In the Gospels we have the unveiling of a wonderful Person. This Person is the eternal God, the One called by the name Jehovah in the Old Testament. He is the Creator of the entire universe and of man. In Genesis 3:15 He prophesied that one day He would become a seed of woman. That promise went unfulfilled until the expiration of the first four thousand years of human history. Then the Lord Jesus came as the seed of the woman. He came as the very God conceived in the womb of a human virgin. We all need to realize this, and we have emphasized this in the Life-study of Luke.
The almighty God, the eternal Jehovah, the Creator of the universe, was conceived in the womb of a virgin and was born of that virgin to be a Person with two natures—the divine nature and the human nature. This means that He was born as the God-man, the One who is both the complete God and a perfect man. In Him we see God with His divine nature and attributes. In Him we also see man in the human nature and with all the human virtues. Therefore, in this one Person we can see both the complete God and a perfect man.
As the God-man, the Lord Jesus lived a life that was the life of a man. However, this man lived by God and with God. We may even say that He lived God; He expressed God in His humanity. In the book of Luke we see a man living on earth full of the human virtues, yet He expressed the divine nature with the divine attributes. With this One God was expressed in a human being, for the life He lived was the mingling of divinity and humanity. His life was a blending of God with man.
No one before the Lord Jesus had ever lived such a life. This kind of life had never been in existence. Therefore, the Lord’s life was unique. In this life we see the blending, the mingling, of God and man. The Lord Jesus lived this kind of life, and in this life He ministered. Actually, His ministry was simply His living. His living was His ministry to accomplish what had been prophesied and typified concerning Him in the Old Testament.
Having lived on earth for thirty-three and a half years, the Lord Jesus knew that it was necessary for Him to go to Mount Moriah and accomplish His all-inclusive death. The Lord did not die an ordinary death; on the contrary, He died an extraordinary death. This extraordinary death was all-inclusive, and it accomplished everything God required to clear up the universe, terminate the old creation, and bring the old creation with Him into His tomb. Therefore, the entire universe was buried with Christ in the tomb.
After terminating the old creation, the Lord, on the one hand, rested in the tomb. On the other hand, while He was resting in His fleshly body, He was working in His spirit in Hades (1 Pet. 3:18-20). In Hades He proclaimed God’s victory over His enemy, Satan. Then, after accomplishing in full God’s purpose through His all-inclusive death, Christ walked out of death and rose up from the tomb. In this way He became the resurrected Savior and Redeemer. Furthermore, in His resurrection He became the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45). As we have pointed out in the past, the Lord has shown us from the Word that this life-giving Spirit is the ultimate consummation of the Triune God reaching His redeemed people. In His resurrection Christ became such a One.
In John 20 we see that in His resurrection Christ as the life-giving Spirit, the ultimate consummation of the Triune God reaching His redeemed people, came back to His disciples in an excellent and mysterious way to breathe Himself into them. The Lord breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22). These disciples were the representatives of the Lord’s Body. Into these representatives He entered as the life-giving Spirit.
On another occasion the resurrected Christ told the disciples, “And behold, I am sending forth the promise of My Father upon you; but you, stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49). Then “He led them out as far as Bethany, and He lifted up His hands and blessed them. And it came about that while He blessed them, He parted from them and was carried up ” (Luke 24:50-51). Before His ascension to the heavens, the Lord charged His disciples, who had already received Him as the life-giving Spirit within them as life essentially, to wait until, after His ascension, He would pour Himself out upon them as the all-inclusive Spirit economically.