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Scripture Reading: Rom. 8:9-11
Romans 8 is mysterious and abstract, yet it is a crucial chapter in the Bible, for it reveals the focal point of God’s economy. The highlight of God’s salvation is that He wants to be one with His redeemed people. God’s desire to be one with man is not accidental or temporary but eternal. Ephesians 1:3-5 says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ...even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world to be holy and without blemish before Him in love, predestinating us unto sonship through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.” These verses reveal that in eternity past God had a heart’s desire and purposed to fulfill this desire. In order to fulfill His desire, God planned to work Himself into a group of human beings. In other words, in eternity past God purposed to enter into His redeemed people so that He could be their life and so that they could be His corporate expression. This is the focus of God’s economy.
According to God’s purpose, He created the heavens, the earth, and millions of items with human beings as the center. Man is the center of God’s creation because God’s intention is to be expressed through man. Man can become God’s expression only by God entering into man to be man’s life and content and to make man one with Him so that man may live by Him and even live Him out. In this way God is expressed from within man.
Zechariah 12:1 indicates that the heavens are for the earth, the earth is for man, and God created man with a spirit so that man can receive God. The crucial part in a transistor radio is the receiver, which receives the radio waves from the air. Without a receiver, a radio does not work. Although there are many radio waves in the air, only a radio with a receiver can substantiate the radio waves. God created man with a spirit as such a receiver to substantiate and receive God.
We human beings are different from animals because we have a spirit as a wonderful receiver. No animal ever built a shrine to worship something. Animals have no thought about God, but throughout history and regardless of race, people have always worshipped. Although what they worship may be wrong, their desire to worship is right. Atheists say that there is no God, yet deep in their being is a desire to worship something. Within man there is a subconscious need to worship God, because man has a spirit. Just as we hunger for food because we have a stomach, we hunger for God because He created a spirit in us.
The Lord said, “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truthfulness” (John 4:24). We cannot worship God with our physical body. We should not try to physically feel, see, smell, or hear God. We must use the proper organ. Just as we must exercise our ears to substantiate sound, we must exercise our spirit to substantiate God. Although radio waves are everywhere in the air, the proper receiver must be used to prove that they are real. God is real, but we need to exercise the proper organ — our human spirit — to know Him. People often come to a point in their lives when it seems that nothing can satisfy them. Although we may have a good family, education, job, and financial situation, we will come to a point when we realize that there is still a hunger and thirst within that is not satisfied. This hunger and thirst are in our spirit. Man was created with a spirit to seek after God.
God planned, purposed, and created the heavens, the earth, and millions of items for man to exist (Gen. 1). After everything was prepared, God created man with a spirit that man could receive God. However, instead of receiving God, man fell. Then in the New Testament God came in the person of the Son. In His incarnation He became a man. He was conceived in a virgin’s womb and grew there for nine months (Matt. 1:23). Then He was born with a physical body and raised in a poor carpenter’s family in Nazareth, a despised city. Isaiah 9:6 says, “A child is born to us... / And His name will be called... / Mighty God.” The little child born in a manger was the Mighty God. The man Jesus who lived on the earth for thirty-three and a half years was God. It is a great thing that God Himself became a man to live a genuine human life on the earth among men.
God was incarnated and lived as a man in order to accomplish something. When the Lord was thirty years old, He came out to minister, preach, and teach. Actually, His ministering was to sow Himself as the seed of life into mankind. However, no one around Him realized what He was doing. Even the Lord’s disciples, who were with Him day and night for three and a half years, did not realize the real significance of His earthly ministry while they were with Him. According to Matthew 13:3, the Lord came as a sower to sow Himself as the seed of life into the soil of man’s heart to grow there. Of all the great historical figures, only Jesus has sown Himself as a seed into other human beings. Jesus was incarnated, lived a human life among men, and eventually sowed Himself into His believers.
In John 6:48-51 the Lord said, “I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died...I am the living bread which came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he shall live forever; and the bread which I will give is My flesh, given for the life of the world.” Verse 52 says, “The Jews then contended with one another, saying, How can this man give us His flesh to eat?” The Lord continued in verses 55 through 56: “My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me and I in him.” Verse 60 says, “Many therefore of His disciples, when they heard this, said, This word is hard; who can hear it?” They did not understand how Jesus, a Nazarene, could be the bread of life for them to eat. The Lord died as the Lamb of God not only to take away our sins and redeem us but also to feed us.
Christ gave Himself to us through death and resurrection. Through death He accomplished redemption, and after His death He entered into resurrection. First Corinthians 15 is a chapter on resurrection. Verse 45 says, “The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit.” In and by resurrection Christ became a life-giving Spirit. First, He died on the cross, sacrificing His flesh and blood to accomplish redemption for us. Then He entered into the tomb and Hades, and after three days He rose from the dead and entered into resurrection. In resurrection He became the Spirit to give life to us. Thus, Christ is our Redeemer, Savior, Lord, and life. Once we believe in Him and call on His name, He enters into our spirit as the life-giving Spirit. Our sins are forgiven because He died on the cross to accomplish redemption and shed His blood to wash away our sins. He solved the problem of sin and sins by His death, and now as the life-giving Spirit, He is in our spirit to be our life.
