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In this message we will begin to consider the aspects of the experience and enjoyment of Christ revealed in the Gospel of John.
John 1 presents Christ as the Word, the Lamb of God, the Baptizer, and the heavenly ladder.
The Word is the definition, explanation, and expression of God; hence, the Word is God defined, explained, and expressed.
“In the beginning was the Word” (v. 1a). As the Word (vv. 1-5, 14-18) Christ was in the beginning. The phrase in the beginning in verse 1a means in eternity past.
The remainder of verse 1 says, “The Word was with God, and the Word was God.” To say that the Word was with God means that the Word is not separate from God. It is not that the Word is the Word and that God is God, and that they are thus separate from each other. Rather, the Word and God are one. For this reason, the next clause in verse 1 says that the Word was God.
“He was in the beginning with God” (v. 2). From eternity past the Word was with God. Contrary to what is supposed by some, it is not that Christ was not with God and was not God from eternity past, and that at a certain time Christ became God and was with God. Christ’s deity is eternal and absolute. From eternity past to eternity future, He is with God and He is God.
“In Him [the Word] was life, and the life was the light of men” (v. 4). Life here refers to the life signified by the tree of life in Genesis 2. This is confirmed by the fact that in Revelation 22 John mentions the tree of life. Since life is in Him, He is life (John 11:25; 14:6), and He came that man might have life (10:10b).
Life is in the Word, the expression of God. Life can be found only in the expression of God. The Word, which is the expression and explanation of God, contains God as our life. When we receive the Word, we receive the life within it. Both the Word and the life are God Himself. The Word is the expression of God, and the life is the content of God. When we hear the Word, we realize that God is expressed and explained. When we receive the Word, we receive God’s very content as life.
The life in the Word is “the light of men.” Whereas the light for the old creation was the physical light (Gen. 1:3-5, 14-18), the light for the new creation is the light of life, mentioned in John 1:4. Christ is the Word, the expression of God by which we may know God. When we receive Him as the expression of God, He becomes our life, and this life becomes the light that shines within us. When the Word is heard and the life is received, the life becomes the light shining within us to enlighten us. Many of us can testify that when we called on the name of the Lord Jesus, receiving Him into us, the divine life came into our being, and immediately we had the sense of something shining within. That shining was the shining of life.
Christ is the light of life (1:4b-13; 8:12; 9:5; 12:46) to bring the divine life to the world by shining forth God that man may be born of God to be His children, making man God in life and nature but not in His Godhead. When we receive His shining of the light of life, this shining imparts the divine life into us. That divine life becomes our authority to be God’s children (1:12-13), God’s kind, God’s species, God’s family.
“The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us” (v. 14a). For the Word as God to become flesh, that is, to be incarnated, is for God to have the human life and the human nature. To be incarnated is to be consolidated. As the Word before His incarnation, Christ was mysterious. However, when He was incarnated, He was consolidated and became real to us. Before His incarnation He was intangible, invisible, and untouchable. By becoming flesh He became solid, visible, and touchable.
The Word that became flesh “tabernacled among us.” The Word, by being incarnated, not only brought God into humanity but also became a tabernacle to God as God’s habitation on earth among men.
Verse 14b tells us that when the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, it was full of grace and reality. Grace is God in the Son as our enjoyment; reality is God realized by us in the Son. Grace is the enjoyment, and reality is the realization.
Verse 17 says, “The law was given through Moses; grace and reality came through Jesus Christ.” The law makes demands on man according to what God is; grace supplies man with what God is to meet what God demands. The law, at most, was only a testimony of what God is (Exo. 25:21), but reality is the realization of what God is. No man can partake of God through the law, but grace enables man to enjoy God. Reality is God realized by man, and grace is God enjoyed by man.
John 1:16 says, “For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.” This indicates that in Christ as the incarnated Word there is abundant fullness, for the fullness of God dwells in Him (Col. 2:9). Now we may receive the riches of grace and reality out of His divine fullness. Grace and reality have no limit. Instead, there is always fullness. Anything we enjoy other than God in Christ has a limit. But when we enjoy God in Christ as grace and reality, there is no limit, only fullness. This fullness is unlimited.
