One day God Himself became incarnated in this man. This means that God put all creation upon Himself. When God put man upon Himself, He put all the items of the old creation upon Himself. For example, the Scripture says that Christ was made sin—not plural sins but singular sin—by God on our behalf (2 Cor. 5:21). God has also caused all our iniquities to fall on Christ (Isa. 53:6), who “bore up our sins in His body on the tree” (1 Pet. 2:24). The incarnated Christ was “in the likeness of the flesh of sin” (Rom. 8:3). This likeness is the likeness of the flesh, and the flesh is the flesh of sin. John 1:14 says that “the Word became flesh”; that is, He became a man, a human being. When He became a man in the flesh, He became a man in the flesh of sin, since by that time sin was within the human flesh. The flesh had become the flesh of sin, and the Lord became incarnated in this flesh. However, we must be careful, for if we say that He became flesh in the same way that we are flesh, that is, with the sinful nature of the flesh, we are wrong. Hence, Romans 8:3 tells us that Christ had only the likeness of the flesh of sin, not the sinful nature of the flesh of sin.
In John 3:14 the Lord Jesus Himself told us that He was typified by the bronze serpent that Moses hung on a pole (Num. 21:9), which typifies the cross. The bronze serpent had only the likeness of the serpent, not the poisonous nature of the serpent. The Lord Jesus was born of a virgin so that He might have the likeness of the flesh of sin, but He had nothing to do with the sinful nature of the flesh. We must be very careful about this matter. When the Lord was made sin, He was made only in the likeness of the flesh of sin.
The Lord not only put man upon Himself, but He also put Satan, the kingdom of Satan, the world, sin, sins, the flesh, etc., upon Himself. Here again we need to be careful. The Lord was incarnated as a man, not as a serpent, but when He was crucified on the cross, He was crucified as a man in the form of the serpent. Because at this stage man was one with Satan, the serpent, the Lord Jesus and even John the Baptist told the Pharisees that they were the offspring of vipers and a brood of vipers (Matt. 3:7; 12:34; 23:33). They were the seed of the serpent (Gen. 3:15), the children of the devil (John 8:44; 1 John 3:10), because they had the serpent’s life; the poisonous nature of the serpent was in them. In the eyes of God they, as sinful people, had become serpents. But the Lord, incarnated as a man, had only the likeness of the flesh of sin, not the sinful nature that sinful people have. Like the bronze serpent on the pole, the Lord had only the likeness of the serpent, not the nature and the poison of the serpent.
Now we need to see something concerning the cross. Christ first put on man, who included the entire old creation, and then brought this man to the cross. There at the cross this all-inclusive man was crucified. This means that all things were brought to an end on the cross. This is the principle of the cross. Through this kind of death Christ brought man to the cross and thereby brought everything to an end. Not only Christ was crucified there, but also man, the world, Satan and his kingdom, sin, sins, the old man, etc., were crucified on the cross. All things of the old creation were brought to an end by the cross of Christ. We must experience this all-inclusive death.
The following verses reveal the principle of the cross in bringing all things of the old creation to an end:
John 12:31 says that the world and the ruler of the world, who is Satan, were to be judged and cast out. When did this happen? According to verse 24, it happened at the time of Christ’s death on the cross. Through Christ’s death the world was judged and the ruler of the world was cast out. Hebrews 2:14 declares that Christ partook of blood and flesh that through death He might destroy, or annul, him who has the might of death, that is, the devil. This verse reveals that through His death in flesh and blood Christ destroyed, or annulled, Satan, who has the might of death. Colossians 1:20 says that Christ reconciled “all things” to Himself. This proves that not only man was wrong with God, but all things also were wrong with God; otherwise, there would have been no need to reconcile all things to God. According to the context of this passage, all creation was dealt with by the cross.
We need to be deeply impressed with the kind of death that Christ died on the cross. That death was an all-inclusive death. This is the reason that we must experience it. All that we have, all that we are, all that we do, and all that is related to us have been brought to the cross. The cross is the end of all things related to us. Everything has been dealt with and already crucified on the cross. The cross is the only ground for all that we are and have. We need to put all things on the cross: our knowledge, our wisdom, our ability, etc. This is the principle of the cross. There is no other ground. We may think about how “good” we are. The young people especially are always thinking of how good they are. They think, “We are young, we are good, we are not like the old folks...” No matter how good we are, we must come to the cross. We must be crucified and crossed out. The more good we are, the more we must be crossed out. We should never be proud of being good. Regardless of whether we are good or evil, we all need to pass through the cross. We should not evaluate ourselves wrongly. There is only one evaluation, that is, that we must put ourselves to death.
Nothing of the old creation is in the church. The church is the new man, the new creation (Eph. 2:15; 4:24). All the old things have passed away, and everything has become new (2 Cor. 5:17). This means that all things have been brought to an end in death, and everything is new in resurrection. We have now seen the principle of the cross, and in the next chapter we will see the principle of resurrection. We do trust that our mind will be open to see that all the things related to us, whether they are good or bad, must be utterly put to death. Then there will be the way for us to come into resurrection and into the new creation.