The principle of death and resurrection is to bring man into God. It is incorrect, however, to say that a person who has passed through death and resurrection is absolutely devoid of the human element, having only the divine element. A person who has passed through death and resurrection is one who has been mingled with God. His human element has not been nullified. Rather, it has been mingled with the divine element. The incarnation of the Lord Jesus was God coming into man, God putting on man. He put on man, passed through death, and entered into resurrection, and in His death and resurrection He brought the man that He had put on into resurrection. Then what is resurrection? Resurrection is the sphere or realm of God. The Lord Jesus died and resurrected, and through His death and resurrection He brought the man that He had put on into the realm of God.
We need the light and the revelation of the Holy Spirit to see these matters of incarnation and of death and resurrection. Our natural mind has no way to fully comprehend this matter of God coming into man and man coming into God, and our words are not adequate to express it. This mystery of God being man and man being God does not exist in our human mind. It is beyond our human thought and concept. To see this matter requires the revelation of the Holy Spirit.
While Jesus the Nazarene was living on the earth, did He live as a man or as God? The Bible tells us that while the Lord Jesus was on the earth, He lived as a man, not as God. In the Gospels the Lord told people again and again who the “Son of Man” was (Luke 6:5) and what the “Son of Man” had come for (9:56). By this He indicated that He was the Son of Man. The Lord Jesus rarely revealed His status as God. Instead, He always lived out His condition as a man. Only once, when He was transfigured on the mountain, did He fully manifest the condition of God within Him before the disciples. Aside from that instance, we can say that He seldom revealed His condition as God. In the thirty-three and a half years He was on the earth, He mostly lived out His condition as a man. He was a man living on the earth. However, He lived out His humanity by His divinity. He was God living the life of a man.
You and I are humans, and the life that we live is one hundred percent a human living. What is a human living? What is the means by which we live out our human living? A human living is a living that a man lives out spontaneously and effortlessly by his humanity. For example, I am a Chinese, my nature is Chinese, and it is natural for me to have a Chinese living. It is not difficult at all for me to have a Chinese living according to the Chinese nature. While the Lord Jesus was on the earth, the life He lived was exactly the same as ours, except that He was without sin. However, did He live by His humanity or by His divinity? He lived a human life by His divinity. Most of us live out the human life by our humanity, but because He was God coming into man, our Lord lived a human life by His divinity.
While the Lord Jesus was on the earth, His living was apparently the same as that of Peter and John. Just as Peter and John lived out the human life, so also the Lord Jesus lived out the human life. Outwardly speaking, they all lived the human life, but Peter and John lived the human life by man, while the Lord Jesus lived the human life by God. They all lived the human life, but Peter and John lived a human life as men, and Jesus the Nazarene lived a human life as God. In Peter and John’s living, there was the flavor of man but not the flavor of God. The living of Jesus the Nazarene, however, was full of the flavor of God. Outwardly He had the form of man, but inwardly His content had the element, nature, and flavor of God.
Although the Lord lived a human life on the earth, He spontaneously expressed His divinity and manifested His divine nature. Why was this the case? It was because He was actually God. His divinity had been put into a man and was constrained, pressed, and confined by this man. He was great, even infinitely great, but He limited His infinite greatness to a small man. Thus, the life that the Lord lived on the earth was that of a man in appearance but was actually God in its content. God was concealed in a man. He intentionally lived a human life by His divinity so that He might mingle His divinity with humanity. This is the principle of incarnation.