Search
Scripture Reading: John 7:38-39; 20:21-22; 1 Cor. 15:45b; 2 Cor. 3:17-18; Rom. 8:2, 9-11, 16; 1 Cor. 1:30; 3:16-17; 6:17; 2 Cor. 13:14; Eph. 1:19-23; 3:14-19; 4:4-6, 22-24; Titus 3:5-6; Phil. 1:19-21a; 3:7-11; 4:13; Col. 2:9; 3:4, 9b-11; 1 Tim. 3:15-16
God’s eternal purpose is to express Himself fully in and through man. He created Adam for this purpose, but Adam fell. Abel was brought back to God by offering the proper sacrifices. After those two landmarks, Enosh, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph followed as individuals to express God. Yet what God wanted was not an expression through individuals only. He wanted a corporate expression. So after Joseph died, in Exodus God gained a collective people to express Him corporately. This people was eventually built up together to be His dwelling place. The sign of this was the tabernacle, which was God’s dwelling place on this earth. First it was a tabernacle, and eventually it became a temple. If you pick up these nine great men plus the tabernacle and the temple, you cover the entire Old Testament.
The New Testament begins with a person, an individual. This individual is a marvelous, wonderful, and all-inclusive person who is both God and man. That is Jesus Christ. He came to dwell among men as a tabernacle to declare the invisible, unseen God (John 1:14, 18). The unseen, invisible God has been fully expressed in this man, Jesus Christ, as God’s tabernacle among men. But again God was not satisfied with just one man as a tabernacle. God wanted a collective people to be His tabernacle. So the Lord Jesus told His disciples that He was going to die and be raised up that He might be enlarged and increased (12:24). The way for Him to be enlarged and increased was to change in form. When He was the tabernacle on this earth among men, He was in the form of flesh, but in the flesh He had no way to enter into His believers so that they could be His increase. In order to enter into so many believers, He needed to change His form from the flesh to the Spirit.
In John 1 the One who was the Word of God, which was God Himself, became flesh. This is so mysterious! He became a material flesh, which was visible and touchable. But after His death and resurrection He came back to His disciples in another form. You may say that He came back in the form of the Spirit, but He also had a spiritual body. He showed His disciples His hands and His side (20:20), indicating clearly that after resurrection He still had a body but not in the natural form. It was not a natural body but a spiritual body.
The apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:35-38 illustrates such a change in form, such a transformation, by a seed. A seed has a form, and it may be yellow or brown, and it is round like a little ball. If you sow this seed into the earth, it dies there. Then it rises up, or it grows up. To rise up is to be resurrected from the dead. When this seed grows up, the form changes. It still has a form, but it changes from a little round yellow or brown ball into the form of a sprout, so tender and green and lovable. It is still the same seed, but in another form. This is marvelous! When it gets into this changed form, it grows and also produces. It increases from one grain to thirty or sixty or a hundred.
This is a good illustration of the Lord Jesus being crucified, being buried, and rising up. When He rose up, He was no more in the original form. He was no more merely an individual grain. John 12:24 says that He was the one grain that fell into the earth. But after rising up He was no more a single grain. He rose up to grow and produce many grains. Who are the many grains? They are all the members of His Body as His increase. This is mysterious, yet we can see it in nature all the time. In the natural things such as a grain falling into the earth and rising up, we can see such a mystery. Before falling into the earth, it is one grain, but after falling into the earth and rising up, it becomes many grains. The many grains are the increase of the original grain.
After His resurrection He came back to the disciples in another form. He was touchable. He had a body yet in another form, a mysterious and wonderful form that we cannot explain. After the Lord Jesus was crucified and buried, all the disciples were fully disappointed. While they were meeting together in the night with the doors closed for fear of the Jews, the Lord Jesus appeared to them. He did not knock at the door, and they did not open the door. While they were under the threatening of the Jews and while they were so sorrowful, suddenly He appeared among them. Right away He said, “Peace be to you” (20:19). What a wonderful word! They had had no peace at all. They were sorrowful because of His death, they were also threatened by the Jews to the uttermost, and they were probably even threatened by His sudden appearance. So He said to them, “Peace be to you.” He showed them His hands and His side, and the disciples realized that He was not a phantom but their beloved Lord. What kind of body did the Lord Jesus have? Was this a physical and material body? Surely it was, because it was touchable. But if it was physical and material, how could He come into the room without any opening? You cannot systematize such a wonderful, mysterious fact in your theology. He was material and physical, yet spiritual. He was spiritual, yet material. He was material because He was touchable, and He was spiritual because He came in without the door being opened.
