The basis for our obedience is first God Himself and then God’s work. Now we come to the third item in the basis for our obedience, and this is the result of God’s work. What is the result, the issue, of God’s work? In brief, it is the church as the enlargement of the consummated Christ to be God’s dwelling, God’s embodiment, God’s expression, and God’s eternal manifestation. This is the church, and such a church is the result, the issue, the produce, of God’s work.
These three matters-God, God’s work, and the result of God’s work-are covered fully in the sixty-six books of the Bible. In the Old Testament we see the types, and in the New Testament we see the fulfillment. The entire Bible is thus an unveiling of these three things. First we have the processed Triune God and His work for our rest, and then, as the result of His work, we have the church as the expression and the enlargement of the consummated Christ. We need to see this. Seeing these three things will give us a strong basis for obeying, going along with, God.
We may talk about obeying God without knowing what it really means to obey God. To obey God is to honor Him as the processed Triune God. In eternity God was perfect, but He still needed to pass through a process in order to be consummated. Some think that if we speak this way about God, we do not reverence Him. Actually, it is to honor Him. In eternity past God was perfect, but He was not complete. Before His incarnation, God had divinity, but He did not have humanity. But after He became a man, He had humanity as well as divinity. Today our God is not merely God with divinity; He is the God-man with both divinity and humanity. He is Jesus and Emmanuel. In the name Jesus we can see the holy name Jehovah, for the name Jesus means “Jehovah the Savior.” Jesus is also Emmanuel, which means “God with us.” Hence, in the name Emmanuel we can see both God and man. From this we see that our God today is the God-man; He is of both divinity and humanity. He is divinely human and humanly divine.
When God became a man. He did not set His Godhead aside. No, Jesus lived by God and with God; He lived in oneness with God. As He said, He was never alone because the Father was always with Him (John 16:32; 8:29).
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