I have spoken so much because I have a burden to show you that our God is the Triune God and His heart’s desire, His longing, in eternity has been to work Himself into man. The Bible with its sixty-six books is very rich in content, but its emphasis is very simple: the Triune God wants to work Himself into man. The first step He took to accomplish this purpose was to create man in His image and according to His likeness as a preparation for Him to work Himself into man. We all know that when a vessel is created to contain something, the vessel must be made the same as the thing it will contain. If the thing is square, you cannot make a triangular vessel. If the thing is triangular, you cannot make a round vessel. From the beginning, God planned to put Himself into man. Therefore, in the beginning when He created man, He created man the same as He. This was God’s preparation.
After approximately four thousand years, God finally came to enter into the man whom He had created. The way He came was not by force; He did not come by using His sovereignty or His great power. He came according to the principle of life in His creation. He first entered into man and was conceived in the womb of the virgin Mary, and then He remained there for nine months before being born on the earth. God is the almighty God who gives life to the dead and calls the things not being as being (Rom. 4:17); why did He not get into man immediately, be born immediately, and grow up to be the God-man Jesus immediately? He did not do it this way. He entered into man by keeping the principle He had established when He created all things. Thus, He was in Mary’s womb for nine months before being born as a child. After His birth, He grew up day by day also according to the principle of life. The Bible records this very clearly: “And Jesus advanced in wisdom and stature and in the grace manifested in Him before God and men” (Luke 2:52). Then, again, when He was thirty years old, He came out to minister according to God’s ordained principle (Num. 4:3; 1 Chron. 23:3; Luke 3:23) and did the work which God had commissioned Him to do. This shows that every step of the living of the Lord Jesus on earth was according to the principle of life. He lived on earth neither by miracles nor by His sovereign authority but completely according to the natural laws of the growth of human life. This was the second step of God’s working Himself into man.
After thirty-three and a half years, again, according to God’s ordination, the Lord Jesus entered into death and then rose from the dead. When He entered into death, Satan thought it was he who had captured the Lord Jesus, put Him on the cross, and crucified Him there. However, in God’s eyes, it was the Lord who willingly laid down His own life to accomplish redemption (John 10:18). He put Himself into death and resurrected from the dead. This was the third step He took to work Himself into man. Through death and resurrection, the Triune God is able to dispense Himself into the myriads of people that He has chosen. This, however, is from God’s point of view. From man’s point of view, the saved ones, the believers, still need to go to preach and announce the Lord who died and resurrected so that, one by one, all those chosen by God throughout the ages may believe into Him.
In God’s eyes, on the day that the Lord Jesus resurrected, we all were also resurrected in Him (Eph. 2:6). But in our experience, we believe in the Lord and are saved one by one in time. Today, by the Lord’s mercy, although our practice of door-knocking according to the God-ordained way is very effective, it is also very tiring. We should expend all our strength because this is according to the law of God’s ordination. In principle, all those chosen by God will come. If we had not been chosen by God, no matter how much people preached to us, we would not have believed. But once we believe into Him, He comes into us and we enter into Him. Then we are baptized into Him and have an organic union with Him (Gal. 3:27; Rom. 6:3; Matt. 28:19; 1 Cor. 12:13; 6:17). Thus, the Triune God is mingled with us.
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