Peter answered the Lord, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16). The title “the Son of the living God” is quite meaningful. The Christ is the Lord’s title in His commission, while the Son of the living God is the title of the Lord’s person, indicating who He is. He is the Son of the living God. John 5:18 says, “For this therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill Him, because He not only broke the Sabbath, but also called God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.” The ancient Jews understood that to be called the Son of God was to be equal to God. They considered it blasphemy for Jesus, a man from Nazareth, to say that He was the Son of God, making Himself equal with God.
Even though Jesus is God, He is still called the Son of God. The Father refers to the source of life. The father of a family is the source of the life of that family. While the Father is the source of life, the Son is the expression, the propagation, and the multiplication of life. When a man is a bachelor, he is alone. However, after he marries he will have children and eventually may have many grandchildren. These children and grandchildren are his propagation and multiplication. God the Father as the source of life needs the Son of God as the propagation and the multiplication of life.
To speak of Christ is to refer to His work, but to speak of the Son of God is to refer to His person as life. The Son of the living God has life. He is the expression of the living One, and the expression of the living One is life. There is no human language that can express what life is. Life is One who never dies, but who is ever living for eternity. This is God, and God is expressed, propagated, and multiplied in the Son. The Son is the life of the Father. John 1:1 and 18 say, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.... No one has ever seen God; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.” In the beginning He was God, and in time He was the declaration of God, the Son of God. In His declaration the Son said, “I am...the life” (John 14:6).
The title, the Son of the living God, denotes not only life but also life to us. Christ is our life (Col. 3:4). The Gospel of John tells us that God as the source of life is Spirit (John 4:24). The Son of the living God as the expression of the source, as life to us, is also the Word as the Spirit. He is the living Word, and this living Word is the Spirit. We all must be born of this Spirit. We received our first birth from our parents in our flesh, but we need a second birth in our spirit (John 3:6). The Spirit of whom we are born is not only God Himself, but also the Son of the living God as life to us, the Word and the Spirit. Such a One has entered into and is now residing in our spirit (2 Tim. 4:22; Rom. 8:16). Our life today is not in our flesh or our soul but in our spirit. This is why we have to set our mind, our being, on our spirit (Rom. 8:6). The mind set on the spirit is life because life is in our spirit. This life is the Son of the living God as the Word and the Spirit. The Lord’s recovery is the recovery of such a Christ.
The second aspect of the Lord’s recovery is the church. When Peter recognized and acknowledged that the Lord Jesus was the Christ and the Son of the living God, Jesus answered, “And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church” (Matt. 16:18). Peter had seen one-half of the revelation but not the other half. He had seen the Husband but not the wife. He had seen the Head but not the Body.
The church is the second half of the Lord’s recovery because not only has the revelation of the Christ been lost, but the revelation of the church has also been lost. Many in Christianity today do not like to talk about the church. They are afraid of this subject. This is the subtlety of the enemy because without the church God can never fulfill His purpose. Without the church Christ, God’s anointed One, can never complete His commission. His commission is creation, incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension for the bringing forth and building up of the church. Creation was for the church, incarnation was for the church, crucifixion was for the church, resurrection was for the church, and ascension was for the church. All the steps of Christ’s commission are for the church, either to produce the church, to bring it into existence, or to build the church.
The book of Revelation, the conclusion of the Bible, speaks of a city (Rev. 21:10-27). A city is the largest unit of building. The city, the New Jerusalem, is the ultimate building in the entire universe, and this building is the ultimate consummation of the building up of the church. Without the building up of the church, Christ as God’s anointed One can never accomplish His commission to consummate the building. Therefore, we all must see the recovery of the church.
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