NOURISHING PEOPLE WITH THE UNSEARCHABLE RICHES OF CHRIST IN HIS FULL MINISTRY IN THE THREE STAGES (3)
From eternity past without beginning, Christ was God’s only begotten Son, possessing only divinity, without humanity. At that time He had not passed through death into resurrection. In incarnation the only begotten Son of God became flesh to be a God-man, a man possessing both the divine nature and the human nature. Through death and resurrection Christ in the flesh as the seed of David was designated to be the firstborn Son of God.
First Corinthians 15:45b says, “The last Adam [Christ in the flesh] became a life-giving Spirit.” The last Adam was the last man. Christ’s crucifixion was the end of man. In His resurrection Christ, the last Adam, became the life-giving Spirit for dispensing life. Through His death and resurrection Christ released the divine life that was confined in the shell of His humanity and dispensed it into His believers, making them the many members that constitute His Body.
This life-giving Spirit who is the pneumatic Christ is also called the Spirit of life ( Rom. 8:2 ), the Spirit of Jesus ( Acts 16:7 ), the Spirit of Christ ( Rom. 8:9 ), the Spirit of Jesus Christ ( Phil. 1:19 ), and the Lord Spirit ( 2 Cor. 3:18 ). The Lord Spirit may be considered a compound title like the Father God and the Lord Christ.
First Peter 1:3 reveals that Christ regenerated all of us who believe in Him in His resurrection. With God there is no time element. According to our human perspective, we were regenerated at a certain time, but in God’s view all His many sons were regenerated through the resurrection of Christ.
The purpose of Christ’s being begotten to be the firstborn Son of God and becoming the life-giving Spirit was for the regenerating of the believers, making them the many sons of God born of God with Him in the one universally big delivery. Christ’s resurrection was a big delivery of Himself as the firstborn Son and the believers as His many brothers, His millions of “twins.” This was for the composition of the house of God, even the household of God, and the constitution of the Body of Christ to be His fullness, His expression and expansion, to consummate the eternal expression and expansion of the processed and consummated Triune God.
The Christ in resurrection gave Himself as the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit without measure through His speaking of the words of God ( John 3:34 ). The more we receive the Lord’s words, the more we are filled with the immeasurable Spirit.
The content of one outline concerning Christ in one of His stages is like ten meals. We should nourish people with a meal. Each member of the vital groups should present a meal to people for their nourishment. It is hard to see a group among us today that is really vital. Our groups are not vital because we are not nourished. If we want to enter into the intrinsic significance of the Bible, we need to digest these outlines that we have released to enable us to nourish others with the unsearchable riches of Christ in His full ministry in three stages. (The Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1994-1997, vol. 5, “The Vital Groups”, ch. 13, pp. 165-173)
The church in Zamboanga 