In John 1 the invisible God became a visible flesh. This was good because formerly God was invisible, and now He is visible. On the other hand, it was not so good, because He was limited by being in the flesh. He could not enter into His disciples. He could not be one with them in a kind of coinherence. He could not live in them that they might live in Him. That was impossible as long as He was in the flesh.
How could He enter into you and take you as His abode, and how could you enter into Him and take Him as your abode? As long as He was in the flesh, it was impossible. What the Lord wants is a kind of coinherence between Him and you. He wants to live in you so that you may live in Him, and you and He live within each other. This is a kind of coinherence. Coinherence means that this one lives in that one, and that one lives in this one. Eventually, they are two and yet one. This is marvelous! This is what God wants. God wants to get into you that you may be in Him. While He abides in you, you abide in Him. He and you become one and yet are still two. This kind of coinherence is just the expression of God.
The invisible God became the visible flesh. Yet this flesh could never enter into us, so He had to change in form to become in the form of the Spirit. This spiritual form is very mysterious. No one can figure out how it could be spiritual and yet material, material and yet spiritual. Yet our very God did become such a Spirit. When He came in, the disciples did not realize at first that it was He. But then He said, “Peace be to you.” After speaking this, He breathed into them and told them to receive the holy pneuma, the Holy Spirit, the holy air (v. 22). After breathing into them, He did not say goodbye, and He did not go out the door. He simply disappeared. Is this not wonderful? Actually, He had not come to them; He had just appeared. To say that He came is not so right. He simply appeared. To say that He left is not right either. He did not leave; He simply disappeared. He was still there but within them.
Even today He is here, but He would not appear to us. According to our weakness, we all would like to see Him appear. But you have to realize that His appearing is not as good as His not appearing. The Lord Jesus came to train His disciples to realize His invisible presence because they were used to His visible appearance. They never had the experience of His invisible presence. So the Lord Jesus came to train them by appearing to them and then by disappearing. Where did He go after He disappeared? He remained in them. From that time He never left, but Peter and all the other disciples did not realize this. Soon they became disappointed again, and Peter said that he was going fishing (21:3). When he went fishing, all the others went fishing with him. They did not realize that when they went fishing, they took the Lord Jesus with them because He was in them. Suppose you go to a movie. Do you realize that when you go to a movie, you take the Lord Jesus there because He is within you? While they were fishing, the Lord Jesus was suffering. It may be that the Lord Jesus did something to keep all the fish away, because the disciples fished the entire night and caught nothing.
Through His death and resurrection He became a Spirit. First Corinthians 15:45b says that the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit. The last Adam is not so simple as the first one. The first Adam did not have God in him, but the last Adam was God becoming flesh. This is very meaningful. The last Adam was a God-man. The good news is that after Him there is no more Adam, because He was the last Adam! You may ask then, “Am I not an Adam?” In Adam you are an Adam, but in this last Adam you are no more an Adam. The last Adam was the ending of Adam.
The last Adam, who was God becoming a man, became the Spirit. There are two “becames” with Him. The Word became flesh, this flesh was the last Adam, and this last Adam became a life-giving Spirit. Without these two steps He could never get into us. He became flesh first to dwell among men, and then He became the Spirit to dwell in His believers. He reaches us by two steps of becoming. First, He as God became a man to be the last Adam, and second, this last Adam became the Spirit to enter into us. The last Adam in the flesh went to the cross to redeem us and to solve all the problems of sin and sins. After solving those problems He became the life-giving Spirit to impart Himself into us as life.
First, the Word became flesh and dwelt among men to be the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world (John 1:29). After taking away the sin of the world as the Lamb of God, He took another step to become the life-giving Spirit. Today He is both the Lamb, the Redeemer, and the Spirit, the Life-giver. He is both. Most Christians today only know a gospel of Christ as the Lamb. They do not know a gospel of Christ as the life-giving Spirit. They only know that Christ is the Lamb of God taking away the sin of the world. They do not realize that the same Christ is also the Spirit to give life. He is both the Lamb to take away sin and the Spirit to give life. If He were just the Lamb to take away sin, that would not be adequate. We may illustrate this with the altar in the tabernacle. Just to come to the altar to solve your sin problem is not adequate. If you come only to the altar, you are still not in the expression of God. You must enter into the tabernacle to be in God’s expression. How can you enter into the tabernacle? The Redeemer who has become the life-giving Spirit has to enter into you, and then He becomes the very way of life for you to enter into God. Today He is no more merely the Lamb, the Redeemer, to take away our sins. He is also the Spirit who gives us life. In John 10:10 He said that He came that we may have life and even have it abundantly. But if He had never entered into resurrection, how could He give us life? It would be impossible. He had to enter into resurrection so that He might become the life-giving Spirit. Today He is not only the Redeemer but also the Life-giver. Now in resurrection He is the life-giving Spirit.
