«　WEEK 6　DAY 4　»

　　John 1:29 The next day he saw Jesus coming to him and said, Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!

　　Eph. 2:15 Abolishing in His flesh the law of the commandments in ordinances, that He might create the two in Himself into one new man, so making peace.

　　The all-inclusive judicial redemption of Christ is of five aspects. First, He terminated all things of the old creation. Second, He redeemed all the things created by God and fallen in sin (Heb. 2:9; Col. 1:20)…. Third, He created (conceived) the new man with His divine element. Ephesians 2:15 says that on the cross He created the Jewish believers and the Gentile believers in Himself into one new man. That creation was a conception…. Christ created (conceived) the new man in Himself, indicating that He was the very element for the conceiving of the new man. He conceived in Himself as the element the two peoples into one new man. While the Lord Jesus was dying on the cross, He was creating the new man.

　　Fourth, when Christ accomplished His all-inclusive judicial redemption, He released His divine life from the shell of His humanity. John 12:24 says that the Lord Jesus was a grain of wheat…. Christ had the divine life, but it was concealed in the shell of His humanity. Hence, He needed to suffer death on the cross so that the shell of His humanity might be broken to release His divine life from His human shell.

　　Fifth, in accomplishing His all-inclusive judicial death, Christ also laid a foundation for His organic salvation and set up the procedure to attain His ministry in the stage of His inclusion. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 5, “How to Be a Co-worker and an Elder and How to Fulfill Their Obligations, ” p. 228)

　　At the end of His life and ministry on earth, the Lord Jesus went willingly to the cross. His crucifixion was a vicarious death, an all-inclusive death which terminated the old creation and solved all problems. His death ushered Him into resurrection. On the one hand, in His resurrection He was begotten to be the firstborn Son of God (Acts 13:33; Rom. 1:4; 8:29). On the other hand, in and through His resurrection He became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b).

　　Furthermore, through Christ’s resurrection millions were begotten, regenerated, by God (1 Pet. 1:3) to be sons of God and to be members of the Body of Christ, the church. The Christ who was incarnated, crucified, and resurrected, the Christ who ascended to the heavens and then descended as the Spirit, has produced the church as the corporate expression of the Triune God. The church today is the enlargement of the manifestation of Christ. Thus, the church also is part of the divine history, the intrinsic history of the divine mystery within the outward, human history.

　　At the end of this part of the divine history, Christ will come back, descending with His overcomers as His army (Joel 3:11) to defeat Antichrist and his army. There will be the meeting of two figures—Antichrist, a figure in the outward, human history, and Christ with His overcomers, the Figure in the intrinsic, divine history. The Figure in the divine history will defeat the figure in the human history and then cast him into the lake of fire (Rev. 19:20). Following this, the thousand-year kingdom will come. Eventually, this kingdom will consummate in the New Jerusalem in the new heaven and new earth. The New Jerusalem will be the ultimate, the consummate, step of God’s history.

　　The history of man, the history of the world, is outward. The divine history, the history of God in and with humanity, is inward. This history is a matter of the divine mystery of the Triune God in humanity. (Life-study of Joel, pp. 34-36)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 5, “How to Be a Coworker and an Elder and How to Fulfill Their Obligations, ” ch. 1