In his Gospel John speaks again and again about the Triune God – the Father as the source, the Son as the expression, and the Spirit as the realization.
God the Father is mysterious, hidden, and no human eye has ever seen Him. But the Son who is in the bosom of the Father has declared Him, explained Him, and expressed Him in full on earth. The hidden God was made visible in the Son, and the abstract Father was made real and tangible to man by the Son.
As the Word of God, Christ defined, explained, and expressed God the Father. As the Son of God, Christ is God to express God, and He is one with God the Father in everything. He even lived because of the Father, and He came to express the Father and carry out the Father’s will. When Christ came, He was full of grace and reality to bring us to enjoy God and realize God.
Yesterday (in the previous blog post) we saw the first seven aspects of Christ as the expression of God as seen in the Gospel of John, and today we will see the remaining nine of the sixteen aspects.
Christ is the Lamb of God. He baptized people in the Spirit. He is life and the bread of life. Christ as the Son of God is the grain of wheat bearing much fruit. The Son is the good Shepherd who is gaining His flock, the church. Christ is the Bridegroom coming for us as His bride. The Son is the vine cultivated by the Father. As the Son of God, Christ died (shedding His blood for us) and flowed out as living water, the Spirit, to germinate us and regenerate us.
In His resurrection (also mentioned in the Gospel of John), the Son of God was breathed into His disciples (all of us) as the Spirit – He now lives in us as the Spirit (who is the realization of the Son with the Father). Wow, Hallelujah for Christ as the expression of God the Father!
The Son is the Expression of the Father (part 2)
For the first seven aspects of Christ, the Son of God, as the expression of the Father, please read the previous article here. In his Gospel John speaks in a very mysterious way concerning the organic relationship between the Father and the Son.
In the Triune God, the Son is the expression of the Father by being the word of God who is God and who was with God in the beginning (John 1:1), by being equal with God (5:18), by being one with God the Father (10:30), by being the expression of the Father (14:8-9), by living because of the Father (6:57), by carrying out the Father’s will (6:38), and by bringing grace and reality to us (1:14, 16-17). Now let us see more aspects of Christ the Son as the expression of God the Father as revealed in the Gospel of John:
8. The Son became a man to be the Lamb of God (John 1:29, 36). God the Father loved the world so much that He gave His only begotten Son, and when the Son came, He expressed the Father’s love to the world by becoming the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world. Our Christ, the Son of God, is the Lamb of God. God’s love, compassion, and care for us were expressed in Christ, and we today enjoy Christ’s redemption. As a man, Christ had human blood to shed for us; as God, His blood is effective and can wash away our sins.
9. The Son baptized people in the Spirit (John 1:33). John the Baptist came to bury people of the old creation, but Christ came to baptize people for the new creation, germinating them with the life of God. Christ as the Son of God didn’t only die for us as the Lamb of God but also baptized us with the Spirit in His resurrection to regenerate us with the life of God.
10. The Son is life and the bread of life (John 11:25; 14:6; 6:35). No other man in human history has ever rightfully claimed that he is life. Life is in God Himself, and that hidden source of life is expressed and known in Jesus Christ who came to be the resurrection and the life! Christ as the Son of God, the embodiment and expression of God, is life to us. And that’s not all: after we receive Christ as life, He is the bread of life for the maintenance of life. Now we daily can eat Christ as the bread of life and as the living bread, and we can live because of Him. He is our life and our life supply.
11. The Son is a grain of wheat bearing much fruit (John 12:24). When Christ became a man, His divine life was concealed within the shell of His humanity. Instead of Him trying to be great and well-known because “He is God”, Christ humbled Himself and fell into the ground to die. In His enlivening resurrection, the Son of God as the one grain of wheat brought forth many grains of wheat – the many believers in Christ as the members of the Body of Christ. He reproduced Himself from one grain into many grains, expressing the Father’s desire to have many sons to be His corporate expression.
12. The Son is the good Shepherd who will gain His flock (John 10:14-16). The Father’s love for man is manifested through the Son’s coming to shepherd us. Christ as the Son of God came to shepherd us by laying His life down for us, the sheep, and He took care of us tenderly, making us all one flock with one Shepherd. The Son expressed the Father’s tender love and care through His shepherding of all the believers as His many sheep.
