In doing anything, one must have some preparations. One cannot do things directly. There is the need of some preliminary steps.
The first preliminary step for Christ’s work was His incarnation. This is implied in His becoming the seed of David (Rom. 1:3; John 1:1, 14). The eternal God, the complete God (the Father, the Son, and the Spirit), came from eternity into time in the Triune God’s divinity. Eternity has no beginning and no end. Suddenly, God inserted time into eternity, and time divides eternity into two parts—eternity in the past and eternity in the future. Christ as God once remained in eternity past. Then from that eternity past, He came out. Do not forget this happened only about two thousand years ago. To our understanding this was a sudden thing, but not to God’s understanding. To God’s understanding this was something planned by Him in His economy before the foundation of the world, in eternity past. We do not know how long He remained in eternity, but we do know that about two thousand years ago, He came out of eternity into time.
He came as God in the Triune God’s divinity to be the flesh in its likeness but without sin (Rom. 8:3b). He partook of the human blood and flesh in which Satan with sin is involved (Heb. 2:14). This was to bring God into man, making God and man mingled as one person. Before His incarnation, God was there in heaven and men were here on the earth. But about two thousand years ago, to our understanding, there was a surprise. Suddenly God came with His divinity to be a man. He brought God into man. God was brought into the womb of Mary to be conceived there and remain there for nine months. Eventually, that conceiving became a birth to bring forth Jesus Christ, and this Jesus Christ is wonderful. He is both God and man. He was God conceived in a human womb, and after this conceiving He was born to be Jesus, the God-man. He is the God-man in the universe, as a model, a prototype, for the mass reproduction of many sons of God, for the accomplishment of God’s eternal economy (1 Tim. 1:4b). This model, prototype, is a particular item in the universe which has never been seen in God’s old creation. This item is the initiation of God’s new creation.
After being born as a God-man, He needed to live as such a person. His human living is implied in His being a man living on the earth for thirty-three and a half years (Rom. 5:15, 17, 19). This was a living of obeying God (Rom. 5:19; Phil. 2:8; John 6:38). It was a living through death—dying to live (Rom. 5:19; Phil. 2:8; John 7:6, 8). It was also a living of righteousness before God (Rom. 5:18). His human living qualified Him to be the Redeemer of the unrighteous men (Rom. 3:23-24; 1 Pet. 3:18).
After the preliminary steps of His incarnation and human living, we come to the two sections of His work. The first section was in His earthly ministry. The second section is in His heavenly ministry.
After He walked through the preliminary steps of incarnation and human living, He began His earthly ministry. In His earthly ministry He did mainly two things. He consummated His all-inclusive death, and He carried out the life-imparting and new-creation-germinating resurrection.
Jesus Christ the God-man died a wonderful, marvelous, excellent death. Adam died a death which he did not like, but Christ died a death which He volunteered to accomplish. This is His all-inclusive death.
He consummated this all-inclusive death through His death in His flesh, body (Col. 1:22). In His death He took away the sin of the world (John 1:29). Jesus died on the cross to bear the transgressions and iniquities of God’s chosen people (Isa. 53:5-6). He died for the sins of the believers by bearing their sins (the outward sins in their conduct) on the cross (1 Cor. 15:3; 1 Pet. 2:24).
He condemned (the inward) sin (brought by Satan into man’s flesh) in the flesh. Romans 8:3 says that sin was condemned in the flesh. This was for the believers’ redemption and justification (Rom. 3:23-26). Without such a death dealing with sin, we could not be redeemed. Even the more, we could not be justified. His all-inclusive death was also for the healing of the diseases of God’s people (Isa. 53:4-5). The New Testament tells us we were healed because of His suffering of death (1 Pet. 2:24). By this death He accomplished God’s eternal redemption to bring God’s people back to God (Heb. 9:12).
By His all-inclusive death, He terminated the old creation signified by our old man (our natural man), including our flesh (Rom. 6:6; Gal. 2:20a; 5:24). He also destroyed Satan, who is involved in our old and fallen man (Heb. 2:14; John 3:14; Matt. 16:23; John 6:70-71). He judged the world (the cosmos of Satan) and cast out Satan as the ruler of the world (John 12:31). His death was the death of the flesh, and this flesh is of the old creation, the old man. Within this flesh is Satan, the world, and sin. So by this one all-inclusive death He terminated all these things. He ended the old creation and cleared up all the negative things in the universe.
First, He did a work to accomplish His all-inclusive death to deal with all the negative things in the whole universe. Then He carried out the life-imparting and the new-creation-germinating resurrection. He accomplished a death and carried out a resurrection. The death is all-inclusive, and the resurrection is life-imparting and new-creation-germinating.
Jesus Christ, as the one grain of wheat, released the divine life within Him from the shell of His humanity (John 12:24). His death was a termination of the old universe. Then His resurrection was a releasing of the divine life within Him. This is the life of God. When God became flesh, His life was contained in a shell of humanity. Christ’s death on the cross broke that shell, destroyed that shell. Then the divine life which was concealed in that shell was released. Thus, His death was the termination of everything negative, and His resurrection was the release of the divine life from the shell.
In resurrection He, as the last Adam in His flesh, became (was transfigured—pneumatized—into) the life-giving Spirit, the Spirit of life (Rom. 8:2; 1 Cor. 15:45). He, in His humanity (1 Cor. 15:45b), was born (designated in the power of His divinity—Rom. 1:4) to be the firstborn Son of God in resurrection (Acts 13:33; Rom. 8:29; Heb. 1:5-6). Christ has two parts: humanity and divinity. In humanity He died. Then in resurrection He, in His humanity, was born, that is, designated, sonized, in the power of His divinity, which is mentioned as the Spirit of holiness in Romans 1:4. The Spirit of holiness refers to the divinity of Christ. Christ was born, designated, sonized, in the power of His divinity to be the firstborn Son of God in resurrection.
He regenerated His believers in His resurrection with Him in one great, corporate birth to be the many sons of God and His many brothers (1 Pet. 1:3; Heb. 2:10-12; John 20:17), who, as the many sons of God, are to be conformed to the image of Him as the firstborn Son of God (Rom. 8:29). This great birth was not just the birth of one or even ten children. It was a great birth which delivered the firstborn Son of God and millions of sons of God. In a sense, if you allow me to say so, you have to realize that you are a twin with Christ, because He is your firstborn Brother. You were born with Him as His following brothers. We all were born, regenerated, in Christ’s resurrection almost two thousand years ago. This is what we call our crystallization-study of the Bible.
The life-giving Spirit is the germinating factor of the Body of Christ as the new creation of God (2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15). Christ as the firstborn Son of God and as the Head is the element and the believers as His many brothers are the constituents for God’s building (1 Cor. 3:9b)—the Body of Christ as the new creation of God consummating in the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:1-2). He is the element within us, the constituents, for God’s building.