When the Lord was on the earth, although inwardly He was Spirit, outwardly He was flesh, a Nazarene. As such, the Spirit within was restricted by the flesh without. Because of this flesh, the Lord was limited not only by time but also by space. When He was in Jerusalem, He could not be in Samaria, and when He was in Judea, He could not be in Galilee at the same time. In fact, it was neither time nor space that limited Him; He was limited by His flesh. If He would have broken through the flesh, He would not have been bound by time or space. Spirit is beyond time and space. God is eternal; He is outside of time and space. However, when God became flesh, the flesh became His limitation. Hence, when the Lord Jesus was on the earth, He still could not enter into men. At most, He could be among men and face to face with men; He could not enter into them or mingle with them to be one, because He was under the restriction of the flesh. It was because of this restriction that He told His disciples that He would pass through death and be raised (Luke 9:22).
What is the significance of the Lord Jesus’ being raised from the dead? People in general think that the Lord Jesus died to shed His blood for us so that our sins would be forgiven, and that He was resurrected because He was the powerful Savior and could not be held by death. However, the true significance of the Lord’s death and resurrection is more than this. Through death and resurrection, the humanity that the Lord had put on was put to death, passed through resurrection, and was brought into the glory of God (24:26; John 12:23-24). In His incarnation, the Lord put on a finite man. In His death and resurrection, He brought this finite man through death and resurrection and returned with this man into the glory of God. When He appeared to His disciples after His resurrection, He was the Spirit, but He also had a body—the marks of the nails, which were still on His hands, and the mark of the spear, which was still on His side, could be touched by Thomas (20:24-28). This proves that after the Lord’s resurrection, He still had a human body, but that this body was not a body of the old creation. The Bible records that after His resurrection the disciples were meeting together in a certain place. Although all the doors and windows were shut, the Lord came and stood in their midst (vv. 19-23). A body in the old creation surely could not have done this.
In the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, that humanity that He had put on in His incarnation was brought into glory (Luke 24:26). This brought man into God because only God Himself is glory. His incarnation brought God into man, and His death and resurrection brought man into God. His coming and going were His incarnation, death, and resurrection. Jesus’ coming to the world was God entering into man. Christ’s resurrection was man entering into God.
In this universe there is a prototype that has been successfully produced—the God-man, the man-God, Jesus the Nazarene. Jesus the Nazarene was man yet God, God yet man. He was God entering into man, and man entering into God. He was the God who originally had no part in humanity and was the uncreated, eternal Spirit. One day this God put on humanity and for thirty-three and a half years mingled with man as one. This caused man to have the divine nature and God to have the human nature. These two were mingled but were not exchanged. He brought God into man and was hidden in a man for thirty-three and a half years, mingling divinity with humanity. Divinity and humanity were mingled together, but humanity had not yet been mingled into divinity. For this reason, the Lord Jesus needed further processing. As a man He needed to pass through death and resurrection. Once He passed through death and resurrection, He brought humanity into divinity. The finite man now became infinite, and what was once limited by time and the space of the universe surpassed the limit of time and space. This was the accomplishment of Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection. He was God entering into man, and man entering into God.