The ministry of Christ is the main ministry in the New Testament to dispense God into us. It is clearly of two parts: the first part is for Him to come to us, and the second part is for Him to go back to God. This is a two-way traffic, a traffic both coming and going. He came to bring God to us, and He went back to God to bring us into God. By this coming and going God has dispensed Himself into our being. The Lord Jesus’ coming began from His incarnation and ended with His crucifixion. From His incarnation to His death was the first part of the Lord’s ministry. The second part of His ministry began from His resurrection and has no ending, so it will last for eternity.
In the last message we pointed out that in the first part of the Lord’s ministry He brought God into humanity, He was the tabernacle of God among men, He brought the divine grace and reality to us, and He expressed God in full. These items were the work of the Lord Jesus while He was on this earth. After accomplishing this work He went to the cross and was crucified. His death on the cross did much to enable God to dispense Himself into us. He died on the cross as the Lamb of God to take away our sin; He judged the satanic world; He destroyed Satan, the power of death, in His flesh; and He dealt with our serpentine nature. All these negative things have been annulled by Christ on the cross.
On the positive side the Lord’s death on the cross released the very divine life concealed within Him. Incarnation brought Him into confinement. His humanity was like a shell that confined His divine life within it. He likened Himself to a grain of wheat (John 12:24). A grain of wheat has a shell which confines the wheat life within it. The only way this confined life can be released is by death. When a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, the life within the shell is released. So on the negative side the Lord’s death dealt with all the negative things, but on the positive side His death released His divine life. Crucifixion released Him as the divine life from His human shell. Both of these aspects of His death are so that God can dispense Himself into you and me.
This is the first part of the Lord’s ministry. This is His coming from God to us through incarnation and death. If He had not gone through incarnation and death, God could never have reached us. God’s dispensing reaches us through Christ’s incarnation and death. All the negative things have been put away, and life has been released. Not only has life been released, but it has also been presented to us so that we may receive it by calling upon His name. This divine life is just the life-giving Spirit (Rom. 8:2), and the life-giving Spirit is just the Lord Jesus Himself (2 Cor. 3:17). So when we say, “O Lord Jesus,” He as the air gets into us. When He gets into us, that is God dispensing Himself into us. This is wonderful!
Although this is marvelous, this is just one way. This is the way of Christ coming from God to us. The second way is Christ going from us back to God to bring us into God. This began from His resurrection and goes on in resurrection, not only for this age, but for eternity. We have to realize that since the Lord Jesus has gone through incarnation and death, He is now in resurrection. In typology resurrection was typified by the wave offering, something waving and moving (Lev. 23:10, 11, 15). In Revelation 1:18 the Lord Jesus said, I am “the living One, and I became dead, and behold, I am living forever and ever, and I have the keys of death and of Hades.” Jesus Christ today is the living One, the One who is in resurrection.
First He was incarnated to be in the flesh; then He was put to death, but today He is in resurrection. If you sow a grain of wheat into the ground, it will die and grow up out of the earth. Where then is the grain of wheat? It is in resurrection. The Lord Jesus passed through death, and now in resurrection He has brought forth much fruit.