In the previous message we began to consider the three stages of Christ. In this message I have the burden to give a particular and up-to-date message on Christ in the three stages of incarnation, inclusion, and intensification.
If we would know Christ in these three stages, we need to consider the whole Bible. The Old Testament contains many types and prophecies concerning Christ, the Messiah, the coming One. In the New Testament we have the fulfillment of the types and prophecies regarding Christ in the Old Testament. (We have considered these in detail in The Conclusion of the New Testament, Messages 34 through 45.) The whole New Testament is concerned with one person—Christ. The New Testament clearly reveals that as the fulfillment of the types and prophecies in the Old Testament, Christ is a wonderful person in three stages. As the wonderful One He is deep, mysterious, and very complicated.
Throughout the centuries the New Testament has been read, studied, and investigated by millions of people. I myself have been reading and studying the New Testament for seventy years. My study has been in three stages: the first stage in mainland China, the second stage in Taiwan, and the third stage in the United States. When I was in China I was greatly helped, even tutored, by Brother Nee. I studied every book of the New Testament and also many different interpretations of the Scriptures. Although I was helped to the uttermost by Brother Nee, while I was in China, my study was limited mainly to the first stage of Christ, that is, the stage of Christ in the flesh, Christ in His incarnation.
As the record of the four Gospels indicates, this stage lasted only thirty-three and a half years. This was the time in which the Lord Jesus accomplished God's redemption judicially. The four Gospels reveal Christ in the flesh as the One who lived a human life on earth and who was then crucified, dying for our sins in order to redeem us back to God. Strictly speaking, this is a matter not of salvation but of judicial redemption.
God's judicial redemption includes the forgiveness of sins (Luke 24:47), the washing away of sins (Heb. 1:3), justification (Rom. 3:24-25), reconciliation to God (Rom. 5:10a), and positional sanctification (1 Cor. 1:2; Heb. 13:12). In a judicial sense, one who has been forgiven, washed, justified by God, reconciled to God, and sanctified unto God is a saved person.
This judicial redemption is not God's full salvation. Rather, judicial redemption is simply the initial part, the foundational part, of God's full salvation; it is the base upon which God's complete, organic salvation is built.