THE SECOND PART: A Bird’s-Eye View of the New Testament
The Full Ministry of Christ in the Stage of Incarnation
Message Two—Expressing the Bountiful God’s Rich Attributes in His Humanity
Scripture Reading: John 8:12; 5:19; Luke 10:21; Eph. 3:19; Acts 3:14; John 5:19, 30; Matt. 12:28
I. Christ expressed in His humanity the bountiful God in His rich attributes through his aromatic virtues—Eph. 3:19; 1 John 1:5; Acts 3:14; Luke 7:36-50; Heb. 2:17:
A. God’s rich attributes are the unsearchable riches of what God is.
B. Christ expressed the divine attributes of love, light, holiness, and righteousness—Eph. 3:19; John 8:12; Acts 3:14.
C. Christ’s aromatic virtues include His mercy, compassion, meekness, forbearance, lowliness, obedience, faithfulness, and truthfulness—Heb. 2:17; Matt. 9:36; 11:29; 2 Cor. 10:1; Phil. 2:8; Rom. 5:19; 2 Cor. 11:10.
II. The Gospel of Luke unveils the ministry of the Man-Savior in His human virtues with His divine attributes—Luke 7; 10:25-37:
A. The Man-Savior healed the slave of the centurion, who saw that the Lord was a man under authority with the word of authority—7:1-10:
1. In the Man-Savior’s human virtue, as a man under authority, He was willing to go to the home of the centurion—v. 6.
2. In the Man-Savior’s divine attribute, He spoke the word of authority to heal the centurion’s slave—vv. 7-10.
B. The Man-Savior showed pity to a weeping widow by raising up her only son—vv. 11-17:
1. In His human virtue of compassion, the Man-Savior spoke to the widow and touched the bier of the “only son of his mother”; (note: He also healed the daughter of Jarius, his “only daughter”, and cast a demon out of a man’s son, his “only child”)—v. 12; 8:42; 9:38.
2. His divine attributes were expressed in His human virtues by He is raising the young man from the dead.
C. The Man-Savior forgave a sinful woman—7:36-50:
1. The Man-Savior’s human virtues of affection, kindness, patience, mercy, and understanding were displayed in His fellowship with this woman.
2. His divine attributes, especially the attributes of divine authority to forgive a person’s sins and His giving of peace to the forgiven sinner, were also displayed—vv. 49-50.
D. The Man-Savior presented the parable of the good Samaritan to signify the expression of His divine attributes with His human virtues—10:25-37:
1. The Man-Savior, in His lost-one-seeking and sinner-saving ministry journey, came down to the place where the wounded victim of the Judaistic robbers lay in his miserable and dying condition—19:10.
2. When the Man-Savior saw him, He was moved with compassion in His humanity with His divinity and rendered him tender healing and saving care, fully meeting his urgent need—10:33-35.
E. The Man-Savior presented the parable of the prodigal son, showing His shepherding, seeking, and saving spirit with the Father’s loving, forgiving, and compassionate heart—15:11-32; cf. 9:55-56:
1. A seeking saint should be poor in spirit and pure in heart, and a repentant believer should always have a willing spirit for the things of the Lord and for the church—Matt. 5:3, 8; Psa. 51:12; cf. Phil. 2:20-22.
2. We must follow the steps of the processed Triune God in His seeking and saving fallen people according to His heavenly ministry of shepherding people with His saving love—Luke 15.
F. The Man-Savior acted in His human virtues with the divine attributes in His word to the criminal on the cross—23:42-43:
1. When Christ was being crucified, one of the two criminals who were crucified with Him said, “Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom” —v. 42.
2. Jesus said to him, “Truly I say to you, Today you shall be with Me in Paradise”; this shows the divine attribute of His eternal and indiscriminate love expressed through His cherishing human virtue—v. 43.
III. Christ’s incarnation and God-man living fulfilled God’s intention in His creation of man—Gen. 1:26-27; John 1:1, 14; Luke 1:31-32, 35; 2:40, 52:
A. The hidden mystery is that God in His divine Trinity desires to dispense Himself into man and to work Himself into man to make man His duplication for His expression—Rom. 16:25; Eph. 1:9; 3:9; Col. 1:27.
B. The incarnation of Christ is closely related to God’s purpose in the creation of man in His image and after His likeness—that man would receive Him as life and express Him in His divine attributes—Gen. 1:26; 2:9; Acts 3:14a; Eph. 4:24.
