God’s everlasting love toward us is so strong, and His divine bands of love are expressed and reach us through cords of a man. The first segment of these cords / the first cord is His wonderful incarnation, then His bountiful human living, and then His all-terminating death on the cross.
Today I was filled with appreciation for Christ’s all-conquering resurrection in which Christ was begotten as the Firstborn Son of God, He became the life-giving Spirit, and we were regenerated to be the many God-men, the many sons of God.
When we see all the implications and the meanings of Christ’s resurrection, we will love Him more and we will enjoy Him more, advancing in the divine romance even more.
Christ was begotten to be the Firstborn Son of God
On the one hand, Christ has always been the Only Begotten Son of God – from eternity and unto eternity. But in time and space, God became a man and put on humanity; the only begotten Son of God put on human nature, and this human nature was NOT the Son of God.
In Christ’s resurrection, He uplifted His humanity into His divinity by invading and mingling His humanity with His divinity, bringing His human part into God.
So through incarnation Christ brought God into man, mingling God with man, and through His resurrection Christ brought man into God, mingling man with God.
We see this clearly in Rom. 1:3-4 and Acts 13:33. God begot Christ as His firstborn Son on the day of His resurrection by designating the seed of David by the Spirit of holiness of Christ in the power of resurrection to be the firstborn Son of God (see Rom. 8:29; Heb. 1:3-6).
When a son is born, everyone is happy. When the Firstborn Son was born, there was much joy in the whole universe! This has never ever happened before.
Human beings are still trying to “make man immortal”, find the secret of eternity, or somehow make a man to be eternal, never dying, or “like God”. Human beings cannot do this, and with our limited human mind we cannot even understand this.
But there was a Man who lived on this earth and this Man had God in Him, and after He died, He resurrected and brought His humanity into His divinity. The human part which is mortal, perishable, frail, was “divinized”, brought into God, deified, to become the Son of God.
Now there is such a thing as “divinized humanity”, a humanity into God, a glorified and deified humanity! In this way Christ became the Firstborn Son of God, being begotten of God in His humanity!
Millions of God-men were produced
When someone has a baby boy, everyone wants to know how much he weighs and what’s his size. In Christ’s resurrection there was a mass delivery, the greatest delivery that ever existed, in which Christ as the Firstborn Son of God and the many millions of believers were regenerated and produced (see 1 Pet. 1:3).
According to His great mercy God has regenerated us unto a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Through Christ’s death the divine life within the shell of His humanity was released, and in Christ’s resurrection this divine life was imparted into millions of people to regenerate them to be the many sons of God and the many brothers of the Firstborn Son of God!
We are now God-men, the many sons of God and the many brothers of Christ, being conformed to Christ’s image to be matured to fully express God corporately.
Christ became the life-giving Spirit
This is another mysterious matter – the Lord Jesus as a man in the flesh became a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45). Somehow, miraculously, a man in the flesh became a Spirit, even a life-giving Spirit.
Now the Lord is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17), and He is “the Spirit of reality” (see John 14) which enters into us to regenerate us and guide us into all the reality of what God is.
The Triune God was processed and consummated to become the pneumatized Christ, the Spirit-Christ, the Christ who is the Spirit, the life-giving Spirit. This is truly amazing, and human words cannot describe or explain this – it is beyond our comprehension.
Somehow in His resurrection Christ became the life-giving Spirit, the reality of resurrection (John 11:25; 1 John 5:6). As such a life-giving Spirit He can come into our spirit and regenerate, vivify, bring to life, and enliven our spirit, and then He can impart life to every part of our being (see Rom. 8).
What a Wonderful One in Resurrection!
When you see this Christ, when you read the Bible concerning all His accomplishments in His resurrection, and when you have your mind open to understand it, all you can do is just open to Him, love Him, and allow Him to continually vivify, enliven, and impart life to your whole being.
We may not understand everything and we don’t even have to – we just need to see His wonderful and all-conquering resurrection, and we will be filled with appreciation for Him.
God in His divine love comes to us with bands of love through cords of a man to bring us further into this lovely divine romance with Him.
Lord, thank You for Your resurrection. We may not understand fully what happened in Your resurrection, but we thank You for not only dying to terminate all the negative things but also resurrecting to regenerate us with Your life. Lord, You are right now inside of us as the life-giving Spirit. How we appreciate Your continual imparting of life into all our inward being! We love You, Lord!
References and Further Reading
- Sharing inspired from, Crystallization-study of the Epistle to the Romans (msg. 18), as quoted in, the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of the Minor Prophets, week 3 (entitled, Three Implications concerning Christ).
- Further reading:
# Rom. 1:3-4 and note on “designated” and “son of God”;
# Acts 13:33 and the note on “begotten You”;
# Rom 8:29 and the notes on “firstborn” and “many brothers”;
# 1 Cor. 15:45 and note on “life-giving Spirit”; - Hymns on this topic:
# By Thy death and resurrection, / Thou wast made God’s firstborn Son; / By Thy life to us imparting, / Was Thy duplication done.
# By divine regeneration / We the sons of God became, / But we must mature to fullness, / Thus the birthright to obtain.
# He’s the Spirit of reality, / Pneumatic Christ, the Firstborn Son in me. - Picture source: resurrection!
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amen!