“No one has ever seen God; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him” (John 1:18). The Greek word translated declared may also be rendered explained. Christ’s being the Word is mainly to express God the Father by declaring, defining, and revealing Him. This verse tells us that the One who expresses the Father is the only begotten Son, who was in the bosom of the Father from eternity past and who is still in the bosom of the Father after incarnation. The only begotten Son was, is, and always will be in the bosom of the Father. The dear, only begotten Son of the Father is continually in the bosom of the Father to declare the Father. The more the Son speaks, the more the Father is declared, expressed.
The Father’s only begotten Son has declared God by the Word, life, light, grace, and reality. The Word is God expressed, life is God imparted, light is God shining, grace is God enjoyed, and reality is God realized, apprehended. God is fully declared in the Son by these five things.
Christ is the Lamb of God, who took away the sin of the world for the accomplishment of God’s redemption. According to 1:29, John the Baptist declared concerning Christ, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” According to verse 36, John looked at Jesus walking and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” These verses indicate that Christ as the Lamb of God has taken away sin from the human race. The phrase of the world in verse 29 actually means from mankind. Through Satan sin entered into man, for Satan injected sin into the human race. But Christ as the Lamb of God came to take away sin from mankind. Christ died on the cross to deal with sin (2 Cor. 5:21; Heb. 9:26) and also with sins (1 Cor. 15:3; 1 Pet. 2:24; Heb. 9:28).
In the Gospel of John the Lamb of God signifies the Word in the flesh as the fulfillment of all the Old Testament offerings to accomplish God’s full redemption. This means that Christ is the totality of all the offerings. He is not only the sin offering but also the trespass offering, the burnt offering, the meal offering, the peace offering, the wave offering, the heave offering, the free-will offering, and the drink offering. With Christ as all the offerings we have God’s full redemption, and we may experience and enjoy this redemption.
Through Christ as the Lamb of God fulfilling all the offerings, we may now enter into God and participate in the divine life and nature (John 3:14-15; 2 Pet. 1:4). Because of Christ as the Lamb of God, we are well able to enter into God. We may boldly come into God, knowing that He does not have the right to reject us, because we come through His Lamb. We have full redemption in Christ as the Lamb of God, and therefore we are enabled to enter into God to enjoy all that He is.
John 1:30-33 indicates that we may experience and enjoy Christ as the Baptizer.
In verse 33 John the Baptist said, “He who sent me to baptize in water, He said to me, He upon whom you see the Spirit descending and abiding upon Him, this is He who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.” In contrast to John the Baptist, who baptized in water, Christ is the Baptizer in the Holy Spirit. Water signifies death and burial for the termination of the repenting people; the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of life and resurrection for the germination of the terminated people. The Holy Spirit, into whom Christ has baptized the believers, is the Spirit of Christ and the Spirit of God (Rom. 8:9). Hence, to be baptized in the Holy Spirit is to be baptized into Christ (Gal. 3:27; Rom. 6:3), into the Triune God (Matt. 28:19), and even into the Body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:13).
John 1:32 says, “John testified, saying, I beheld the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven, and He abode upon Him.” The dove signifies that Christ, the One who became the tabernacle and who is all the offerings, has become a life-giving Spirit to impart God into all those who accept the offerings in order to enter into God.
In John 1 Christ is presented as a little lamb with a little dove. The Lamb takes away sin from man, and the Dove brings God as life to man. The Lamb is for redemption, to redeem fallen man back to God, and the Dove is for life-giving, for anointing, to anoint man with what God is, to bring God into man and man into God, and for uniting the believers in God. Both the Lamb and the Dove are needed for us to participate in God.
John the Baptist testified that He saw the Spirit descending as a dove upon the Lamb of God and abiding upon the Lamb. A heavenly Dove was therefore upon the Lamb of God. In this way the two, the Lamb and the Dove, became one entity, which we may call the Dove-Lamb. This Dove-Lamb is the pneumatic Christ. The adjective pneumatic, meaning spiritual, is derived from the Greek word for spirit, pneuma. After His resurrection Christ became the pneumatic Christ. According to 1 Corinthians 15:45 He is the last Adam, who has become the life-giving Spirit. The life-giving Spirit is the pneumatic Christ. For our experience and enjoyment today, Christ is not merely the Lamb nor merely the Dove; He is the Dove-Lamb, the pneumatic Christ, the life-giving Spirit.
As the Baptizer Christ puts men into the Triune God (Matt. 28:19), bringing them into a spiritual and mystical union with the Triune God.