C. The Man-Savior was born of the human essence with the human virtues in order to uplift these virtues to such a standard that they can match God’s attributes for His expression—Luke 1:35:
1. As the One who was conceived of the divine essence with the divine attributes to be the content and reality of His human virtues, Christ fills the empty human virtues—Matt. 1:18, 20.
2. The divine attributes fill, strengthen, enrich, and sanctify the human virtues for the purpose of expressing God in the human virtues.
D. When the Lord Jesus saves us, He comes into us as the One with the human virtues filled with the divine attributes—Luke 2:10-11, 25-32; 19:9-10:
1. As the life-giving Spirit He enters into us to bring God into our being and to fill our virtues with God’s attributes—1 Cor. 15:45b; 6:17.
2. Such a life saves us from within and uplifts our human virtues, sanctifying and transforming us—Rom. 5:10; 12:2.
Ministry Excerpts:
FINE FLOUR
The Main Element of the Meal Offering
The meal offering is made of fine flour. Fine flour, therefore, is the main element of the meal offering. This fine flour signifies Christ’s humanity.
Christ’s humanity is fine, but our humanity is rough and coarse. We may appear outwardly to be gentle and nice, but actually we are rough. Among the human race, Christ is the only one who is gentle; only He is the fine flour. With Him there is no roughness. His humanity is fine, perfect, balanced, and right in every way. Form every angle, front and back, top and bottom, right and left, He is right.
Produced out of Wheat Which Has Passed through Many Processes
The fine flour of the meal offering is produced out of wheat which has passed through many processes, including being sown, buried to die, growing up, being beaten by the wind, frost, rain, and sun, and then being reaped, threshed, sited, and ground. These processes signify the varied sufferings of Christ which made Him “a man of sorrows” (Isa. 53:3). In His human living the Lord Jesus had sorrow upon sorrow.
Being Perfect in Fineness, Evenness, Tenderness, and Gentleness and Fully Balanced,
with No Excess and No Deficiency
The fine flour is perfect in fineness, evenness, tenderness, and gentleness and is fully balanced, with no excess and no deficiency. This signifies the beauty and excellence of Christ’s human living and daily walk. Christ’s humanity is perfect. There is no comparison between His humanity and our natural, fallen humanity.
OIL
Signifying the Spirit of God
The oil of the meal offering signifies the Spirit of God (Luke 4:18, Heb. 1:9). Christ is a man, and as a man He has an excellent humanity. He also has the divine element, which is the Spirit of God. The divine element is in the Spirit of God and is the Spirit of God.
As the meal offering, Christ is full of oil. We may even say that He has been “oiled.” He has been mingled with oil. This means that His humanity has been mingled with His divinity.
Poured upon the Fine Flour
In the meal offering the oil is poured upon the fine flour. This signifies that the Spirit of God was poured upon Christ (Matt. 3:16; John 1:32).
FRANKINCENSE
Signifying the Fragrance of Christ in His Resurrection
Frankincense is sweet smelling and causes people to have a very pleasant feeling. In typology, the frankincense in the meal offering signifies the fragrance of Christ in His resurrection.
Put upon the Fine Flour
The frankincense was put upon the fine flour. This signifies that Christ’s humanity bears the aroma of His resurrection manifested out from His sufferings (cf. Matt. 11:20-30; Luke 10:21). During the course of His human life, Christ suffered a great deal, but the aroma of His resurrection was manifested out from His sufferings. Although He suffered very much, He exuded a sweet fragrance, the aroma of His resurrection.
In the meal offering there are three elements: the fine flour, the oil, and the frankincense. If we study the four Gospels, we will see that Christ’s life consisted mainly of these three elements. The Lord Jesus continually lived and walked in these three things in His humanity mingled with His divinity and expressing His resurrection.
Even before Christ was actually crucified He continually expressed His resurrection. Concerning this, we need to realize that the Lord Jesus was crucified not only at the very end of His life but that He was crucified daily. His entire life was a life under the cross. He was always being slaughtered, skinned, and cut into pieces. His crucifixion, which lasted six hours, was the totality of His being slaughtered, skinned, and cut into pieces. Because the Lord Jesus lived daily under the cross, He always expressed resurrection from His humanity mingled with His divinity.
If we keep this in mind as we read the Gospels, we will see what kind of person Christ was while He lived on earth. He was a person with the highest and best humanity. This humanity was “oiled,” for it was mingled with His divinity. In His human living, He expressed not His sufferings but resurrection. This resurrection is the frankincense, the fragrant aroma, the sweet savor, in the universe. Nothing is as sweet, as fragrant, as this aroma of resurrection. This was Christ’s human living on earth.
