The Man-Savior went through a long process not to save us by snatching us out of hell, but to carry out His dynamic salvation. The term “dynamic salvation” means that God became a man and lived a man’s life to express God. Although He lived a man’s life, He did not express man—He expressed God. As the Man-Savior lived such a life on earth, the angels and demons could testify that He was man living a human life for the expression of God. This is the Man-Savior’s God-man living. The four Gospels tell us of the One who lived the life of a God-man.
In Luke 2:40-52 we see the Man-Savior growing and advancing. When He became twelve years old, He went with His parents to Jerusalem at the feast of the Passover according to custom (vv. 41-42). Luke also tells us that the Lord Jesus began His ministry when He was about thirty years old (3:23). Only in the Gospel of Luke are we told what happened to the Lord Jesus at the ages of twelve and thirty. The reason is that Luke presents the Lord Jesus as a genuine and typical man. In the Gospel of Luke we see that the Lord was a real man, a normal man; He was not a magical person. The Lord grew in a normal, human way. Eventually, at the age of thirty, He had come to maturity for the divine ministry. According to the Old Testament, a Levite had to be thirty years of age before he could enter fully into the priesthood. Likewise, the Man-Savior was fully grown when He entered into His ministry.
The Man-Savior’s living was a God-man living. When He was on the earth, the Lord Jesus lived a God-man. This living is a fact recorded in the Bible. We thank the Lord that we can study the account of the Lord’s God-man living recorded in the Gospels. The more I study the four Gospels and the more messages I give on them, the more convinced I become that the Lord Jesus truly was the God-man.
We have seen that the Man-Savior did not live a life expressing man. He lived a man’s life, yet this life expressed God. Hence, the Lord’s living was a God-man living. He lived a life in which God was expressed through man.
We have used the illustration of a hand and a glove to show how God was expressed through the Man-Savior’s humanity. A glove contains the hand and expresses the hand. When the hand in the glove moves, the glove also moves. But as the glove moves, it does not express the glove; it expresses the hand. In a similar way, the Lord Jesus lived on earth as a man, but He did not express man; He expressed God. He lived a life expressing God. When people saw Him, they saw a genuine man. Nevertheless, what they saw in Him was the expression of God. They did not see a man expressing man; they saw a man expressing God.
Concerning the expression of God in the Lord Jesus, John says, “We beheld His glory, glory as of an only begotten from a father” (John 1:14). Glory is the expression of God. Therefore, when the disciples saw the Lord’s glory, they saw the expression of God.
The Apostle John was one of the sons of thunder (Mark 3:17). Although he was bold and impetuous, he was attracted to the Man-Savior and followed Him. He and his brother James were the second group attracted to the Lord Jesus. (The first group was composed of Peter and Andrew.) When the Lord called John and James, they were “in the boat with Zebedee their father mending their nets” (Matt. 4:21). But they were attracted to the Lord and left the boat and their father and followed Him (Matt. 4:22). For the next three and a half years they saw the God-man’s living, although they did not understand what they were seeing. But after the Man-Savior’s resurrection, their eyes were opened, and they began to understand the Man-Savior’s God-man living.
When John wrote his Gospel, he was very old, probably in his nineties. He testified that God became flesh and that they beheld His glory. A man was living and walking with them, and in this One they saw the glory of God. When He was with them in the flesh, they did not understand that the Lord was a man living a human life to express God. But after His resurrection they came to realize that they had seen God expressed in Jesus the Nazarene.
The Gospels record the history of the Man-Savior’s God-man living. Now this history needs to be written into our being. In a forthcoming message we shall see that God’s desire is to reproduce in us the Man-Savior and His God-man living.