We need to see the essences, the constituents, of the being of this One who was crucified on the cross and whose name was Jesus Christ. We know that He was crucified on the cross as One constituted of the human and divine essences because He had been conceived and born of these two essences. He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of a human virgin, with the divine essence mingled with the human essence. He is not merely human, but He is essentially both human and divine because He has been constituted with these two essences. These two essences are His constitution, His intrinsic Being.
When the Lord Jesus was baptized, He was baptized as One who possessed the divine essence and the human essence. All the others who were baptized were baptized as those who only possessed the human essence. There was only One by the name of Jesus who was baptized with two essences.
After His baptism, the Holy Spirit came down and descended upon the Lord Jesus. Based upon this fact, Cerinthus taught his great heresy that Jesus Himself did not have the Holy Spirit, but He was only human. (See footnote 221 in 1 John 2, Recovery Version.) Cerinthus in his heresy separated the earthly man Jesus from the Christ who is divine. He taught that the Holy Dove was a sign of the Christ who is divine, and that Christ as the Holy Dove, the Holy Spirit, descended upon the man Jesus after His baptism. He taught that this Christ as the divine Dove was with Jesus from that time for three and a half years, and that the divine Dove left Jesus when He went to the cross and was crucified. In other words, in his heresy Cerinthus taught that Christ left Jesus.
Cerinthus might have used two verses as a base for this part of his heresy. First, Matthew 3:16 says that the Holy Dove descended upon Jesus after His baptism. It might have been based upon this fact that Cerinthus taught that Jesus had nothing divine before the descending of the Holy Dove. Then, when Jesus was crucified on the cross, at the beginning of the last three hours at noon, He cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46). It might have been based upon this verse that Cerinthus taught that the Holy Dove went away and left only the man Jesus on the cross.
It may seem that Cerinthus could be right on this point, that he could have some ground for his interpretation of these verses. However, we need to look into this matter further. According to the cry of the Lord Jesus Himself, it is true that God left Jesus on the cross for man’s sin. But we need to consider who was left on the cross. Was He merely a man of human essence? We need to see clearly that the One who was left on the cross was the same One already constituted of the human essence and the divine essence before His baptism. Before He was baptized and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him, this One was divine already, constituted with the divine essence. This is a crucial point. Therefore, it was not merely a man who was baptized, but a God-man who was baptized. In the same principle, it was not merely a man who was crucified, but a God-man who was crucified.
Therefore, in our Redeemer, while He was crucified on the cross for us sinners, there was the human essence—He was a man as the first creature and as the last Adam, the head of all mankind. In this Redeemer there was also the divine essence, because He is also God. With His human essence He was the first item of the creatures and the last Adam of mankind. With His divine essence He was God. God’s leaving Christ on the cross is another aspect. This is the same as the time that the Holy Spirit descended upon Him when He was standing there after His baptism. For the Holy Spirit to descend upon Him did not indicate that He did not yet have the divine essence, because He had been constituted of it already. He was conceived with the divine essence and born of the divine essence before the time of His baptism. In the same principle, for God to depart from Christ on the cross did not indicate that He was no longer constituted with the divine essence. These points may seem to be quite complicated, but I hope they could be made clear to all of you.
At this juncture we need to go back to consider a further point concerning the sequence of the Trinity. In the Trinity we have seen the Father, we have seen the Son, Christ, and we have seen the Spirit. It is correct to say that in the Trinity the First is the Father, the Second is the Son, and the Third is the Spirit. However, we need to see that the sequence of the Trinity is changed when it comes to the matter of the application to us.
Not only in Revelation 1 does the Third become the Second (vv. 4-5), but the same principle has been applied elsewhere. In Ephesians 3 Paul says that he prays to the Father that He may strengthen you through His Spirit (here the Spirit is mentioned second) that Christ may make His home in your heart. In such an application, the Third becomes the Second, which is in principle the same as in Revelation 1. Furthermore, 1 Peter 1:2 indicates that we were chosen by the Father through the sanctification of the Spirit according to the blood of Christ. Here again the Spirit is ranked as the Second. In addition, the sequence of the Trinity is also changed in 2 Corinthians 13:14 where Paul speaks of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. In this case, the sequence is changed in the application to us with the Second (Christ) becoming the First, and the First becoming the Second.
These changes in the sequence in the Trinity indicate that function is one thing, and essence is another. In function the Trinity is mentioned in a sequence that is different from His sequence in essence. In addition, as we have seen in the matter of the seven Spirits, the Spirit is essentially one, but economically seven. Because some early teachers discovered this principle, they invented terms such as the essential Trinity and the economical Trinity.