The first crucial item of God’s New Testament economy is the incarnation of the Word. Strictly speaking, the incarnation is the incarnation of the Word. John 1:14 says that the Word became flesh. It does not say that Christ became flesh or that God became flesh. The Bible tells us that the Word, who was God (John 1:1), became flesh. The Word is God’s definition, and since it is God’s definition it is God’s embodiment. God is abstract and invisible since God is Spirit (John 4:24). Our thought is abstract and invisible, but when we put our thought into words these words become the definition of our thought, the very embodiment of our thought. The word is the definition, the expression, and the embodiment of our thought. If I spoke to you for one hour, you would know what my thought was because my thought is embodied in my word.
The Word as God’s definition, God’s expression, and God’s embodiment, became flesh. The Word, which was God’s definition and God’s embodiment, needed to be embodied further in a Person, and this Person was God the Son. When the Word became flesh, the very embodiment of God became a Person by the name of Jesus Christ. This Person is the embodiment of the Word, which Word was the embodiment of God. In this way we may say that God has been embodied twice. God was embodied in the Word before His incarnation (John 1:1), and the Word was embodied in a living Person who was the Man, Jesus Christ (Col. 2:9).
When the Word became flesh, He was sent by God and with God (John 7:29). When the sent One came, He came with the sending One. When the Son came by becoming a man, He came with the Father. According to John 6:46 and 17:8, the Son came from God the Father. The Greek preposition translated “from” is para which means “by the side of.” Therefore, the sense here in the Greek is “from with.” Darby has a note in his New Translation on John 6:46 which also indicates that the sense in the Greek is “from with.” The Son came not only from the Father, but also with the Father. While He is from the Father, He is still with the Father (John 8:16, 29; 16:32). In John 8:29 the Lord says, “He who sent me is with me,” which indicates that the Father sent the Son “from with” Him. When the Son came, He did not leave the Father in the heavens on the throne. This is why the Bible tells us that “everyone who denies the Son does not have the Father either; he who confesses the Son has the Father also” (1 John 2:23).
Even in our experience today, when we call “Lord Jesus,” we have the deep sensation that the Father is right in us (Eph. 4:6). As a young believer I was taught to address my prayer to the heavenly Father, and that sometimes I might address my prayer to the Lord. I was also told never to address my prayer to the Spirit. I could only pray to the Father and sometimes to the Lord through the means, the instrument, of the Spirit. Based on this teaching, whenever I knelt down to pray, I had to think about whom I was going to address my prayer to. When we initially received the Lord Jesus, though, we had the sensation that He was near to us (Phil. 4:5; James 4:8). We spontaneously addressed Him in our prayer in an intimate way. We may have said, “Lord Jesus, I love You. You are so dear, precious, sweet, and real to me. Thank You, Lord Jesus, that You died for me. Hallelujah! I love You, Lord Jesus.” It was not until we received some “theological help” that we began to address the “Father on the throne” in heaven. However, when we pray in a spontaneous and intimate way to our dear Lord Jesus, we have a deep sensation that the Father is in us. We pray to the Lord Jesus, yet we have the sensation that the Father is here.
Our concept has been that when the Son came to the earth, He left the Father sitting on the throne. We all must see that when the Father sent the Son, He sent the Son with Himself. The Son indwells us (2 Cor. 13:5) and the Father does also (Eph. 4:6). The Lord Jesus told Philip in John 14:9, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” While the Lord Jesus was speaking to Philip, He furthermore declared that the Father was in Him and that He was in the Father (14:10). This shows that when we have the Son, we have the Father also. Even the Son is the Father (Isa. 9:6).
We must also realize that while the Father is with the Son and in the Son, He is also on the throne. The two are distinct, yet not separate. This is a divine mystery which we cannot fathom. On the one hand, the three in the Godhead coexist and on the other hand, they coinhere. They mutually indwell each other and interpenetrate one another. Electricity provides us with a good example of such a mystery. The electricity which we are enjoying in our room is the same electricity in the power plant. It is simultaneously at the power plant and also in our room. In like manner, God the Father was within Jesus on the earth and at the same time He was on the throne. We should not be bothered by this. We need to realize that with the infinite God there is no element of time or space. Because He is the eternal God, He is above time and space and not limited by them.