The second major step in the Lord Jesus’ accomplishments was His experience of human life. As a man He lived in a lowly home (cf. Isa. 53:2) and lived among the human race for over thirty years. He came in contact with various kinds of people: the moral (John 3:1), the immoral (John 4:17-18), the dying (John 4:47), the sick and impotent (John 5:5), the hungry (John 6:26-27), the thirsty (John 7:37), those under the bondage of sin (John 8:3, 34), the blind (John 9:1), and even the dead (John 11:39). He also experienced human sufferings, sorrows, despisings, rejections (Isa. 53:3), trials, and temptations (Heb. 2:18; 4:15), and He even wept (John 11:35). He passed through all these tests. It is in His humanity with divinity that He passed through all the things of the human life.
The third major step in the Lord Jesus’ accomplishments was death (1 Cor. 15:3). His death was the death of a God-man, an all-inclusive death. He died as One with a sevenfold status: the Lamb of God (John 1:29), a man in the flesh (Rom. 8:3), the brass serpent (John 3:14), the old man in Adam (1 Cor. 15:45a), the Firstborn of all creation (Col. 1:15), the Peacemaker (Eph. 2:14), and a grain of wheat (John 12:24). His death terminated all the negative things in the universe: sins, the flesh, the Devil—the old serpent—with the world belonging to him, the old man, the old creation, and all the separating ordinances and customs; His death also released His divine life to us. Thus He accomplished His eternal redemption (Heb. 9:12; 10:12).
The fourth major step of the Lord Jesus’ accomplishments was that He rose from the dead (1 Cor. 15:4). His resurrection was God’s vindication and approval of Him and His work to be a proof of our justification before God (Rom. 4:25); it was also a mark of His universal success. His resurrection demonstrated that He triumphed over Satan, death, Hades, and the grave (Heb. 2:14; Acts 2:31). Through His resurrection He became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b) to impart God’s life to us (John 3:15) and regenerate us (1 Pet. 1:3). Thus, having nullified death through His death, He brought life and incorruption to light through the gospel in His resurrection (2 Tim. 1:10).
The fifth major step of Christ’s accomplishments was that in resurrection He came back to the disciples and breathed into them that they might receive the Holy Spirit essentially (John 20:22), who is the Spirit of life (Rom. 8:2), the life-giving Spirit whom He has become in resurrection (1 Cor. 15:45b), to be their life and the essence of the new creation (1 John 5:12; 2 Cor. 5:17).
The sixth major step of the Lord Jesus’ accomplishments was that He ascended and sat at the right hand of God, far above all in the universe (Mark 16:19; Eph. 1:20-21), was made both Lord and Christ by God (Acts 2:36), and became the Head over all things and the Head of the church (Eph. 1:22; Col. 1:18).
The seventh major step of the Lord Jesus’ accomplishments was that He poured out the Spirit of power economically after His ascension (Acts 2:33), first on the day of Pentecost, baptizing the Jewish believers into the Spirit (Acts 2:4), and later in the house of Cornelius, baptizing the Gentile believers into the Spirit (Acts 10:44-45). By these two steps He baptized all the believers once for all into the Spirit and into His one Body (1 Cor. 12:13).
All these seven items of His accomplishments were accomplished once for all and have become accomplished facts.