As the Baptizer Christ also germinates with the divine life those who believe in Him, causing them to become children of God with the divine life and the divine nature (John 1:12-13).
In verses 51 and 42 we see that we may experience and enjoy Christ as the heavenly ladder. He is the fulfillment of the ladder which Jacob saw in his dream when he was fleeing from his brother (Gen. 28:12). On that ladder the angels of God were ascending and descending.
In John 1:51 the Lord Jesus said to Nathanael, “Truly, truly, I say to you, You shall see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” This reveals that Christ, as the Son of Man, with His humanity, is the ladder set up on the earth and leading to heaven, keeping heaven open to earth and joining earth to heaven. Heaven refers to God, and earth refers to man. As the ladder, Christ as the Son of Man joins God and man into one.
As the heavenly ladder Christ is the One who brings heaven to earth and joins earth to heaven. According to our concept, Christ has gone away from the earth. But according to God’s concept, Christ has been set up on the earth, and no one can move Him. Our Christ, who is the ladder bringing heaven to earth and joining earth to heaven, is now not only in heaven but also on earth. Christ has been set up on earth, and He is reaching into heaven for the purpose of coming to us and joining us to Him.
In eternity past He was the Word, but in eternity future He will be the ladder. The ladder is not flat. It is set up on the earth to reach the heavens as a stairway. Every ladder is a stairway for going up and coming down. This traffic is the fellowship. The ladder indicates traffic, fellowship. The love of the Father, the grace of Christ, and the fellowship of the Spirit (2 Cor. 13:14) are the reality of this ladder for going up and coming down. The Triune God is not flat. The Triune God is standing up to be a ladder. Without a ladder, there is no way to climb up higher. Christ as the ladder is the way in John 14:6. He is “the ladder way.” How can we as earthly men be one with the heavenly Father? Christ is the way as the ladder. He is the stairway for us to be one with God.
Christ as the heavenly ladder also needs a strong base to stand on. In Genesis 28:12 and 19 the heavenly ladder which Jacob saw took Bethel as its base. Bethel is God’s house, God’s dwelling place. Today in God’s organic salvation, our regenerated spirit is God’s dwelling place (Eph. 2:22), even the Holy of Holies of God (Heb. 4:16; 10:19), which Christ as our heavenly ladder takes as His base. Whenever we turn to our spirit, we sense Christ bringing God (heaven) to us and joining us to God (heaven). Thus, Christ as the heavenly ladder is the stairway to bring God to us and join us to God.
This Christ as the life-giving Spirit becomes the heavenly ladder that brings heaven to earth and joins the earth to heaven at Bethel — God’s dwelling place in the spirit of the believers on earth. We are a part of God’s house, Bethel, which brings heaven to earth and joins earth to heaven. We need to realize that as the duplication of Christ, we are the heavenly ladder bringing heaven to earth and joining earth to heaven (cf. S. S. 3:6). When we minister Christ to sinners, they will appreciate Christ and receive Christ. This is to bring heaven to the earth. Then when we help them to grow, we are joining them to heaven. Every day we should be persons bringing heaven to earth and joining earth to heaven.
As the universal, heavenly ladder, Christ brings heaven to earth and joins earth to heaven, thereby making God and man one. On this ladder the angels of God ascend and descend as they do their service “for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation” (Heb. 1:14). Today we may experience and enjoy Christ as the ladder that joins us to heaven and brings heaven to us so that we may be a heavenly people living a heavenly life on earth and inheriting all the heavenly things.
Christ’s being the heavenly ladder is not only for joining the earth to heaven but also for producing stones for the house of God (John 1:42; Gen. 28:16-19). When Jacob awoke from his sleep in Genesis 28, he said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven” (v. 17). Then he poured oil (a symbol of the Holy Spirit) upon the stone (a symbol of a transformed person) which he had used for a pillow, and he called the name of that place “Bethel,” which means “house of God.” In chapter one of John, we have the Spirit and the stone for the house of God. Verse 42 tells us that when Simon was brought to the Lord Jesus, He looked at him and said, “You are Simon, the son of John; you shall be called Cephas (which is interpreted, Peter).” The name Peter means “a stone,” signifying a work of transformation that brings forth material for God’s building. Thus, wherever Christ is as the heavenly ladder in His humanity, there is the gate of heaven, and there is the building of God’s house with all the stones, that is, with all the transformed persons.
