In the New Testament, the veil is taken away and the Lord is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17). In the Old Testament, the Lord as the Spirit was not there because the Triune God had not yet passed through any processes. In the Old Testament, before the processes of incarnation, human living, death, and resurrection, the Triune God remained the “raw” God. But in the New Testament, having passed through all these processes, the Lord became a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). Now He is no longer “raw”; He is the processed Triune God. In resurrection the Lord as the last Adam became the life-giving Spirit, not only with divinity but also with humanity. His being the last Adam indicates His humanity. The first Adam was only a created man, but the last Adam is God incarnate, the very God with His humanity who became a life-giving Spirit.
God becoming a man and this man becoming the life-giving Spirit are a great mystery. We can never fully understand this mystery. The Triune God passing through the processes of incarnation, human living, death, and resurrection in order to give life to us is the most wonderful story in the whole universe. This story is a real history. The Triune God Himself became a man of flesh. He lived on this earth for thirty-three and a half years. He then voluntarily went to the cross and was crucified for six hours to accomplish an all-inclusive death. He then was buried, and three days later He walked out of death in resurrection. When He lived on this earth, walked to the cross, was crucified, buried, and resurrected, He was in humanity. He carried out all these things in His humanity. By such a process His humanity was uplifted. He was transferred and transformed from flesh into the Spirit. His being transferred involved transformation, a transformation of humanity into divinity. This was the procedure for His being “sonized.” Sonizing is a transformation, a transfer, in which the Lord as a person with divinity and humanity became the Spirit. The Lord being the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17) implies all of this. The greatest history among all the histories is the history of God becoming a man and being transferred and transformed to be the Spirit. The Spirit is the consummation of the divine history.
We also share in this divine history which has not yet been completed. The book of Acts is an ongoing history of Jesus through His believers; therefore, it does not have an end or a conclusion because it is still being written today. It is a history of God Himself in Christ with His believers as His expansion, enlargement, and increase.
We believers are a part of the enlarged Christ. This is the revelation Paul received when the Lord spoke to him from the heavens as Paul traveled to Damascus in Acts 9. When Paul persecuted the believers of Jesus, he never thought that he was persecuting Jesus. But when the Lord Jesus spoke to him, He said, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” (v. 4). This word indicates that the followers of Jesus become a part of Jesus Himself.
In 2 Corinthians 3:16-18 there are five items which show us how to be transferred and how to be transformed. First, the heart turns to the Lord. Second, the veil is taken away. Third, the Lord is the Spirit. Fourth, where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. Finally, we are transformed by beholding and reflecting the glory of the Lord.
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