Question 5: Why is it said that corrupt mankind must be saved by God incarnate? This is something that most people don’t understand—please share fellowship on this.
Answer:
The reason corrupt mankind must be saved by God’s incarnation is that man’s flesh has been thoroughly deceived and corrupted by Satan. All of mankind lives under Satan’s domain, they can’t distinguish between good and evil, beauty and ugliness. They can’t tell the difference between the positive and negative. They live according to Satan’s philosophy, law and nature, they are arrogant, self-righteous, reckless, and lawless. They are all embodiments of Satan and have become degenerates conspiring with Satan to resist God, yet they don’t realize that. God is the Creator, only God thoroughly knows humanity’s true nature, to what degree they’ve been corrupted. And only God can expose and dissect man’s satanic nature and corrupt disposition, can tell man how to live and act as men, and can thoroughly conquer, purify, and save mankind. Other than God, no created man can see through to the essence of man’s corruption and certainly cannot give man the truth of how to act as men. So, if God wishes to wrest the deeply corrupt mankind from the clutches of Satan and save them, then only if God’s incarnation personally expresses the truth and God’s disposition and tells man of all the truths which he must possess in order to be saved, allowing man to understand the truth, know God, and see through Satan’s evil plots and various fallacies, only then may man forsake and reject Satan and return before God. Also, the work of God’s incarnation exposes all kinds of men. Because men are all arrogant and refuse to give in, when God is incarnated to express the truth, men invariably respond with their conceptions, resistance and even war. As such, the truth of corrupt mankind’s resistance to and betrayal of God is fully exposed and God conducts His judgment of man based upon the corruption they reveal and their nature and essence. Only in this way, can God’s conquest, salvation, and perfection of mankind be carried out smoothly. Through the judgment by God’s words, man is gradually conquered and purified. When man is thoroughly conquered, he begins to obey the incarnate God, he begins to accept and obey God’s judgment and chastisement and experience God’s work, and he resolves to pursue the truth and never again live by Satan’s philosophy and law. When man lives entirely according to God’s word, then God has thoroughly defeated Satan and corrupt man serves as the spoils of His victory against Satan. In essence, God wrests the corrupt mankind from the grips of Satan. Only the work of God’s incarnation can have such an effect. This is the absolute necessity of God’s incarnation saving mankind, and only God’s incarnation can thoroughly conquer and save mankind. The people that God uses are incapable of doing the work of redeeming and saving mankind.
Corrupt man truly needs God to become flesh to judge and purify him personally if he wants to be saved. In the course of the incarnate God’s interaction with man, He allows man to understand and know God face-to-face. Because the real pursuers of the truth accept the judgment and purification of Christ of the last days, they naturally are able to obey God and feel love in their heart for God and are thoroughly rescued from the domain of Satan. Is this not the best way for God to save and perfect mankind? Because God is incarnated in the flesh, we have had the opportunity to come face to face with God and experience His real work, and have had the opportunity to receive the supply of God’s accurate word and be shepherded and watered by Him directly so that we begin to rely upon God, obey God, and truly love Him. If God didn’t become flesh to do the work of mankind’s salvation, this practical effect could not be achieved. …
When God becomes flesh to save corrupt mankind, He can use the language of men to clearly tell mankind of God’s demands, His will, His disposition and all that He has and is. In this way, man can understand God’s will without having to cast about and search, they may know God’s demands and the way in which they ought to practice. They can also, as such, have a practical understanding and knowledge of God. Just as in the Age of Grace, Peter asked the Lord Jesus, “Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?” (Mat 18:21). The Lord Jesus told Peter directly: “I say not to you, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven” (Mat 18:22). From this we can see that the incarnate Lord Jesus nurtured and supported men whenever and wherever He went, giving man the most practical and clear supply. In the last days, Almighty God has been incarnated amongst men, expressing the truth to address man’s actual situation, expressing God’s disposition and all that God has and is to support and supply mankind, pointing out all of the inaccuracies and fallacies within man’s belief in God, informing man of God’s will and His demands, and giving men the most practical and accurate life supply and sustenance. For instance, when we live in rebellion and resistance of God without knowing it, God’s word directly exposes and judges us, allowing us to see, in God’s word, how our very satanic nature is against God. When we follow God for our own personal gain and are self-righteous in so doing, God exposes us based upon what we lack and tells us what beliefs we must hold as followers of God. When we misunderstand God in our experience of His judgment, God’s word reminds us of the earnest intentions with which God judges and saves mankind, resolving our misunderstandings of God, etc. All of God’s chosen have deeply experienced how the incarnate God is constantly helping and supplying us so that we needn’t cast about and search. All we need to do is read more of Almighty God’s word to gain God’s most practical sustenance and nurturing. Through the word God expresses, we gain some true understanding of God’s will, His disposition and all that He has and is and through this understanding, we come to know how to pursue in such a way as to live out a true life and learn how to see through Satan’s dastardly plots, clearly seeing how we ourselves have been corrupted to the core by Satan, and in so doing, slowly casting off our sin and Satan’s dark influence. As a result, our life disposition changes and we set foot on the right way, living out the reality of truth. God’s incarnation has made all of this possible.
God has been incarnated to do work and express His word, allowing man to attain the most practical life supply and sustenance. Despite the fact that man has many conceptions regarding God incarnate’s work of judgment, God has brought man the way of life and the everlasting salvation, and man has come to depend upon Him. … Despite the fact that God has taken the form of an ordinary Son of man in His incarnation in the last days to save and perfect mankind, despite His not performing signs and wonders, and not possessing superhuman qualities or a large stature and His being the target of man’s conceptions, their denial, resistance, and rejection, the truth that Christ expresses and the work of judgment which He carries out have given man a supply of God’s word, and allowed them to attain the truth and see the appearance of God. Though we have not seen God’s real person, we have seen His inherent disposition, and His holy substance, which is just the same as if we had seen His real person. We have seen God living amongst us really and actually. We really feel that we have been raptured before the throne, experiencing God’s work face to face with God, and enjoying the supply of living water of life which flows from the throne. By undergoing God’s work of judgment in the last days, we gradually come to understand God’s earnestness in saving mankind. We see how great God’s suffering is, what a great price He pays in order to save mankind. All that God does for us is love; it is all salvation. We all hate how rebellious and unreasonable we were in the past and we now possess genuine love and obedience for God. Now that we’ve gotten to this point, we all truly recognize that we’ve experienced our current transformation entirely because of the salvation of God incarnate. Christ of the last days truly is corrupt humanity’s greatest salvation and the only path for man to know God and gain His approval.
Excerpted from Classic Questions and Answers on the Gospel of the Kingdom