13. The Son is the Bridegroom coming for His bride (John 3:29-30). John the Baptist saw this – Christ is the Bridegroom coming for His bride. When we receive the Lord we got engaged to Him, and today we have a foretaste of what our marriage life with our beloved Bridegroom will be like. He loves us so much that He wants us to marry Him and be in an organic union with Him as a universal divine-human couple for eternity. We are now the bride of Christ, eagerly awaiting our Bridegroom and crying out, Come, Lord Jesus, our dear Bridegroom!
14. The Son is the vine cultivated by the Father (John 15:1). The Father’s desire is to be expressed, and so the Son came to be an organism, the vine, with many branches and clusters of grapes to manifest the Father. In this universe there’s a universal vine, Christ as the Son of God, and all the believers are part of the vine enjoying all the riches of Christ and manifesting the fullness of God in the universe. Christ is the vine, and we are the branches. What a mystery and yet what a reality in the church all over the earth today!
15. The Son died, shedding His blood for the redemption of sins, and flowed out as living water, even as the Spirit (John 19:34; 7:38-39). Christ died on the cross, shedding His blood for the redemption of sins, and out of His side flowed blood and water – blood for redemption and water for regeneration and impartation of life. The Father’s desire is to have many sons, and the Son came, died to redeem man, and released His divine life to regenerate us to be the children of God! Today we have both the blood of Christ (to wash away our sins) and the flowing life of Christ (for us to drink and be filled with His life).
16. In resurrection the Son was breathed into us as the Spirit (John 20:22). God the Father is fully expressed in God the Son, and the Son is realized as the Spirit. In His resurrection, Christ came to breathe the Holy Spirit into the disciples. Through His death and resurrection Christ became a life-giving Spirit, and now the resurrected Christ can be imparted into us to give us life! God as the source is manifested in Christ as the expression and He flows out as the Spirit to be breathed in by us!
The Divine Trinity is truly mysterious and at the same time absolutely wonderful.
On the one hand, we need to exercise our spirit and our trained mind to get into the word of God and understand – to the best of our ability – the revelation in the word of God concerning the Triune God. On the other hand, we need to daily enjoy the divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity into our being by calling on the name of the Lord and praying to Him (especially by using the words in the Bible as our prayer) so that we may be filled with His life.
Yes, the Triune God is a mystery; agreed, He is impossible to fully understand and comprehend. However, we can exercise the deepest part of our being, our mingled spirit, to understand what the mind cannot understand and to receive the divine life which is the Father in the Son as the Spirit.
Lord Jesus, how we appreciate Your incarnation, human living, death, and resurrection. Thank You for coming as the Lamb of God to take away our sin. Thank You for baptizing us in the Spirit to germinate us with the divine life. Thank You for being our life and our daily life supply for us to live the Christian life in the church life. Thank You for dying as the grain of wheat to produce us as Your multiplication. Thank You, Son of God, for being the good Shepherd tenderly caring for us. We love You, our dear Bridegroom! We love abiding in You as the vine that we may be for the Father’s manifestation in the universe! Praise You for the blood and water which flowed from Your side for our redemption and regeneration. Lord, keep us open to You to breathe You in as the Spirit, the life-giving Spirit, all the days of our life!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, bro. James Lee’s speaking in the message for this week, and portions from, Taking Christ as Our Person for the Church Life (pp. 46-48), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Mending Ministry of John, week 2 / msg 2, The Revelation of the Triune God and of the Consummated Spirit.
- Hymns on this topic:
# Lamb of God so pure and spotless, / Lamb of God for sinners slain. / Thy shed blood has wrought redemption, / Cleansing us from every stain. / Lamb redeeming, Lamb redeeming, / Bearing all our sins away, / Bearing all our sins away!
# Thou art the Bread of Life, / O Lord, to me, / Thy holy Word the truth / That saveth me; / Give me to eat and live / With Thee above; / Teach me to love Thy truth, / For Thou art Love.
# Oh, Father thank You for Your Son, / He shares Your heart for us. / That gladly He would bear us to / The bosom of Your love. / No greater Shepherd could there be, / That He would not lose one! / And lead us all to dwell with You. / Sweet Pasture, Living Stream.
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