Before incarnation God had only one element, which was God Himself. After His incarnation He not only had the divine element but also the human element. At that time, because the Lord had not yet died through crucifixion, there was no resurrection. Although He had the resurrection life in Him, the fact of resurrection had not yet been accomplished in Him. After He was raised from the dead, the element of resurrection was added into Him in addition to His divine and human elements. Then there were not only the elements of God and man in Him but also the element of resurrection.
According to God’s original intention, He wanted to mingle with man. Hence, He became flesh, obtaining the human element in addition to the divine element. At that point, God had already worked Himself into man, accomplishing the purpose of mingling Himself with man. Why was there a need for the element of resurrection? The reason is that the incarnation of God was only a one-way mingling of God and man. Man had not yet entered into God and been mingled with God. In other words, incarnation put God in the same position as man, but God and man, man and God, had not been fully mingled together. It was only after resurrection that God was fully mingled with man.
When you were saved, your salvation was in the principle of incarnation, which is the bringing of God into man. When you were saved, incarnation took place in you, and God came into you. However, at that moment, was there any mingling between God and you, or you and God? Strictly speaking, according to the principle of incarnation, in our salvation God and man were not mingled together. Instead, God and man were just put together. This may be likened to people baking bread or cakes at home. They first put water into the flour. At this time the water and the flour have merely been put together but not mingled together. After putting the water into the flour, the next step is to mix, blend, and knead them together. At this time the water truly becomes mingled with the flour and the flour with the water. The two—the water and the flour, the flour and the water—are mingled together.
Incarnation brought God into the same position as man. The two were put together but were not fully mingled together. In His thirty-three and a half years of human living, the Lord Jesus was God who had put on man and was living a human life on the earth. God simply came and stayed where man was. Strictly speaking, God and man were not fully mingled together. While the Lord Jesus was living on the earth, His living was the living of the incarnated God. In those thirty-three and a half years, especially in the last three and a half years, the Lord’s living, strictly speaking, was not the full living of the mingling of God and man because He had not yet resurrected. At that time God had entered into man, but man had not yet entered into God. This is one side of the matter.
On the other side, the last three and a half years of the Lord’s living were truly a living of the mingling of God and man. Thus, there are two aspects. On the one hand, the Lord’s living was not the living of the mingling of God and man because the Lord had not yet died and resurrected, and man had not yet entered into God. The incarnation of the Lord brought God into man, but He had not yet died and resurrected and had not yet brought man into God. We can only say that God was living a life in man. Apparently, He first lived on the earth and then died. On the other hand, in reality He died first, and then He lived. At the beginning of His last three and a half years, He was baptized. Baptism put Him to death. When He came up from the water, He was a person of resurrection and was already mingled with God. His living in the last three and a half years on the earth was a living of man being mingled with God.