THE GREAT COMMISSION OF CHRIST IN RESURRECTION (2)
Resurrection means divinity. Incarnation means humanity. Christ becoming a man was His entering into the stage of incarnation by bringing divinity into humanity. This is to bring God into man, making God and man one, as one entity, one person, one God-man. This was unprecedented in human history. There was no one before Christ who was one entity of divinity and humanity.
Christ lived in humanity to express God, especially to express the attributes of God in His human virtues. Although He was in humanity, He did not express humanity. He expressed divinity. He especially expressed the attributes of God. God’s attributes are what God is. God is love, light, holiness, and righteousness. When these attributes were expressed in Christ’s humanity, they became His human virtues.
Christ accomplished an all-terminating and an all-redeeming death to close His ministry in His incarnation. His one death terminated all negative things. Whatever God created became fallen and was terminated by Christ’s death. Also, whatever was terminated by Christ’s death was redeemed, so His death is all-terminating and all-redeeming. His ministry in His incarnation was closed by His death.
Through His death Christ entered into His resurrection to carry out His ministry in the stage of His inclusion. Before Christ became a man, He was God and the Son of God. At that time there was nothing of humanity in Him. But when He was brought into resurrection through His death, He became all-inclusive. Now in Him there is not only divinity but also humanity. In Him there is also His death with its effectiveness and His resurrection with its power. Now Christ is not simple; He is all-inclusive. Through His death He entered into His resurrection to carry out His ministry in another stage, the stage of inclusion. This is the stage of Christ as the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b).
Christ carries out His ministry in the stage of His inclusion through all the believers in Him as His Body to accomplish God’s eternal economy. Many use the term the great commission, but they do not see that the great commission of Christ is to carry out God’s eternal economy. Most think that the great commission is just to save sinners, to carry out soul-winning. Soul-winning is the meaning of their great commission. But the great commission to us revealed in the Bible is not soul-winning, to save sinners, but to carry out God’s eternal economy. The goal of this eternal economy is the New Jerusalem, which is a divine-human constitution of the processed and consummated Triune God with His redeemed, regenerated, transformed, and glorified elect. (The Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1994-1997, vol. 5, “The Vital Groups”, ch. 5, pp. 98-100)
The church in Zamboanga 