The Christ revealed in the book of Isaiah specifically is so rich: He is not just the Redeemer and the Savior, but He is so much more!
God’s economy is simply that this Wonderful Person, Christ, would be worked into our being little by little, so that He would replace us with Himself in an organic way and live out God’s expression in us! This Christ is the all-inclusive One – He is the reality of every positive thing in the universe!
Our Christ is so rich – He is both God and man, and He is the incarnation of the invisible God. In Him all the fullness was pleased to dwell (Col. 2:9).
Actually, Christ is the real God and the real man – He possesses both the human virtues and the divine attributes. He is the reality of love, life, righteousness, light, grace, humility, patience, power, mercy, wisdom, holiness, wisdom, etc. All these things are merely empty human virtues unless Christ comes in to be the reality of all these things. Our Christ is “the real thing” when it comes to all the positive things in the universe.
And even more: in His resurrection, this Christ who is so all-inclusive became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45). Just as when He became man Christ embodied all that the Triune God is and has, so when He became the Spirit, Christ became the Spirit as a “compound” of all that He is, all He has, all He has passed through in His human living, His death, His resurrection, His ascension, and His enthronement!
It’s all in the all-inclusive compound Spirit. Here in this Spirit we have God, man, incarnation, the perfect human living, the all-inclusive death of Christ, the life-imparting resurrection, the resurrection life, ascension, enthronement, headship, and the Lordship over all. This Spirit was poured out upon the Body at the day of Pentecost (on the Jewish side of the Body) and in the house of Cornelius (on the Gentile side of the Body) – once and for all!
When we repent and believe into the Lord, we receive this all-inclusive compound Spirit. And it is God’s desire that His Christ as this wonderful Spirit be wrought into us for the fulfillment of His economy. God’s economy is fulfilled by this Christ as the Spirit within us, with us, and by us.
We cannot fulfill God’s economy apart from Christ. Our efforts and desire to do this is simply not enough: Christ has to become our everything, He has to constitute and even replace us, so that He in us and with us will fulfill God’s heart’s desire!
We can see this replacing in Isaiah also, in the second section of the book: God hires some of the Gentile nations to come and deal with Israel, but because they are to greedy and harsh in dealing with Israel, God fires them. God hires the people of Israel to fulfill His purpose – but because they fail God and forget about Him, even offend Him by their actions and attitude, God fires the people of Israel.
Eventually, the One “hired” by God – the only One qualified to fulfill God’s economy – is Christ, the all-inclusive One! Christ becomes the replacement of anyone else in the fulfillment of God’s economy! O, may this Christ as the all-inclusive compound Spirit become our replacement more today!
As we eat and drink of Him, as we enjoy Him daily, and as we open our whole being to Him, He becomes our constitution in an organic way: He becomes even the fibers of our being, our intrinsic constitution!
Lord, do replace us more – until it is no longer us but You! Lord, even the life we now live, we live in faith – this organic union with the compound Spirit in our spirit (Gal. 2:20)! Lord, Amen, keep us enjoying You as such an all-inclusive One today!
[enjoyment from the Life-Study of Colossians as quoted in the Crystallization-study of Isaiah(1)]
