Message Eleven

The Resurrection of the Man-Savior

Scripture Reading: Luke 24:6-8, 25-27, 30-32, 44-46

1. In order for us to see the resurrection of the Man-Savior, we need the Lord Spirit to open our mind to understand the Scriptures through His enlightening—Luke 24:6-8, 25-27, 30-32, 44-46; Eph. 1:17-18:
   1. In order to enter into His life-dispensing resurrection, the Man-Savior died an all-inclusive death with a sevenfold status: the Lamb of God (John 1:29), a man in the flesh (Rom. 8:3), a man in the old creation (1 Cor. 15:45), the bronze serpent (John 3:14), the Firstborn of all creation (Col. 1:15), the Peacemaker (Eph. 2:15), and a grain of wheat (John 12:24).
   2. The Man-Savior’s resurrection was God’s vindication and approval of His person and His all-inclusive redemptive work by His death; His resurrection was also His success in all His achievements—Acts 2:24; 3:15; 4:10; 5:30; 10:40; 13:30, 33-34, 37; 17:31; 26:8; John 10:17-18; Rom. 4:25.
   3. The Man-Savior’s resurrection was His victory over death, including Satan, Hades, and the grave—Acts 2:24; Phil. 3:10a; Rom. 6:9; 2 Tim. 1:10; Heb. 2:14; 1 John 3:8; Rev. 1:18; cf. 2 Tim. 4:22.
   4. The Man-Savior’s resurrection was His glorification—John 12:23-24; 13:31-32; 17:1; Luke 24:26; 12:49-50.
   5. The Man-Savior’s resurrection was His birth as the firstborn Son of God—Acts 13:33; Rom. 1:3-4; 8:29.
   6. The Man-Savior’s resurrection was His transfiguration into the life-giving Spirit to enter into the believers—1 Cor. 15:45b; John 14:16-20.
   7. The Man-Savior’s resurrection was His germination of the new creation to impart the divine life into His believers for their regeneration as the many sons of God—12:24; 1 Pet. 1:3; John 1:13; 3:15-16; 2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15; Rom. 8:29; Heb. 2:10.
   8. The Man-Savior’s resurrection was His propagation to produce the church as His reproduction—John 12:24; 1 Cor. 10:17; Eph. 1:20-23.
   9. The Man-Savior’s resurrection issues in His living within us; He lives in us so that we may live by Him to be His reproduction—John 14:19-20; Gal. 2:20.
2. The Man-Savior’s resurrection began while He was dying, just as the resurrection of a grain of wheat begins with its death; while He was dying outwardly, He was rising up inwardly—John 12:24; 1 Pet. 3:18:
   1. On the one hand, the Man-Savior was living to die (Luke 12:49-50), and on the other hand, He was dying to live (1 Cor. 15:35-36).
   2. Before His actual death, Christ was the resurrection (John 11:25); while He was living in the human life, He was resurrecting by dying; He is the dying-to-live Man-Savior and also the living-by-dying Man-Savior:
      1. The death of Christ means that when Christ lived on this earth, He was always rejecting Himself; He lived a life of denying Himself and living by the Father—6:57; 5:19; 4:34; 17:4; 14:10, 24; 5:30; 7:18.
      2. He lived a life that had the manger at the beginning and the cross at the ending (Luke 2:12; 23:23-46); by being baptized, He recognized and declared that as a man in the flesh, in His humanity (John 1:14; Rom. 8:3), He was good for nothing but death and burial (Matt. 3:13-17).
      3. He had a very holy, pure human life, but He did not live by that life; He put that life aside, put that life to death, and lived by the Father’s life:
         1. His “looking up to heaven” means that He was one with the Father, trusting in the Father as the source of blessing—Luke 9:16; John 10:30.
         2. He did not do anything from Himself (5:19), He did not seek His own will but the will of the Father who sent Him (v. 30b), and He did not seek His own glory but the glory of the Father who sent Him (7:18).
3. When we were regenerated by the resurrected Man-Savior as the life-giving Spirit, we were “born crucified”; now that we have been “regenerated crucified,” we are dying to live and living by dying—3:5-6; Gal. 2:20:
   1. Dying to live means to live under the crucifixion of Christ; on the one hand, Paul had been terminated, crucified, but on the other hand, a resurrected Paul, one who had been regenerated, still lived; Christ lived in him, and he lived Christ—v. 20; Phil. 1:21a.
   2. Just as Christ, the one grain as the prototype, fell into the earth to die, we, the many grains as the mass reproduction, should follow Him to fall into the earth to die by continually exercising to reject the self and live by another life, the life of the Man-Savior—John 12:24-26; Luke 9:23-25; Col. 3:4a.
   3. When we do not live by our natural life but live by Him as the life within us, we are in resurrection; we die to live Him, and He lives by our dying—Gal. 2:20; 6:17; 1 Cor. 15:31, 36.
   4. We must follow the pattern of the Lord Jesus, who lived a crucified life to express the divine life, living out the divine attributes as His human virtues; to follow Him intrinsically as our indwelling model is to bear in our body the brands of Jesus by the grace of Christ—1 Pet. 2:21; Gal. 6:17-18.
   5. We must enjoy the precious death of Christ with its sweetness and effectiveness and the precious resurrection of Christ with its repelling power in Christ as the compound Spirit for the church life—Exo. 30:22-25; 1 Cor. 15:45b; Rom. 14:17-18; cf. Deut. 8:7-8.
4. By the power of Christ’s resurrection, we are enabled to die daily, to take up our cross daily, being conformed to Christ’s death by the Spirit as the power and riches of His resurrection for the sake of His Body—Phil. 3:10; 1 Cor. 15:31; Luke 9:23; cf. S. S. 2:8-14; Hosea 6:1-3:
   1. The reality of resurrection is the pneumatic Christ, who as the consummated Spirit indwells and is mingled with our spirit—John 20:22; 1 Cor. 15:45b; 6:17.
   2. It is in such a mingled spirit that we participate in and experience the resurrection of Christ, which enables us to be one with the cross to be delivered from the self and to be transformed into a new man in God’s new creation for the fulfillment of the economy of God in the building up of the organic Body of Christ—Rom. 8:2, 4, 6, 13; 12:1-2, 11.