Thus far, we have seen that our Redeemer, the second of the Trinity, has become a life-giving Spirit. Second Corinthians 3:17 says, “The Lord is the Spirit.” Who is the Lord? From the context of 2 Corinthians 2, 3, and 4 we can realize that the Lord here is Jesus Christ (4:5). After His resurrection the Lord Jesus Christ is the Spirit. Verse 17 of chapter 3 goes on to say that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. This means that there is freedom from the law, from religion, from culture, from the concept of ethics, and from traditions.
After being freed, we come to verse 18: “We all with unveiled face, beholding and reflecting like a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit.” In the last chapter we saw that we have four layers of veils: culture, religion, ethics, and tradition. But after all the veils are gone, we can see the Lord Jesus with an unveiled face. We behold Him as a mirror, and at the same time we reflect Him. By this we are being transformed into His image for His expression. We are being transformed into His image from one degree of glory to another degree of glory. How could this be? It is by the Lord Spirit. First, verse 17 says that the Lord is the Spirit. It goes on to use the phrase the Spirit of the Lord, and then verse 18 uses the term the Lord Spirit. These are one. The Lord is the Spirit, and the Spirit of the Lord is the Lord Spirit. This means that after the Lord became the life-giving Spirit, He can enter into us to free us from all kinds of veils. Then day after day as we behold Him and reflect Him, we are being transformed into His image from one degree of glory to another degree of glory by Him, the Lord Spirit, for God’s expression. We just need to let Him saturate us and permeate us. The more we behold Him and the more we reflect Him, the more He saturates and permeates us to transform us into His own image, that we might express God. This is not only the Lord mingling with us; this is also the Lord saturating us and even soaking us.
A good example of the soaking and saturating is the making of tea. To make tea you take a cup of boiling water and put a tea bag into it. The tea saturates the water until all the water is soaked with the tea. Eventually, the water becomes tea-water. Even we do not call it water; we call it tea. It is actually more water than it is tea, but the water has been saturated by and with the tea. The saturating tea causes the water to become tea. The saturating tea is like Christ. When the tea is put into the water, the water is teaified. When Christ comes into us and saturates us, we are “Christified.” Christ as the life-giving Spirit saturates us until we are Christified. By being Christified, we become Christ. This is why we are Christians. Christ has come into us and has Christified us so that we are now Christians. Christians are simply Christ. This is the corporate Christ as the expression of God.
This is the Lord’s recovery. The Lord has no intention to recover the wearing of long skirts or long sleeves. The Lord has no intention to recover a plain face without any makeup. The Lord has no intention to merely recover immersion or speaking in tongues. These are the minor things. The Lord’s intention is to recover Christification! You need to be Christified. Wonderful! What is the church life? The church life is the glorious Christification. What is the Lord’s recovery? It is to Christify every believer until he has a total Christification. This Christification is just the expression of God.
Now let us go on to Romans 8. This chapter talks much about the Spirit. It speaks of the Spirit of life (v. 2), the Spirit of God (v. 9), the Spirit of Christ (v. 9), the Spirit of the One who raised Jesus from the dead (v. 11), and eventually the Spirit (v. 16). Verse 16 says that the Spirit witnesses with our spirit. What Spirit witnesses with our spirit? It is the Spirit of life, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of the One who raised Jesus from the dead, and the Spirit. The Spirit is the shortest title ascribed to God’s Spirit, yet it is the most meaningful one. Even John 7:39 just uses the term the Spirit. Before Jesus’ resurrection the Spirit was not yet. But after His resurrection the Spirit of reality came. So in Romans 8 you have the Spirit.
First Corinthians 1:30 says that it is of God that we are in Christ Jesus. This means that God has put us into Christ so that Christ might be our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification, and our redemption. How could a person be your wisdom, your righteousness, your sanctification, or your redemption unless that person becomes one with you? God has put us into Christ. Christ is our wisdom. Christ is our righteousness, Christ is our sanctification, and Christ is our redemption. Christ is everything to us. Since God has put us into Him, He has become everything to us. For God to put us into Christ, Christ has to be a Spirit. Because Christ has become a Spirit, God could put us into this Spirit, and this Spirit could be the wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption within us.
Now we come to 1 Corinthians 3:16-17, which says that we are the temple of God. Not only is Christ Himself the temple, but all of us who are in Christ and who have Christ in us are the temple to contain God and to express God.
First Corinthians 6:17 says that we are joined to this wonderful Lord. We are one spirit with Him. When we are speaking or doing anything, we must believe that we are one spirit with Him.
