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August 9, 2022

God Left Christ When He Was Judged for Our Sins (3)

Matt 1:18 Now the origin of Jesus Christ was in this way: His mother, Mary, after she had been engaged to Joseph, before they came together, was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit. Matt 3:16 And having been baptized, Jesus went up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming upon Him. 17 And behold, a voice out of the heavens, saying, This is My Son, the Beloved, in whom I have found My delight.

[Part 3 of 5] In chapter three of Matthew we see that the Spirit descended upon the Lord Jesus as a clear, distinct unit. However, it cannot reasonably be denied that the Lord Jesus already had the Holy Spirit within Him. Matthew 1:20 says that "that which is begotten" in Mary "is of the Holy Spirit." Not only was the Holy Spirit within the Lord Jesus; the Spirit was one of the essences of His being. Therefore, we need a way to reconcile two important facts: first, that the Lord Jesus had the Holy Spirit within Him as one of His essences; second, that the Holy Spirit descended upon Him after He was baptized. If we had only the revelation of the Trinity in Matthew 3, we may think that the Trinity is a matter of tritheism, of three Gods: one in the heavens, one on the earth, and one in the air. However, chapter three of Matthew comes out of chapter one. In Matthew 1 the emphasis is not on the three but on the one. Hence, when we put chapters one and three of Matthew together, we see that God is triune, three-one. Actually, it is not possible for us fully to reconcile the two aspects of the Trinity, the aspect of the one in Matthew 1 and the aspect of the three in Matthew 3. The reason we cannot reconcile these aspects is that the Trinity is a mystery. The crucial point for us to see regarding Matthew 1 and 3 is that when the Holy Spirit descended as a dove upon the Lord Jesus, He was already human and divine. He already had the divine nature and the human nature, for the Holy Spirit was one of the essences of His being. [Continued tomorrow] (c) Living Stream Ministry.

Bible verses are taken from the Recovery Version of the Bible and Words of Ministry from Witness Lee, Life-study of Mark, pp. 413-414. Both are published by Living Stream Ministry, Anaheim, CA. Please visit us at www.emanna.com. Send comments to: [email protected].

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