In the previous messages, we have seen how Christ cherishes us in His humanity and nourishes us in His divinity. Surely these are new terms in a new language. My burden is to minister something new, yet still ancient. The New Testament was written in a particular way. Each of the four Gospels has a particular way to minister Christ to us. The most particular and mysterious one is the Gospel of John.
We should not present Christ to others in an old or traditional way but in a new way according to the revelation of the rich Christ revealed in the New Testament. We may say to someone: "Christ is the very God who created the universe. One day He was born of a human virgin to be a man by the name of Jesus." This way of speaking is right and good. Although I appreciate it, I would still say that it is old. Because the United States is an old Christian nation, many people have already heard this kind of presentation of Christ. We have to learn to present Christ in a new way. We want to nourish people with the unsearchable riches of Christ in His full ministry in three stages.
When we go to visit people, we do not want to merely tell them something but to nourish them with Christ as their food. The first time I saw that the believers of Christ should learn how to eat Him was in 1958 in Taiwan. John 6:57 reveals that Jesus is edible: "He who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me." Of course, we live by what we eat. Actually, the Bible begins with the thought of God's desire for man to eat the tree of life. God created a perfect man, Adam, but God put this man in front of the tree of life. He did not put man in front of a book teaching him many things, including how to live a marriage life. God, after creating a perfect man, brought that man into a garden which included the tree of life. God warned this man not to eat the other tree, the tree of knowledge (Gen. 2:9, 16-17). Man must eat the right tree or he will be poisoned.
Man needs to eat only one thing—the tree of life. This tree signifies Christ. When Christ was incarnated, He said, "I am...the life" (John 14:6); He also said, "I am the vine" (John 15:5a). He is the life and He is the vine tree, so He is the tree of life. Christ is not only our Savior and Redeemer but also our life-tree. He is our food so that we can be nourished with Him. When we contact people, we should always endeavor to present some spiritual food to them, not to teach them with mere knowledge. Then they will be nourished. Ephesians 3:8 says that Christ's riches are unsearchable, or untraceable. The one new testament age reveals an unsearchably rich Christ in His full ministry in three stages.
First, Christ was incarnated to be a man. Then He lived on this earth for thirty-three and a half years. He died on the cross, and His crucifixion ended His stage of incarnation.
His crucifixion ushered Him into another stage. After His death, He resurrected and entered into the stage of inclusion. In this stage Christ is the all-inclusive Spirit. He is now God, man, and also the all-inclusive, life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b; 2 Cor. 3:17).
According to the flesh, Christ was the last Adam. Then as the last Adam, He became the life-giving Spirit. The book of Revelation shows that as the life-giving Spirit, He became the sevenfold intensified Spirit (Rev. 1:4; 3:1; 4:5; 5:6). We call the above three stages of Christ the three i's: incarnation, inclusion, and intensification.