All of us are familiar with the parable of the lost sheep. The Lord Jesus used this parable to very vividly tell us about how real God’s love is and to allow us to feel how sincere God’s desire to save mankind is. This parable always has been a source of encouragement for all of us who follow the Lord, enabling us to experience the Lord Jesus’ mercy and care for us.
I, however, always felt that the Lord Jesus’ will was not limited to this. A few days ago, I happened to read a passage in a book, which gave me some new understanding of God’s will behind this parable. The passage says, “The way of expression—the parable—used here is a figure of speech in human language, and as such it belongs within the scope of human knowledge. If God had said something similar in the Age of Law, people would have felt that such words were not truly consistent with who God was, but when the Son of man delivered these words in the Age of Grace, it felt comforting, warm, and intimate to people. When God became flesh, when He appeared in the form of a man, He used a very appropriate parable that came from His own humanity, in order to express the voice of His heart. This voice represented God’s own voice and the work He wanted to do in that age. It also represented an attitude that God had toward people in the Age of Grace. Looking from the perspective of God’s attitude toward people, He compared each person to a sheep. If a sheep was lost, He would do whatever it took to find it. This represented a principle of God’s work at that time among mankind, when He was in the flesh. God used this parable to describe His resolve and attitude in that work. This was the advantage of God becoming flesh: He could take advantage of mankind’s knowledge and use human language to speak to people, and to express His will. He explained or ‘translated’ to man His profound, divine language that people struggled to understand in human language, in a human way. This helped people understand His will and know what He wanted to do. He could also have conversations with people from the human perspective, using human language, and communicate with people in a way they understood. He could even speak and work using human language and knowledge so that people could feel God’s kindness and closeness, so that they could see His heart” (“God’s Work, God’s Disposition, and God Himself III”). I learned that through the parable of the lost sheep, not only can we realize how real God’s love and salvation for us are and see how much responsibility He takes for our lives, but we can also see the benefits of the work of God incarnate to people. If He had done this work in a spiritual body, appearing to people through thunder, clouds, and pillars of fire, we would have no way of drawing close to God, nor would we be able to understand His will. However, when God incarnated as the Son of man to work in our midst, the Lord used human language as well as things we often see and encounter in our lives, things we can easily understand, to create parables. This includes the parable of the sower (see Matthew 13:1–9), the parable of the tares (see Matthew 13:24–30), the parable of the mustard seed (see Matthew 13:31–32), and the parable of the net (see Matthew 13:47–50). We can gain a better understanding of God’s love through these parables, understand God’s will and requirements for us, have a clear path of practice, plus know what God has and is, and His disposition. We also truly feel how kind and approachable God is—the distance between us and God grows smaller. All this can’t be achieved by the work of the spiritual body. Just like when we read the parable of the lost sheep, we can see God’s resolve and attitude toward saving mankind and that He will save a lost sheep at any cost, and will not rest until He’s done. We also gain an even greater understanding of the Lord Jesus’ merciful and loving disposition. If it weren’t for God becoming flesh and using human language to come up with these parables, to create these examples, it would be so hard for us to understand God’s will, and this is something that we’d never realize.
God personally became flesh and came to walk among us to work and speak. He used commonplace, easily understandable language to guide us to understand His will and requirements so that we have a path of practice. This shows how important for our understanding of the truth and of God it is that God incarnated to work and speak on earth!
