In the foregoing chapters we have devoted much attention to various portions of the Old Testament. In this chapter we need to have an overall view of the New Testament concerning the ultimate revelation of the local oneness and its recovery.
If we have a bird's-eye view of the Bible and consider the Bible as a whole, we shall see that it reveals four main figures. Firstly, the Bible reveals God as the Creator. The very first verse of the Bible, Genesis 1:1, says, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Heb.). God was in the beginning, and all things were created by Him. Malachi 1:1 and 2 reveal that this very God is also the One who loves Israel. Hence, the Old Testament reveals God as the Creator of all things and as the One who loves a particular people, Israel. In a sense, this is a summary of the revelation of God in the Old Testament. We may call this God the God of Israel. This term is even used in the Old Testament. The Jews, of course, love the Old Testament very much because it reveals that the unique God in the universe, the One who created the heavens and the earth, is also the very One who loves Israel.
As we all know, the New Testament goes on to reveal much more of God. For this reason, we who believe in Christ cannot say that the revelation of God in the Old Testament is fully a revelation of our God, for it is actually only a partial and incomplete revelation of Him.
Matthew 1:1 says, "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, Son of David, Son of Abraham." How different is the opening of the New Testament from the first verse of the Old Testament! The One spoken of in Matthew 1:1 is revealed further in Matthew 16. In this chapter the Lord Jesus asked His disciples, "Who do men say that the Son of Man is?" After the disciples made some reply, the Lord directed His question to them specifically: "But you, who do you say that I am?" (v. 15). Receiving the revelation from the Father in the heavens, Simon Peter answered and said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (v. 16). The Lord acknowledged that this revelation did not come from flesh and blood, but from the Father. Then He went on to say, "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it" (v. 18). What we have here is not Israel loved by God—we have the church built by Christ.
John 1:1 says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." In verse 14 we are told that "the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us...full of grace and reality." This Word who was in the beginning with God and who became flesh is the very God who created all things, but He is much more. In our preaching of the gospel we need to tell our Jewish friends of this. We need to teach them the truth that the God who created all things became a man through incarnation. We must tell them that God did not stop simply with being the One who loved Israel. According to the Gospel of John, He became a man. Hence, to know God only as God is to know Him in an incomplete way.
After living on earth for thirty-three and a half years, Christ was crucified and then entered into resurrection. On the day of His resurrection, Christ said, "Go to My brothers and say to them, I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God" (John 20:17). In Matthew we have Christ and the church. In John we have the Son of God and His many brothers, who are the church. After His resurrection, Christ began to call the disciples brothers, for through His resurrection they had been regenerated (1 Pet. 1:3) with the divine life released by His life-imparting death, as indicated in John 12:24. He was the Father's only Son, as the Father's individual expression. Now, through His death and resurrection, the Father's only begotten has become "the firstborn among many brothers" (Rom. 8:29). His many brothers are the many sons of God and the church (Heb. 2:10-12), as a corporate expression of God the Father in the Son.
At this point we see from the revelation in the Bible three main characters: God, Christ, and the church. God is embodied in Christ, and Christ is expressed through the church. This is the revelation at the end of the Gospels.