Today our Lord is God who became flesh and was transfigured into the Spirit. In His resurrection He was transfigured to become the Spirit. Now we would like to go on and have a further look at the crystallized significance of Christ’s resurrection. This is another item of the result of our study of the Word for more than seventy years.
John chapter one says clearly that the Lord Jesus was the only Begotten of God (v. 14). Then, in the Epistles, Romans says that Christ is the firstborn Son of God among many brothers (8:29). Hebrews says that when Christ comes again into the world, He will be sent by God as the Firstborn (1:6). The process of the only begotten Son becoming the firstborn Son is not so simple; this process began with incarnation. John 1 says that the Word, who was God, became flesh, and this Word was the only Begotten who came from the Father (vv. 1, 14). The Father denotes the source, and the Son denotes the expression. Before His incarnation, the Son was the only begotten Son; once He became flesh, entering into the flesh, He was the last Adam (1 Cor. 15:45), who was Jesus. Jesus as the last Adam was God who became man. Although this is a common word, it is not easy to explain its intrinsic significance.
In eternity past God had neither the human nature nor a human body; it was when He became a man that He put on a body of flesh and blood and partook of the human nature. Hence, Hebrews 2 says, “Since therefore the children have shared in blood and flesh, He also Himself in like manner partook of the same” (v. 14). Hence, Jesus was a God-man. There was a part within Him that was God; that part was the only begotten Son of God. But in His incarnation He put on the flesh, and that flesh was His human nature, which had nothing to do with divinity. In His living on the earth for thirty-three and a half years, the Lord Jesus was always with the flesh, where the human nature lies. Since He was with the human flesh, how could He become the Son of God? He was designated the Son of God in power through His resurrection (Rom. 1:4).
Paul tells us in the beginning of Romans that he was a called apostle separated unto the gospel of God, which concerns the Son of God, Jesus Christ (1:1, 3). Who was this Son of God? Paul points out clearly that this Son of God was One who came out of the seed of David according to the flesh and who was designated the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness out of the resurrection of the dead. This means that it was God who designated Christ in His human flesh the Son of God by the resurrection power. The Spirit of holiness here does not refer to the person of the Holy Spirit of God but to the divine essence of Christ, the divinity of Christ. The flesh was Christ’s humanity, whereas the Spirit of holiness was Christ’s divinity. Before His resurrection His human nature was not yet designated the Son of God. It was by resurrection that His human nature was sanctified, uplifted, and transformed. Hence, by resurrection He was begotten to be the Son of God with His humanity (Acts 13:33) and thereby was designated the Son of God.
Acts 13:33 says, “You are My Son; today I have begotten You.” Is the Son here the only begotten Son or the firstborn Son? If He were the only begotten Son who was already there in eternity, there would have been no need of begetting again, but on the day of resurrection, the humanity of the Lord Jesus was born again. His humanity was born the first time in His mother’s womb; that was human and could not be considered the Son of God but only the Son of Man. Hence, He was called the Son of Man (Matt. 8:20; 9:6). By resurrection He was begotten again in His humanity and designated the Son of God.
The designation of the Lord Jesus in His humanity to be the Son of God was carried out by the Spirit of holiness. The origin of this Spirit of holiness was the Holy Spirit in Matthew 1. Matthew 1:20 says, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife, for that which has been begotten in her is of the Holy Spirit.” God was born into Mary through His Spirit; hence, the One who was born was a God-man with the Holy Spirit and the human flesh, possessing both divinity and humanity. Yet in His humanity He still needed to be designated the Son of God; this was accomplished on the day of resurrection. When the Lord Jesus was crucified on the cross, He died in His humanity but was very active in His divinity. This is what 1 Peter 3:18b says: “On the one hand being put to death in the flesh, but on the other, made alive in the Spirit.” The crucifixion put Christ to death only in His flesh—the flesh He received through His incarnation (John 1:14)—not in His Spirit as His divinity. This means that the crucifixion did not crucify His divinity but His humanity, His flesh. When His flesh died on the cross, His Spirit as His divinity did not die but rather was given the opportunity to be made alive, enlivened, with new power of life.
In John 12:24 the Lord Jesus said that He was a grain of wheat, which unless it “falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” This is to die and live, that is, to live by dying; to die is to live. Apparently a grain dies when it falls into the ground, but actually that death is for the grain to live. It is through death that the grain of wheat is activated within so that the inner life power has the opportunity to operate and bring forth new sprouts. The death of the Lord Jesus opened the shell of His flesh, and the Spirit of holiness had the great opportunity to operate for the germination of the new creation.
Because a seed is living, the operation of life is activated simultaneously with the death of the seed. When a stone is buried in the ground, there is neither death nor life, but when a seed is sown into the soil, life begins to operate. It is through death that life operates. The Lord Jesus was both God and man. People thought that if they killed Him, He would be finished since He was merely a man. Little did they know that His being killed afforded Him a great opportunity for the divinity in Him to become operative. It was then that He was designated in His humanity to be the Son of God by the Spirit of holiness (the divinity of Christ) in resurrection.
To designate means to uplift. When we designate or mark out a certain object, we uplift it. For example, out of many pieces of wood, you may pick one of them. As far as you are concerned, that piece is at the top; you have marked it out. Again, for example, when you go to the market to buy fish, you pick only one out of many fish. This means that you uplift that fish by designating it. Likewise, through resurrection the humanity of Christ was marked out, uplifted, by the Spirit of holiness, the divinity of Christ. In this way the humanity of Christ was uplifted into divinity; that is, Christ was begotten again in His humanity. Hence, Acts 13:33 says, “You are My Son; today I have begotten You.” This begetting is the designation in Romans 1:4; both refer to resurrection.