In His death and resurrection the Lord Jesus did not put off the humanity that had restricted, bound, and limited Him. Since the purpose of His incarnation was to bring God into man, and His goal was ultimately to bring man into God, it was not possible for Him to put off His humanity. In His death and resurrection He did not put off His humanity. Rather, He brought the humanity that He had put on into God. In His incarnation the man that He put on was finite and limited, but in His death and resurrection He brought the man whom He still had on into death. In resurrection this man was transfigured. Before His resurrection this man had been finite, but through His death and resurrection this man became infinite. Formerly He had been a man, a finite man, but through His death and resurrection, this finite man was brought into the realm of resurrection and entered into God. Thus, He became infinite. Through death and resurrection the man who was finite became infinite.
God is infinite and eternal, but the man the Lord Jesus put on, before entering into death, was a finite and limited man. After the Lord Jesus passed through death and entered into resurrection, the man He had put on became eternal and infinite. Because He entered into God, what was finite became infinite, and what was temporal became eternal. Through death and resurrection this man fully entered into God and was mingled with God. In the thirty-three and a half years that the Lord Jesus was on the earth before His death and resurrection, He lived a human life that was filled with divinity inwardly and that expressed God spontaneously, and after His resurrection when He appeared to His disciples, what He expressed was God’s living. Romans 1:4 says that in His resurrection, He “was designated the Son of God in power.”
In His incarnation the Lord Jesus appeared as the Son of Man, but after His death and resurrection He appeared as the Son of God. In His incarnation He appeared as a man in the midst of men, but after His resurrection He appeared as God among men. As God, the Lord Jesus was incarnated to live a human life, but He died and resurrected to live God’s life. Just as He lived a human life that was different from man’s living, so also He lived God’s life in a way that was different from God’s living. This statement may seem too extreme, but the fact is that when He was on the earth, although He lived a human life, He was different from ordinary men. Similarly, after His resurrection, although He lived God’s life, He was different from the God before incarnation, death, and resurrection.
Before the Lord Jesus was incarnated, He was already God. After His death and resurrection He again expressed Himself as God. However, the God whom He expressed at that time was very different from the God whom He had expressed before incarnation. What was the difference? The difference was that before His incarnation He as God did not have humanity, but after His incarnation He as God possessed humanity and was full of humanity. When the Lord Jesus was on the earth, He lived a human life in which the divinity that was in Him was expressed spontaneously. In like manner, after His resurrection what was expressed was God’s living, but it was a living in which the humanity that filled Him was also expressed spontaneously.
Death and resurrection did not put off or nullify man. Instead, death and resurrection brought man into God, causing man to become the content of God. Hence, incarnation is God becoming the content of man, and death and resurrection are man becoming the content of God. Incarnation is for God to become man to live out a human life while death and resurrection are for man to become God to live out God’s life.