The Gospel of the Promise made to the Fathers: a Human Seed becomes the Son of God!

This week we start enjoying and prayerfully considering the matter of, Propagating the Resurrected, Ascended, and All-inclusive Christ as the Development of the Kingdom of God (2018 fall ITERO), and in particular today we want to see the gospel of the promise made to the fathers – the fact that a human seed becomes the Son of God!

By propagating we need reproducing; to propagate Christ is not just to spread the truth concerning Him but to reproduce Him, just as a husband and a wife propagate by bringing forth children the same as they are.

We propagate Christ in His economy in the way of reproducing Him.

When someone responds to the word of the gospel and faith is infused into that one by the sanctifying Spirit who works within him, this one believes in his heart that God raised Jesus from the dead and confesses with his mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord, and this one is saved, becoming part of the propagation of Christ.

When we confess with our mouth and believe with our heart that Jesus Christ is Lord, the life-giving Spirit enters into us to regenerate us, imparting the divine life into us, so that we may become children of God and brothers of Christ.

This is what we mean that Christ is being propagated. This is Christ increasing among us; although He has the preeminence among us as the only begotten Son of God, He became the firstborn Son of God, and we are His many brothers.

In John 12:24 the Lord Jesus spoke of Himself as a grain of wheat who fell into the ground to die and bring forth much fruit, many grains; this is propagation.

In Acts 5:14 and 11:25 we are told that large numbers of people were being added to the Lord; on one hand they were outwardly added to the church, but actually, Christ was expanded and increased in humanity.

We are propagating a person, not a teaching; our gospel is a person, the life within us is a person, the word we announce is a person, and the church in which we are is a corporate expression of this person.

Everything is personal here: though we have never seen him physically, we love Him, we believe into Him, He is our Lord, and we cooperate with Him to propagate Christ!

We are not here in a movement simply trying to save souls so that they won’t perish; we don’t minimise this and we don’t look down on it, but we are here to announce the truth concerning a Person, Jesus Christ, so that many other human beings would turn to this Person, believe into Him, receive Him, be baptized into Him, consecrate themselves to Him, and allow Him to permeate and saturate their entire being to make His home in their heart.

Our focus is the all-inclusive person of Jesus Christ, who has been resurrected and ascended, and who is emphatically revealed in the book of Acts.

In Acts we see the disciples, who were eye witnesses to the Lord Jesus and His living and work, who were trained by Him and saw Him living, dying, resurrecting, and appearing to them – these ones were the Lord’s witnesses, the witnesses of His resurrection.

They were testifying of the resurrected and ascended Christ, and this One is so all-inclusive!

Lord Jesus, we truly believe into You! We fervently love You, Lord, and we earnestly seek You. Oh Lord, we desperately need You, for apart from You we are nothing and we have nothing and we can do nothing. By Your drawing love we turn our heart to You and we open every part of our inner being to You to receive more of You. Lord, we praise You for Your glorious victory over Your enemy – he is crushed under our feet right now, and You are the Lord of heaven and earth! Lord, we rejoice to have You as our indwelling life-giving Spirit, working yourself into our being, reproducing Yourself into us to bring forth the one new man! Amen, Lord, we are here for Your propagation, Your duplication, and Your enlargement!

Knowing and Experiencing Christ as the Resurrected, Ascended, and All-inclusive One to Propagate Him

The Christ reproduced in us and propagated through us depends on the Christ we see, enjoy, and experience, that is, on what this Christ IS to us in reality.

If Christ is only our Savior, we will propagate Him only as our Savior for others to be saved. But if we know Christ as resurrection and we experience the power of His resurrection, if we come to know Christ in His heavenly ministry and with His supreme authority, we will announce and propagate such a Christ.

If we know Christ as the center of God’s administration and government in the universe, we will propagate Him as such a One, and this will make an impact on the ones brought to Him by us. If we go on to realize, know, and enjoy the all-inclusive Christ, spontaneously such a Christ will be reproduced through us.

God doesn’t want to gain great preachers and eloquent teachers of God’s word but witnesses, those who bear witness of the person they truly know, experience, and enjoy. The Lord appeared to Saul of Tarsus to make him a minister and a witness.

The Lord’s way is not to make us eloquent ministers giving sermons, but to raise up a number of witnesses who can speak not just what they believe but of the One in whom they believe, the Christ they know and experience.

We are not here merely to speak of God and of Christ; we are here not merely to speak of the God we believe into but of the God we know. The Lord wants to have witnesses who really know the Person to whom they are bearing witness.

And the goal of this propagation and witnessing is that God gains a kingdom. The Person we propagate is Christ as the development of the kingdom of God.

The kingdom of God is intrinsically Christ Himself sowed into our being as the seed of life to grow within us and bring forth within us a realm over which He rules by Himself as life.

The kingdom doesn’t come in the way to be observed; the kingdom of God is among us, for Jesus Christ incarnated is the kingdom of God.

We desire, as those filled with the essential Spirit and empowered by the economical Spirit, to propagate the resurrected and ascended Christ over all the earth as the development of the kingdom of God, so that, as soon as possible, the Lord Jesus would return and manifest the kingdom of God in glory all over the earth! Amen!

