the many sons of God born of God with Him in the one universal great delivery:
         1. For the composition of the house of God, even the household of God.
         2. For the constitution of the Body of Christ to be His fullness, His expression and expansion, to consummate the eternal expression and expansion of the processed and consummated Triune God.
      2. The Christ in resurrection gives Himself as the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit without measure through His speaking of the words of God—John 3:34.
      3. All the believers in Christ are built up into a dwelling place of God in their spirit indwelt by Him as the Spirit (Eph. 2:22) through dispositional sanctification (Rom. 15:16), renewing (Titus 3:5), transformation (2 Cor. 3:18), and conformation (Rom. 8:29).
3. The third stage of the full ministry of Christ is the stage of His intensification, the stage of Christ as the sevenfold intensified Spirit, from the degradation of the church to the consummation of the New Jerusalem:
   1. The first thing which Christ is doing in the third stage of His ministry is to intensify His organic salvation:
      1. On the way of Christ's ministry in the stage of His inclusion, which is to carry out His organic salvation for the producing of the church and the building up of His Body to consummate the New Jerusalem, the church became degraded, frustrating the accomplishment of God's eternal economy.
      2. Hence, Christ became the sevenfold intensified Spirit (Rev. 1:4; 4:5; 5:6; 3:1) to intensify His organic salvation sevenfold for the building up of His Body to consummate God's eternal goal—the New Jerusalem.
   2. The second thing which Christ is doing in the third stage of His ministry is to produce the overcomers:
      1. Through the degradation of the church nearly all the believers in Christ became defeated in their old man by Satan, sin, the world, and their flesh.
      2. In His seven epistles to the degraded churches, Christ calls the defeated believers to be His overcomers by Himself as the sevenfold intensified Spirit for their experience of His organic salvation in His sevenfold intensification.
   3. The third thing which Christ is doing in the third stage of His ministry is to consummate the New Jerusalem:
      1. According to the entire revelation of the New Testament, the unique goal of the Christian work should be the New Jerusalem, which is the ultimate goal of God's eternal economy.
      2. The degradation of the church is mainly due to the fact that nearly all the Christian workers are distracted to take many things other than the New Jerusalem as their goal.
      3. Hence, to be overcomers answering the Lord's call under the degradation of the church, we need to overcome all the things which replace the New Jerusalem as the goal and take the goal of God's eternal economy, that is, the New Jerusalem, as our unique and ultimate goal.