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Scripture Reading: Zech. 12:1; John 14:23; 15:4; Eph. 3:17; Rom. 8:2, 6, 9-11, 29
Romans 8 may be considered the focus of the entire Bible and even the central focus of the universe. To understand this fact, we must first consider what God’s purpose is. Zechariah 12:1 says, “Thus declares Jehovah, who stretches forth the heavens and lays the foundations of the earth and forms the spirit of man within him.” In this verse we can see that God created three crucial things — the heavens, the earth, and our spirit. Most people would agree that the heavens and the earth are great. However, we may have never thought that in the Bible a part of our being is ranked with the heavens and the earth. In order to understand why the spirit of man is ranked with the heavens and the earth, we need to turn to the New Testament, which reveals that our spirit is the location where God desires to dwell (Eph. 2:22; cf. 2 Tim. 4:22). Most Christians have the concept that the heavens are God’s home and aspire to go to heaven to be with God. However, this is not according to God’s concept as revealed in the Bible. Isaiah 66:1 says, “Thus says Jehovah, / Heaven is My throne, / And the earth the footstool for My feet. / Where then is the house that you will build for Me, / And where is the place of My rest?” In this verse God is aspiring to obtain a proper home. His home is not the heavens or the earth but man.
Several verses in the New Testament reveal that God desires to dwell within man. John 14:23 says, “Jesus answered and said to him, If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make an abode with him.” The Son and the Father do not come to us merely for a short visit and then go away. If we are genuine lovers of Jesus, the Son and the Father will come to us to make a mutual abode with us. In other words, we become God’s home, and He becomes our home. In John 15:4 the Lord said, “Abide in Me and I in you.” Here the Lord was indicating that He is our home and that we are His home.
In Ephesians 3:14-17 Paul says, “For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father...that He would grant you...to be strengthened with power through His Spirit into the inner man, that Christ may make His home in your hearts through faith.” The inner man is our spirit. We can see the Triune God in these verses. The Father grants us to be strengthened into our spirit by the Spirit so that Christ the Son may make His home in our heart. To make home is to be settled. When we temporarily stay in someone else’s home, we do not make our home there. When we believed in the Lord, He came into us not for a brief visit but to stay forever. When we move into a house, we make home in it by filling every room and corner with our possessions. Our heart is a composition of our mind, emotion, will, and conscience. Therefore, Christ makes His home in our heart by occupying our mind, will, emotion, and conscience. Paul prayed that the Father would grant us to be strengthened into our inner man, our spirit, that Christ would have the opportunity to make His home in our heart. We need to be strong to agree and cooperate with the Lord’s settling Himself in our heart by filling every part of our inner being with Himself. The Lord comes into our spirit when we believe in Him, but we need to give Him the permission to spread into our will, our emotion, and especially our mind. We need to give Him the freedom to take over our mind, emotion, and will. Otherwise, He will be confined by us in our spirit and will be unable to settle in our entire inner being to make His home in our heart.
The above verses in John and Ephesians convey the New Testament revelation that the Triune God desires to dwell within us to make us His home. Although the Bible is composed of sixty-six books and over a thousand chapters, it has a central thought — Christ as the embodiment of God wants us to receive Him and give Him the permission to make His home in our hearts, to dwell in us permanently and eternally. The Triune God created the heavens and the earth, was incarnated, lived as a man on the earth for thirty-three and a half years, and died on the cross to accomplish redemption, take away our sins, and terminate our old man and the entire old creation. Then He entered into resurrection and ascension. The central focus of the universe is that this processed Triune God has come into us and now dwells in us. This is the greatest miracle. Nothing else in the universe could be more important than this.
We need to see that the indwelling of the processed Triune God is not a mere theory or doctrine but a real and present fact. Nothing should be more important to us. If we see that the Triune God lives in us, we will be ecstatic. If we were given a precious diamond, when others saw us, they would realize that we had received something extraordinary. We should all be full of joy since the Triune God is indwelling us and is one with us. He is our life and our person, and He is making us His home. It is crucial that we recognize this fact. We need to pray, “O Lord Jesus, show us this glorious fact.” We need His mercy to see a vision that the processed Triune God, who has accomplished everything and is now the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit, dwells in us. Even if we see only a little, it is better than nothing. Although we may not be ecstatic, as long as we are happy, it is good enough. A Christian must be a happy person. The Christian life is a happy life.
