After everything in the universe had been prepared by God within six days, God created man in His own image (Gen. 1:26). God’s intention was to be expressed through this man, and this man is not an individual, but a corporate man. God needs a corporate man to be a corporate vessel to contain Him and to express Him. This is clearly revealed in the holy Word.
God created such a man, but this man fell into the hand of Satan, the enemy of God. As a result, man was divided and scattered. He was no longer a complete and perfect corporate vessel to God. Rather, this corporate vessel was shattered into pieces mainly by racial differences. Man was divided according to his families, his languages, and according to his land into many nations (Gen. 10:5, 20, 31-32). Thus, man became old in the eyes of God. Anything that becomes old in God’s eyes is through with His purpose. In other words, the man created by God to fulfill His purpose was absolutely destroyed, thus becoming useless in the hands of God. But in the Bible we can see one principle-no one can stop God’s intention. God would not change His mind related to His purpose. Since He has made up His mind, He will surely get what He desires.
Man became a failure, but because God would not give up His original intention, He came to be a man (John 1:1, 14). This Man, who is God incarnated, is called in the Bible the second Man (1 Cor. 15:47). He lived on this earth and died an all-inclusive death on the cross to deal with every negative thing in the universe. He was willing to die on the cross, and He had no choice but to die for the carrying out of His intention. His death for our redemption took away sin and sins (John 1:29; 1 Cor. 15:3), crucified our old man and the entire old creation (Rom. 6:6; Col. 1:20), and destroyed Satan and judged the world (Heb. 2:14; John 12:31). Ephesians 2:14-15 tells us that Christ dealt with another negative item. In His death on the cross He abolished the enmity between the races, the forms or ways of living and worship, the ordinances. The different ways of living or ordinances became a strong enmity between the races, especially between the Jews and the Gentiles. Christ has abolished sins, sin, the old man including the flesh and the self, the entire old creation, Satan and the world, and also the ordinances that divide the human race.
God’s purpose cannot be fulfilled simply by taking away sin and sins, releasing us from our old man, liberating us from Satan, and sanctifying us by separating us from the world. God’s purpose can only be fulfilled by a man. God needs a man. On the cross Christ not only accomplished redemption, release, liberation, and sanctification, but He also created one new man of two peoples, the Jews and the Gentiles. To do this He needed to abolish the law of the commandments in ordinances.
Ordinances are mainly the ways of living. Each culture on this earth has its own way to live. Every race is proud of its way of living. All the different ordinances existing among the human race are dividing factors. We have to realize the good news that Christ through His death on the cross abolished all the ordinances. The Bible calls these ordinances “the enmity” (Eph. 2:14). History has proven that Germany, France, and Britain could never be one. The different ways of living among the races on this earth have made it impossible for man to be one. But the good news is that all these differences have been abolished on the cross. Even the differences, the enmity, between China and Japan have been crossed out. This is a part of the perfect and complete gospel. Not only our sin, sins, our old man, Satan, and the world have been dealt with, but also all the different ways of living among the nations have been abolished on the cross. Christ did this in order to create of the two peoples one new man.
God created the one new man on the cross, but practically speaking this one new man has not come into existence. Our redemption was accomplished on the cross before we were born, but according to our experience, redemption was not realized by us until we repented and believed in the One who died for us. Until we believed in the Lord Jesus, redemption did not come into existence with us in our experience. This is the principle of the New Testament economy. Christ accomplished so much on the cross, including the creation of the one new man, yet many of these things have still not come into existence in our experience. In this chapter we want to see the steps that need to be accomplished for the new man to come into existence.
Home | First | Prev | Next