Second Corinthians 13:14 says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” This is the Triune God for our enjoyment. With Christ the Son there is grace, with God the Father there is love, and with God the Spirit there is fellowship. This is our portion, our enjoyment. This is not just a kind of benediction. This is the grace of Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit with us for our enjoyment. This is the reality of God’s expression. The Lord wants to recover this.
Let us go on to Ephesians 1:19-23. These verses are too profound! They tell us that there is a divine power, which in Greek means a dynamo. God exercises upon us this very power by which He raised up the Lord Jesus from the dead and exalted Him to the top of the universe, subduing and subjecting all things under His feet and making Him the Head over all things to the church. This church is His Body, and His Body is the fullness, the overflowing, the expression, of the all-inclusive One who fills all in all. This is marvelous. This is the church. This is the kind of church that the Lord is going to recover. This is the church as the Body of Christ, the fullness of the One who fills all in all, who is in resurrection, in exaltation, in the headship. How could this be? The only way is that this One has to saturate us with His resurrection and His exaltation and His headship. When He Christifies us by saturating us, He does it with all the attributes of the all-inclusive Christ. Christ is the motor, the dynamo, in the church life. If there is no dynamo in the church life, the church life is dead and empty. That is not the church the Lord wants to recover. The Lord wants to recover a church with a dynamo.
In Ephesians 3:16-19 Paul prayed that the Father would strengthen the believers with power through His Spirit into the inner man so that Christ the Son could make His home in the believers. This is so that they might be filled unto all the fullness of the Triune God. The Father strengthens through the Spirit so that the Son can make home. This is the Triune God getting Himself fully settled in your inner being to fill your mind and emotion and will and even to fill every corner of your conscience and heart and spirit. He wants to fill you so that every part of your entire being might be filled unto overflowing with the Triune God. This is the reality of God’s expression. This is what the Lord wants to recover.
The Lord does not want to recover the trivial doctrines or practices. What He wants to recover is that the Father would strengthen us through the Spirit into our inner man, that the Son, the all-inclusive One, might make His home and get Himself fully settled into our heart, into every part of our inner being, so that our whole being will be filled unto the overflowing of the Triune God to become an expression of God.
Ephesians 4:4-6 tells us that there is one Body and one Spirit and one hope of our calling. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism. There is one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. With one Body and one Spirit there is one hope. The Lord is going to recover a church filled, saturated, and mingled with the Spirit, full of hope. Such a church is one with the Lord through faith and baptism that God the Father may be over them and through them and in them all the time. This is a church that is the embodiment of the Triune God, mingled with the Spirit, one with the Lord, fully mingled with the Father, who is over them, through them, and in them.
Verses 22 through 24 of chapter 4 tell us that such a church, which is mingled with the Spirit, one with the Lord, and saturated with the Triune God, is being renewed. To be renewed is to drop the old element and to replace the old element with the new. We have to drop the elements of culture, of religion, of ethics, and of traditions. In the church life there is a kind of life metabolism causing us to drop the old and to replace the old with the new. Every day we can enjoy something new. This is not to enjoy some new thought or new teaching but a new element from the divine source, which is the Triune God. This will saturate us to replace the old and to discharge the old. The old element will be discharged and replaced by the new element of the Triune God.
Titus 3:5 and 6 say, “Not out of works in righteousness which we did but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior.” In the church life our being is washed. That washing is the washing of regeneration. While we are being washed, we are being renewed by the Spirit. The old nature has to go. The old man has to be washed away, but the new element has to be added in by the renewing Spirit.
In Philippians 1:19-21 Paul only cared for the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, which would turn out to his salvation. He did not care for imprisonment or death. He only cared that Christ was being magnified in him. To him, to live was Christ. This is the expression of God. In chapter 3 of the same book Paul indicates that formerly he treasured certain things, especially the righteousness from keeping the law, but now he counted everything refuse, dog food. Now he had only one pursuit — to pursue after Christ. He wanted to live Christ, to live in Him, and to be found by others in Christ. He wanted to be in Christ, having Christ as his righteousness and his everything. His longing was to know Him. Just to know Him is excellent. Paul wanted to know Him and the power of His resurrection. Paul also says in Philippians 4:13 that he was able to do all things in the One who empowered him.
By reading Colossians 2:9 we can realize that the very Christ who is Christifying us is the very embodiment of God. The fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him bodily. He is Christifying us with the fullness of the Godhead to make us the full expression of God. In 3:4 we have this One as our life, and in 3:10 we are being renewed to be a new man, in which there is no race, no social rank, and no culture. Christ is all and in all. He is all and in all the members. In every race and in every color there is nothing but Christ.
Finally, we come to 1 Timothy 3:15-16, where we see that the church is the house of the living God. Great is this mystery. Everyone confesses that God is manifested in such a church that is the very expression of the Triune God. This is what the Lord wants to recover today.