Even when the Lord Jesus was arrested and crucified, He lived a life of humanity mingled with divinity and expressing resurrection. A band of soldiers and deputies from the chief priests and Pharisees came to the garden seeking Jesus. Twice He asked them, “Whom are you seeking?” (John 18:4, 7), and each time they answered, “Jesus the Nazarene” (vv. 5, 7). The Lord Jesus then said to them, “If therefore you are seeking Me, let these go away” (v. 8). ‘These’ refers to His disciples. Under the suffering of the betrayal of His false disciple and the arrest of the soldiers. He still took good care of His disciples. Here we can sense the fragrance of resurrection.
When the Lord Jesus was on the cross, He took care of His mother. “Jesus, seeing His mother and the disciple whom He loved standing by, said to His mother, Woman, behold, your son. Then He said to the disciple, Behold, your mother” (John 19:26-27a). Here we again see resurrection expressed out from the Lord’s sufferings.
No matter what the circumstances were, the Lord Jesus lived a life of suffering but expressing the fragrance of His resurrection. In every place and at every time, Christ lived a life in His humanity mingled with His divinity and expressing His resurrection. This is the meal offering.
The burnt offering is for God’s satisfaction to fulfill His desire. The burnt offering is God’s food, and only He is allowed to eat it. The fact that the entire offering is burned on the altar indicates that it is received by God. We may say that the fire which consumes the burnt offering is God’s ‘mouth.’ Whereas the burnt offering is God’s food, the meal offering is our food for our satisfaction, with a little portion shared with God.
Proper worship involves the burnt offering and the meal offering. To offer the burnt offering for God’s satisfaction and to offer the meal offering for our satisfaction and for sharing our satisfaction with God, this is real worship. Proper worship is a matter of satisfying God with Christ as the burnt offering, and of being satisfied with Christ as the meal offering and sharing this satisfaction with God. In real worship Christ as the burnt offering ascends to God, and Christ as the meal offering enters our being. In such worship, we satisfy God with Christ, and we share with Him our enjoyment of Christ. (Life-Study of Leviticus, msg. 11)
EXPRESSING IN HIS HUMANITY THE BOUNTIFUL GOD IN
HIS RICH ATTRIBUTES THROUGH HIS AROMATIC VIRTUES
The utterance for this point is entirely new. Christ in His incarnation came to earth not only to bring the infinite God into the finite man and to unite and mingle the Triune God with the tripartite man, but also to express the bountiful God in His humanity, His human living. God is bountiful in His rich and many attributes. The attributes of God are what God is. He is love, light, holiness, and righteousness. We all admire humility. The real humble One is God. He was the infinite God, but He humbled Himself to become a finite man. Philippians 2:6-7 says that He existed in the form of God, but He took the form of a slave, becoming in the likeness of men. Verse 8 says, “And being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death, and that the death of a cross.” He was in the form of God, but He humbled Himself to put on the form of man, becoming obedient to God, even unto the death of the cross. He became a servant, washing the feet of His disciples (John 13:1-11). God is the real One that is humble. Humility is one of the many attributes of God. God’s attributes were expressed in Christ as a man to be Christ’s virtues. Christ expressed the bountiful God in His human living, mainly expressing God in His rich attributes, that is, in the unsearchable riches of what God is. We have to study these things so that we can acquire these new points with these new terms.
When the attributes of God became the virtues of Christ in His humanity, these virtues were very aromatic and sweet. This is why so many people throughout the centuries have been captivated by Jesus and love Jesus. In my youth, I was occupied with the world, but then I was captivated by the aromatic Christ. He is so sweet and good. Christ attracted and captivated people not by living His human life in the flesh but by living His divine life in resurrection. The incarnated Christ had two statuses. He was the Son of Man and the Son of God, having the human life and the divine life. Although He lived in the human life, He did not live by the human life. He lived His divine life in resurrection. His human life was always put aside. He said that He did not do anything out of Himself but that the Father was the source of all that He did (John 5:19, 30). He did not do anything in His natural life but He did everything in His divine life in resurrection. He always put His natural life on the cross, and through the cross He entered into resurrection. It should be the same with us today. A brother can talk to his wife in two ways. He can talk to her in his natural life, but this is wrong. He should talk to her in his natural, human life by another life, that is, the life of Christ, the divine life, the eternal life. We have to experience this. Then we can use this truth to nourish all those whom we contact. (The Vital Groups, ch. 12)