In the universal scene, there are mainly two persons—God and man. There are millions of other lifeless and organic things, which may be considered as a decoration to God’s universe. God loves beauty because He is a God of beauty. The living creatures and the plant life are beautiful. God did not create an empty heaven and a barren earth but a universe of beauty. All the items of beauty in the universe created by God may be considered as God’s decoration, but the main things in the universe are two persons—God and man.
If you take God and man away, the entire universe will have no real history. The universe has a history, beginning with the creation of man, of approximately six thousand years. The real history of the entire universe is concerning God with man and concerning God within man. The Old Testament, from Genesis through Malachi is the history of God with man. Genesis 1 says that God created man, and Malachi 4 says that God will come to man as the Sun of righteousness with healing in His wings (v. 2). Sun dispels all the darkness, and healing swallows up all our sickness. In the age of restoration we will have the unique God as our Sun and our healing. Everything will be restored by His healing and by His shining. When He shines and heals, we are restored.
The history of the entire universe is a history of God with man in the Old Testament, but this is not the ultimate consummation. Still, we have the New Testament. In the New Testament we see a further history of God. Now this God is not just with man; He is within man. The first chapter of Matthew tells us how He got into man. He was conceived in the womb of a virgin. He was the Creator, who could call things into being. In the old creation, He spoke things into being. When He said, “Let there be light,” there was light (Gen. 1:3). This is the way He creates. But in the New Testament, He was conceived in the womb of a virgin and remained there for nine months.
Matthew 1:20 says, “That which has been begotten in her is of the Holy Spirit.” God was born into Mary through His Spirit. That which was born in Mary was God. God was born there, and He remained there exactly nine months. This was surely a great step. When He created the universe, He spent only six days. But for Him to enter into man was not a simple matter. To enter into man means to join with man and to be one with man.
God has the divine life, the uncreated life, and man has the human life, the created life. How could these two lives be together as one, and how could there be a living of these two lives as one living? This is why God entered into man. He was divine yet He was born human. No one can exhaust the study of this wonderful One. Who is He? He is God, but He is more than God. He is also man. He is the complete God and the perfect man. We have to call Him the God-man. The term God-man implies so much. This One who is our God, our Savior, our Redeemer, our Lord, and our Master is marvelous and far beyond our natural comprehension.
In Matthew 1 we can see how the unique God became a man. His name was Emmanuel, meaning God with us (v. 23). He was God with man. Then He lived on this earth, and He died a wonderful, vicarious, all-inclusive death to terminate every negative thing in the universe. His death was also a life-releasing death. In His death, He released Himself out of the human shell which He had put on. His resurrection was a life-imparting resurrection. In resurrection He became a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b) to take a second step to enter into man.
In the first step of incarnation He entered into man with the divine essence, to bring God into man, but through the second step of resurrection, He enters into man with two essences, the divine essence and the human essence. A divine-human mingled essence enters into man. When He entered into us in the second step, all the aspects of His person and work were included. When He entered into us, the complete God and the perfect man entered with His human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. When we were born of our human parents, we did not realize all the things that we received genetically. In the same principle, when we were regenerated, when God came into us, we did not realize that many wonderful things came into us. When we give Christ the first place, taking Him as our first love, we grow in Him. It is by our growth in life that we begin to realize what we have inherited by our divine birth.
In the process of living the Christian life, I have discovered many things, not just by my own experiences but also by the revelation in the Holy Bible. In God’s economy there are three crucial factors—God and man plus the Bible, which reveals the history of God in His union with man. In the Bible we have seen that the unique God desires to be wrought into man, making Himself one with man. He lives in this man and this man lives in Him. These two entities have one living.
The apostle Paul said that our outer man is being consumed, but our inner man is being renewed day by day (2 Cor. 4:16). To be consumed means to be reduced and to be renewed means to be increased. The old man is decaying, reducing, and the new man is increasing. Our inner man is being renewed with God. This means that the very Triune God is working Himself into us. If we are willing to receive His working, to say “yes” to His working, we will be the overcomers.
The overcomers enjoy God in them to be their grace for their enjoyment. The result, the coming out, is the Triune God wrought into and mingled with our tripartite being to make us one person, one entity. The New Jerusalem, which is the totality of all the overcomers, is a divine mingling of the processed Triune God with the redeemed and transformed tripartite man, a mingling of divinity with humanity, issuing in a universal, corporate, mysterious person. This is the conclusion of the entire Bible and of the history of God, first with man and second within man.
In the entire universe, the crucial items are God plus man plus His divine revelation, which is the Bible. At the conclusion of the divine revelation, all of God’s chosen and redeemed people will be absolutely one in the Triune God. He is three but He is uniquely one, so in the Triune God, the three-one God, we all can be made one. The conclusion of the divine revelation is the New Jerusalem, which is the processed, consummated Triune God wrought into our tripartite, God-created being, making the Triune God and us one entity.
(The Overcomers, Chapter 6, by Witness Lee)