Today God has passed through His work of creation, incarnation, human living, and His redemptive death. He has entered into resurrection and ascension, in which He has been enthroned, crowned, and glorified. He has received the headship, lordship, and kingship over all of creation. Since God has accomplished all this, He is no longer merely God the Creator, as in Genesis 1, not yet having passed through all His processes. In the four Gospels He was incarnated and lived on the earth. Many believers wish that they could have been with the Lord as the disciples were. Perhaps we have all thought that it would have been wonderful to touch Jesus, wash His feet, serve Him, and accompany Him. During His earthly ministry the Lord was able to be among the disciples, but He could not enter into them, because He had not yet died and resurrected to become the life-giving Spirit. Therefore, today is actually the best time to live. The Lord was with the disciples, but He was not in them as He is in us today. The disciples had the Lord’s visible presence, but we have His inward, invisible presence. We need to treasure the Lord’s invisible presence, realizing how valuable it is that the Lord is in us. We are living in the best age, the age of Christ for the church. We have Christ within and without. We who are living in this age are very much blessed, for we are indwelt by the Triune God who has gone through the procedures and processes of creation, incarnation, human living, His all-inclusive crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. The God who has accomplished, obtained, and attained everything has come into us as the Spirit.
Romans 8 shows that the Spirit today is all-inclusive. In verse 9 Paul first says, “The Spirit of God dwells in you.” Then he continues in the same verse, “Yet if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ.” In verse 11 Paul says, “The Spirit of the One who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you.” Thus, the Spirit is the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, and the Spirit of the resurrecting One. He is the Spirit of the Triune God. John 4:24 says, “God is Spirit.” God here surely refers to the entire Triune God, comprising the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Therefore, the Father is Spirit, the Son is Spirit, and of course, the Spirit is Spirit. Because traditional theology overemphasizes the distinction among the three of the Trinity, some Christians today oppose the truth that Christ is the Spirit (cf. 1 Cor. 15:45b; 2 Cor. 3:17). Instead of caring for theology, which is a set of human concepts about God, we should care for the pure revelation of God in the Scriptures. The Bible tells us that the entire God is Spirit. Thus, all three of the Godhead are Spirit.
In John 7:38 Jesus said, “He who believes into Me, as the Scripture said, out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.” Then the writer, John, gives a kind of interpretation, saying, “This He said concerning the Spirit, whom those who believed into Him were about to receive; for the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified” (v. 39). Today the Spirit is, because Jesus has been glorified through death and resurrection. The Spirit is the all-inclusive Spirit as the ultimate consummation of the processed Triune God.
Some may be unfamiliar with terms such as the processed Triune God. However, all believers know that God passed through incarnation. To be incarnated, God was conceived in a virgin, grew in her womb, and was born of her. Such a birth was surely a process. Further, God in Christ lived on earth for thirty-three and a half years, passing through all kinds of experiences and sufferings of human life. This too was a process. His crucifixion was also a process. Likewise, His passing through death and Hades and entering into resurrection were also processes.
God today is different from God in Genesis 1. God the Creator in Genesis 1 possessed only divinity, but God today also possesses humanity. In Genesis 1 God was merely God, but today He is both God and man; He is fully God and fully man, the real God and a true man. He is human as well as divine, possessing the human nature as well as the divine nature.
In Genesis 1 and even in the Gospels before John 20, God had no way to enter into the believers. Because He had not accomplished redemption, the requirements of His righteousness, His holiness, and His glory had not been fulfilled. The righteous, holy, glorious God could not come into fallen sinners. Therefore, in John 14:2-3 the Lord said to His disciples, “In My Father’s house are many abodes; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I am coming again and will receive you to Myself, so that where I am you also may be.” The Lord died to prepare the way so that He could bring us not into heaven but into the righteous, holy, and glorious God. Christ’s death satisfied all the requirements of God — His righteousness, holiness, and glory. Moreover, Christ’s resurrection brought His human body into glory. Today in resurrection He possesses a glorious body, and He will make our body the same as His (Phil. 3:21). Our God today is utterly complete in what He is, has done, and is able to do. He has accomplished, obtained, and attained everything. This God, who is complete, full, and perfect, is the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit.
The all-inclusive Spirit is the ultimate consummation and application of the processed Triune God. God the Creator was mysterious and far away from us, but as the Spirit, God is near and applicable to us. The all-inclusive Spirit is the Triune God reaching us. We need to see that the all-inclusive Spirit of the processed Triune God resides in us. Although we may not recall every point that we have read in these chapters, we need to at least remember the good news that we live in an age in which the Triune God is fully processed, has accomplished everything, and is the applicable God as the life-giving Spirit. He is in our mouth and in our heart, and if we only say, “O Lord Jesus,” He will come into us (Rom. 10:8-9).
Because we are genuine Christians, Christ has come into us to be our life, and we should live Him all the time. However, we mostly live by many things other than Christ. For instance, we often live by the traditions of our nationality or culture. Instead of living as an American or a Chinese, we should live Christ. Because we have received the Lord’s mercy and grace, we may hate sin, not commit gross sins, and even not love the world. Nevertheless, day after day we may still live by tradition, living Christ only for a short time each day. Although we do not live in sin or love the world, neither do we live Christ. Instead, we live by our tradition or habit. However, as genuine believers in Christ, we should live only Christ, who is the embodiment of the Triune God and is applied to us as the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit. The Spirit who resides in us is the ultimate consummation and application, or reaching, of the Triune God. He is within us, expecting that we would walk according to Him, live by Him, and live Him out. The genuine Christian life is not merely a sinless, perfect, and ethical life but a life that is Christ Himself. We should live by and with Christ, and we should live out Christ. Christ should be our life within and our living without. We need to live Christ continually.
