The general subject of this book is the organic union in God's relationship with man. The crucial points in this book can be summarized by the following four sentences:
1) God created man for the purpose that man may take Him as life for man to live Him and express Him.
2) God incarnated Himself to be a man that He might be united with man organically.
3) Christ saves man with His dynamic life that man may be able even to reign in His eternal life.
4) Christ builds up His Body by His believers growing up into Him, as the Head, in all things that His Body may be consummated in the New Jerusalem as the eternal manifestation and expression of the Triune God in His unlimited life.
In the Bible what is unveiled to us is simply the organic union in God's relationship with man. In the six chapters of this book we will cover the six major steps of this organic union, from the first two chapters of the Bible to the last two chapters. The first step of the organic union is God's creation of man. This is fully recorded in the first two chapters of Genesis. At the end of the Bible the organic union in God's relationship with man consummates in the New Jerusalem. This is fully unveiled in the last two chapters of Revelation. Between these two ends are the remaining four steps of the organic union: God's incarnation, God's salvation, the growth of the believers, and the building up of the Body of Christ. These six steps cover the entire Bible and give us the details of this organic union.
Most Christians have read through the first two chapters of the Bible concerning God's creation of man. However, most of the students and even the teachers of the Bible have not entered into the intrinsic significance of this portion of the holy Word. The way to study, to understand, and to interpret the holy Word is exemplified by the Lord Jesus in Matthew 22:23-33. One day the Sadducees, who did not believe in the resurrection (v. 23; Acts 23:8), asked the Lord Jesus concerning seven brothers who consecutively and respectively married one woman. They asked the Lord whose wife this woman would be in the resurrection. The Lord answered, "You err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God" (v. 29). In the Lord's answer He told the Sadducees that, although they had the Pentateuch, the Scriptures, in their hands, they did not understand it. Then the Lord quoted Moses' writing in Exodus 3:6: "I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob" (v. 32). Next, the Lord interpreted His quotation of the holy Word, telling the Sadducees that God is not the God of the dead but of the living. The Lord saw the intrinsic significance of the threefold divine title the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, that is, that God is not only the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but He is the God of the living. Thus, the Lord used this divine title, with the life and power implied in it, to prove to the Sadducees that the dead Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will be resurrected. This is the way to interpret the Bible.
After many years of studying Genesis 1 and 2, my conclusion is that in such a wonderful and marvelous record concerning the creation of man by God, there are three striking points. Every one of these points is crucial.