We need to see that the indwelling Spirit is the Triune God. According to the New Testament Greek, in the expression the Spirit of God, the Spirit and God are in apposition, indicating that the Spirit and God are one (Rom. 8:9). Similarly, the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of the resurrecting One, and the Spirit of life in Romans 8 indicate that the Spirit is Christ, the resurrecting One, and life (vv. 9, 11, 2). Therefore, since the Spirit indwells us, all three of the Triune God are in us as life. Actually, the three of the Triune God are all one. In John 14:23 the Lord said clearly that if we love Him, He and the Father will come and make an abode with us. In Ephesians 3:17 we read that Christ the Son is making His home in our heart. However, this does not mean that the Father does not come into us as well. Wherever one of the Godhead is, the other two are as well, because the three of the Godhead not only coexist but also coinhere. This is a mystery. To coexist is to exist simultaneously, and to coinhere is to exist within one another. The Father exists in the Son and in the Spirit, the Son exists in the Father and in the Spirit, and the Spirit exists in the Father and in the Son. The three exist at the same time and within one another. Therefore, when one of the three comes to us, all three come. The Lord Jesus told us that when the Spirit comes from the Father, He comes “from with” the Father (John 15:26). When the Spirit comes to us, He does not leave the Father in heaven. Instead, He comes with the Father and with the Son, because the Father, the Son, and the Spirit coinhere.
In Romans 8 the indwelling Spirit is called the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, and the Spirit of the resurrecting One. Thus, we can say that the Spirit in Romans 8 is the all-inclusive Spirit as the ultimate consummation and application of the Triune God. The Spirit is the link of the Triune God to us, for when He is present, the Triune God is present. The all-inclusive Spirit is nothing less than the Triune God Himself. God may seem far away and objective to some, but the Spirit is always subjective. The Spirit is the reaching, the application, of God to us. The current of electricity is the application and reaching of electricity from a distant power plant to a building. When electricity is thus applied as a current, it becomes subjective. Similarly, the Spirit is the application and the reaching of the Triune God to us. In our experience God is the Spirit. For this reason the Lord said, “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truthfulness” (John 4:24). Because God is Spirit, we can worship Him, touch Him, reach Him, and experience Him. God reaches us and is applied to us as the Spirit.
The Triune God as the all-inclusive Spirit is within us for us to experience and enjoy by taking Him as our life and our person. We need to realize how wonderful it is that the Triune God dwells in us. Within every genuine believer of Christ, there are two persons: the believer and the Triune God. We are the container of the Triune God, and He is within us as our life and our person. The Triune God indwelling us as the Spirit is a great and central matter in the Christian life, yet it is missed by many Christians today because it is mysterious and abstract. We need to fully realize that the Triune God is in us. God’s desire is that we, as believers of Christ, would live no longer by our self but by Him, who indwells us. He wants us to take Him as our life and our person. Because this teaching is neglected today, I have been burdened by the Lord to speak concerning Romans 8 for the past two years. Thus far, I have given at least fifty messages, mainly on the first fourteen verses of Romans 8. The more I minister, the more I am burdened. Because I enjoy the indwelling Triune God as the Spirit, I desire that all the brothers and sisters also would enjoy Him. We need to take Him as our life and our person.
Now we come to a very mysterious and puzzling point: life. The all-inclusive Spirit indwells the believers for the imparting of life to the believers. We may be familiar with the imparting of gifts and power to the believers, but Romans 8 does not mention gifts or power. Romans 8:2, 6, 10, and 11 all mention life. Today many Christians mainly seek after spiritual power; those who serve the Lord want to be full of impact. However, Paul was not for power but for life.
When Christ enters into us, our spirit is regenerated. Thus, our spirit is life (v. 10). When we love the Lord and set our mind on the things concerning Him, our mind is life (v. 6). Furthermore, if the Spirit of the resurrecting One indwells us, He will give life to our body (v. 11). For the Spirit to indwell us, we must give Him the permission to settle within us and saturate our inner being. We need the Spirit of the One who raised Jesus from the dead to give life to our mortal bodies. Concerning the things of God, our bodies are weak and dying, but the resurrecting One gives life to our dying bodies.
Life is abstract, mysterious, and difficult to define. Nevertheless, I have the assurance to say that in Romans 8 life is nothing less than Christ as the embodiment of the Triune God. For our spirit to be life means that our spirit is full of Christ. For our mind to be life means that our mind is filled with and occupied by Christ. For life to be given to our body means that Christ as the indwelling Spirit is ministered into our body.
