I

When God became flesh and lived among mankind for a long time, after He had experienced and witnessed people's various lifestyles, what He thought of was not how to have a good life or how He could live more freely and comfortably. Instead, from His experiences of authentic human life, He saw the hardship in people's lives. He saw the hardship, the wretchedness, and the sadness of people living a life of sin beneath Satan's corruption. He also experienced how helpless people were who were living amongst corruption, and He saw and experienced the miserable conditions of humans who lived in sin, who lost all direction amidst the torture to which they were subjected by Satan and by sin. Everything He saw made Him feel the importance and the necessity of the work, He had taken on during this time that He lived in the flesh.

II

Even though He Himself knew that the responsibility He needed to take on in the flesh was so immense, and He knew how cruel the pain would be which He would face, when He saw mankind helpless in sin, when He saw the wretchedness of their lives and their feeble struggles under the law, He felt more and more grieved, and became more and more anxious to save mankind from sin. No matter what kind of difficulties He would face or what kind of pain He would suffer, He became increasingly resolved to redeem mankind, who was living in sin.

III

During this process, the Lord Jesus began to understand more and more clearly the work He needed to do and what He had been entrusted with. He became increasingly eager to complete His work—to assume all of mankind's sins, to atone for mankind so that they no longer lived in sin, and at the same time, God would be able to forgive man's sins because of the sin offering, allowing Him to continue to further His work of saving mankind. In the Lord Jesus' heart, He was willing to offer Himself up for mankind, to sacrifice Himself. He was also willing to act as a sin offering and to be nailed to the cross. When He saw the miserable conditions of human life, He wanted even more to fulfill His mission as quickly as possible, without the delay of a single minute or even a single second.

IV

Feeling such urgency, He spent no thought on how great His own pain would be, nor did He harbor any further apprehension about how much humiliation He would have to endure. He held just one conviction in His heart: As long as He offered Himself up, as long as He was nailed to the cross as a sin offering, then God's will would be carried out and God would be able to commence new work. Mankind's life and their state of existence in sin would be completely transformed. His conviction and what He was determined to do were related to saving man, and He had only one objective, which was to follow God's will so that God could successfully begin the next stage of His work. This was what was in the Lord Jesus' mind at the time.

from The Word, Vol. 2. On Knowing God. God's Work, God's Disposition, and God Himself III