The Lord must have the reality of the kingdom before there can be the manifestation of the kingdom. We need to know Christ, enjoy Christ, and experience Christ as the Resurrected, Ascended, and All-inclusive One, so that we will propagate Him on earth in a spontaneous way.

Lord Jesus, we want to know and experience You as the resurrected, ascended, and all-inclusive One so that we may spontaneously propagate You on earth. We want to enjoy You as the resurrected One with the resurrection life and power, and as the ascended One with Your authority and government and glory. Amen, Lord, grant us to enjoy and know You as the all-inclusive One, so that spontaneously we may testify to others of the wonderful Christ we have been enjoying and experiencing! Amen, Lord Jesus, we are here for Your propagation on earth!

The Gospel of the Promise made to the Fathers: a Human Seed becomes the Son of God!

In Acts 13 we see Paul actively propagating the resurrected, ascended, and all-inclusive Christ as the development of the kingdom of God, and when he speaks the gospel he mentions, the gospel promised to the fathers (Acts 13:23, 32).

What is this gospel? It is the gospel promised to David in 2 Sam. 14, when he wanted to build God a house; this gospel was concerning God building David a house, and having his seed build God a house, and this seed becoming the Son of God.

From this man’s seed – from David’s seed – according to promise, God brought to Israel a Savior – Jesus Christ – and Paul announced to the Jewish people the gospel of the promises made by God that a human seed will be called God’s Son!

This promised seed in 2 Sam. 7;12 refers, literally, to Solomon, who was David’s son and built the temple as God’s dwelling place in the Old Testament (1 Kings 5:5; 8:15-20; 1 Chron. 22:9-10; 28:6). However, David’s seed actually refers to Christ as God’s firstborn Son (Heb. 1:5-6) who has both divinity and humanity.

The Son of God became David’s seed by being born as a descendant of David; He was constituted into David’s being.

Then, through death and resurrection, He became the firstborn Son of God to build God’s real house, His spiritual temple, the church. God’s desire was and is to work Himself into us, men, to be our life, nature, and constitution, so that Christ would be produced in us and come forth in us for the building up of the dwelling place of God.

The only begotten Son of God became a man through incarnation to be the Son of Man, and through death and resurrection He was designated the Son of God, the firstborn Son of God, according to the promise made to the fathers.

We need to see a vision of Christ as the firstborn Son of God, have a realization of Him, and have a burden to propagate Him as the Firstborn Son, because the desire in God’s heart is to produce millions of sons who would be conformed to the image of God’s firstborn Son.

In Matt. 22:41-45 the religionists questioned the Lord, and then later the Lord asked them a question, Who is Christ? Why does David, his father, calls Him in spirit, Lord? Wow!

Somehow the seed of a man, that is, the Son of Man, can become the Son of God. God Himself, the divine One, became a human seed, the seed of David; this seed was Jesus, the God-man, Jehovah the Savior (see Matt. 1:18-21; 2 Tim. 2:8).

Then, through resurrection Christ as the human seed became the Son of God in His humanity. Wow! God was constituted into man through incarnation, and man was brought into God through resurrection. Hallelujah!

Just like the Lord Jesus, we are all descendants of a human being, but it is possible for us to be sons of God!

From John 1:18 and 3:16 we can clearly see that, in the Godhead, Christ is the Only Begotten Son of God; this cannot change. But this One became flesh, and later in John 20 He told Mary, Go and tell My brothers…In Christ’s resurrection we all were regenerated to be the many brothers of Christ, and He is the firstborn Son of God!

On one hand Christ as the Son of God is the only begotten Son, but on the other hand, He in His economy went through a process to be the firstborn Son of God with us as the many brothers! Hallelujah!

Thank You Lord Jesus for becoming a man – You brought God into man, and You constituted divinity into humanity. Praise You Lord for bringing man into God through Your resurrection, thus being begotten of God as the firstborn Son of God. Hallelujah, there’s a way for us as human beings to be born of God, reborn with the divine life, so that we may be the many sons of God and the many brothers of Christ! Lord, may many thousands of sons of God be produced all over the earth to be part of Your corporate expression and reproduction, Your propagation!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Ron Kangas for this week, and portions from, Life-study of 1 & 2 Samuel, msgs. 23, 25 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Propagating the Resurrected ascended, and All-inclusive Christ as the Development of the Kingdom of God (2018 fall ITERO), week 1, Propagating the Resurrected Christ as the Firstborn Son according to the Promise Made to the Fathers.
• Hymns on this topic:
  # In the bosom of the Father, / Ere the ages had begun, / Thou wast in the Father’s glory, / God’s unique begotten Son….By Thy death and resurrection, / Thou wast made God’s firstborn Son; / By Thy life to us imparting, / Was Thy duplication done. (Hymns #203)
  # Once He was the only God-man; / Now we are His duplication. / As the many grains we’re blended / As His corporate reproduction. (Song on, God has called us for His purpose)
  # God ordained us unto sonship, / Ere creation’s work was done, / To conform us by His Spirit / To the image of His Son; / That His only dear Begotten / Might become the firstborn One, / And by Him with many brethren / His expression full be won. (Hymns #741)