A brother may be saved for years and know the Bible quite well, but one day he may be down and weak in his spirit, mind, and body. He may have no interest, thought, heart, or strength to pray. We have all been in this kind of situation. We are genuine believers, yet sometimes we do not have any strength for the things of God. This means that we are weak in our spirit, mind, and body; we have no life, strength, or energy but are exhausted and dying. When we are in this kind of situation, it is not because something is wrong but rather because something is missing. We may say that we are short of breath, which is to be short of life. To stop breathing is to die. Therefore, we need more breath. If we are weak, lacking life in our spirit, mind, and body, it is because we are short of spiritual breath. To breathe spiritually is to call on the name of the Lord. When we are weak, we do not need to call on the name of the Lord loudly. To shout loudly may be a kind of performance. Instead, we can breathe softly, “O Lord Jesus,” and we will be enlivened.
When we breathe by calling on the Lord, life comes into us. First, life comes into our spirit. Then we may go on to pray something, such as, “Lord Jesus, thank You. You are so good to me and to all of Your believers. Lord Jesus, I love You, I love the church, and I love all the saints.” If we pray in this way, life will spread into our mind, and our mind will be life. At this point we may have a burden to go to a meeting, offer a prayer, and speak something to the saints. Perhaps twenty minutes before, we were tired in every part of our being and did not have the strength or the energy to go to the meeting. However, now our spirit and mind are life, and life is being given to our body. A number of times before I came to speak, I was tired and very weak. However, when my mind is filled with life, I receive physical strength and am able to speak. Then the more I speak for the Lord, the more I am energized, as life is given to my mortal body.
The life that is given to our spirit, mind, and body is the Spirit, who is the consummation of the Triune God. Life, the Triune God, and Christ are one in the Spirit. Therefore, as we continually breathe in the Spirit as life and allow Him to spread into all our being, more and more of Christ is added into us. We become different when Christ as the life-giving Spirit is added into us, because we receive a new element. This is to know God in the experiential way of life. It is more than believing and trusting in an objective God and more than merely receiving gifts or power from God for our use or strength. Instead, it is to possess, experience, and enjoy the subjective God within our being.
When God is thus repeatedly added into our being, we will receive the life element that causes us to grow. Power does not cause us to grow. Growth requires the addition of a new element. A plant will not grow if the soil is poor and lacks nourishment. However, if the soil is rich, more nourishing elements will be added to the plant and cause it to grow. We need more than the knowledge of an objective God in our mind; we need to have the element of the subjective God added into our being. This occurs not by teaching but by experiencing. Therefore, whenever we feel weak in our spirit, mind, or body toward the things of God, we need to call on the name of the Lord. Hymns, #73 says, “Just to breathe the Name of Jesus, / Is to drink of Life indeed.” To call on the name of the Lord is to breathe life into us, and this life is nothing less than Christ as the embodiment of God realized as the Spirit. This is not a theory but a real fact. In this way the divine element is added into our being, and we grow with this element. As a result, our Christian life and growth will be normal and healthy.
My burden is not to exhort, admonish, or entreat you to improve yourself. To try to correct our outward behavior is a matter of ethics or religion and is not of God’s economy. Instead, we simply need to breathe in Christ as our life and live by Him. This is the proper, genuine, normal Christian living by the divine life. We need to realize that God is in us and that there is no need for us to do anything since He has accomplished everything necessary. The only need today is for us to take God as our life so that He may be added into our being. In this way He and we become one and live one life. This is the Christian life according to Romans 8.
In the divine life is a law, which is the working, the function, of this life (v. 2). While we are growing with the element of the divine life, this life has an automatic function, the law of life. This law regulates us from within, shaping us into the form of Christ. Thus, we are being conformed to the image of Christ and will eventually be exactly the same as He is (v. 29). This is not ethics, religion, or improvement of character; much less is it something of habit, nature, or culture. Instead, it is the Triune God indwelling us so that we can take Him as our life, our life supply, and even our person and thereby live by the divine life and grow with the divine element every day. While we are growing with this life element, the law of life works in us automatically to shape us, conform us, into the image of Christ. The Body of Christ, the fullness of Christ, the new man, and the mutual habitation of God and man issue from our experience of this life. Ultimately, this life will prepare the bride of Christ, which will cause the Lord to come back and usher us into the next age. For this reason, the crucial focus of the Bible and the universe is in Romans 8.
