In the previous chapter, we saw that man is God's expression and His representative with His authority. In His creation God made man in His image and entrusted man with His dominion (Gen. 1:26-28). We have these two words: image and dominion. Image is a matter of life, whereas dominion is a matter of authority. Thus, we have the divine life and the divine authority involved here. Since man was created in the image of God, this means that man was meant to have God's life. And since God entrusted man with His dominion, this means that man was meant to have the authority of God. To express God we need the divine life. To represent God we need the divine authority.
However, man became fallen. Therefore, God Himself came to be a man named Jesus. Jesus was a wonderful man, and today, even in His resurrection, He is still a man. He is a man in the heavens. When Stephen was being stoned to death in his martyrdom, he saw "the heavens opened up and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God" (Acts 7:56). Thus, today Christ in the heavens is still a man. But we have to realize that this is not all. After Christ was resurrected from the dead and ascended to the heavens, He came down as the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b) and as the Spirit of power (Acts 1:8).
This Spirit, who is Jesus Himself, is now waiting for all the fallen human beings to receive Him. As soon as a person receives Him, this wonderful One, Jesus, immediately enters into this person. This means this person is saved. To be saved simply means to have Christ coming into us.
We all know it is not a small thing to have Christ come into us. However, there is something deeper than this. The opening word of the gospel of the kingdom is repent. We need to repent for the kingdom of the heavens (Matt. 3:2) because we have fallen from the dominion of God. Therefore, we need to come back. We need to have a real turn from the fallen state to the original state. We have to leave the fallen situation and turn to God's dominion again. This dominion is simply the kingdom of the heavens.
Christians today talk a lot about gospel preaching, but what do we preach as the gospel? We may say we preach Christ. This is right, but it is still inadequate. The gospel preached at the beginning of the New Testament was: "Repent, for the kingdom of the heavens has drawn near." We were made in the image of God, and we were entrusted with God's dominion. But we became fallen. Now we have to return to God's dominion; then we will have His image again.