By Xiang Ying
Many people are familiar with the word “Christ,” but don’t know what Christ is. Let’s explore this issue together!
God’s words say: “God become flesh is called Christ, and so the Christ that can give people the truth is called God. There is nothing excessive about this, for He possesses the substance of God, and possesses God’s disposition, and wisdom in His work, that are unattainable by man. … Christ is not merely the manifestation of God on earth, but instead, the particular flesh assumed by God as He carries out and completes His work among man. This flesh is not one that can be replaced by just any man, but one that can adequately bear God’s work on earth, and express the disposition of God, and well represent God, and provide man with life.” “Christ is the flesh donned by the Spirit of God. This flesh is unlike any man that is of the flesh. This difference is because Christ is not of flesh and blood but is the incarnation of the Spirit. He has both a normal humanity and a complete divinity. His divinity is not possessed by any man. His normal humanity sustains all His normal activities in the flesh, while His divinity carries out the work of God Himself. Be it His humanity or divinity, both submit to the will of the heavenly Father. The substance of Christ is the Spirit, that is, the divinity. Therefore, His substance is that of God Himself.”
From God’s words we can see that Christ is the incarnate God and is God’s Spirit clothed in flesh, that is, God’s Spirit is materialized in the flesh with normal humanity and normal human thinking, and thereby becomes an ordinary and normal person practically uttering, speaking, and expressing the truth among men to do the work of saving mankind. Just like when the Lord Jesus Christ came to earth in the flesh, He really and actually engaged with people and lived alongside and with people. According to people’s needs at that time, He spread the way of repentance, teaching people to be tolerant and patient and to love their neighbors as themselves; He freed people from the bindings of the laws and rules and asked them to confess and repent their sins so that they could gain the abundance of grace bestowed by Him. When the Lord Jesus preached and worked everywhere with His disciples, people practically experienced and felt God’s love and salvation for man and thus gained a real knowledge of God, no longer believing in the vague God in heaven. The Lord Jesus brought us humans closer to God and drove the image of a vague God from our hearts. Christ is God Himself; He has the essence of God from His birth, which can’t be possessed by anyone.
From His outward appearance, Christ is an ordinary and normal Son of man, but He is substantively different from us created human beings. Christ has not only normal humanity but, more importantly, complete divinity. Therefore, He has God’s substance, He can fully represent God, express all truths as God Himself, express God’s disposition and all that God has and is, and bestow the truth, the way and the life upon us. Christ’s life being can’t be possessed by any created or non-created being. Christ works and speaks, expresses God’s disposition, and all that God has and is in His flesh. No matter how He expresses God’s words and does God’s work, He always does so within normal humanity, and there is nothing supernatural about Him. Because Christ has complete divinity, He can express God’s words directly, not just relay or pass on God’s words. He can express the truth anytime and anyplace, supplying, watering, and shepherding man and guiding all of mankind. It’s just like the Lord Jesus Christ living in normal humanity. Like a normal person, He needed all the normal necessities of life, would shed tears when feeling sorrow and would laugh when feeling happy. However, Jesus Christ has complete divinity, so He can examine man’s innermost heart, see through all things and do the work that man is unable to do. For example, Jesus Christ could calm the wind and sea, feed five thousand with five loaves of bread and two fish, raise the dead, and make the blind see and the lame walk; He could conclude the Age of Law and start the work of the Age of Grace; He could spread the gospel of the heavenly kingdom, bring man the way of repentance and prophesy what would happen in the last days…. Thus it can be seen that Jesus Christ possesses God’s identity and substance; the words He said could not be spoken by man, and the work He did could not be done by man; He is substantively different from man. So we say that He is God’s incarnation, the practical God Himself.
Therefore, only if we accept and follow Christ, closely following the footsteps of the Lamb wherever He goes, can we obtain the way of life bestowed by God. It’s just as the Lord Jesus Christ said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man comes to the Father, but by me” (John 14:6).
