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In John 14:7-26, Christ who is the Father’s house is also revealed as the expression of the Father realized as the Spirit. This chapter unfolds that the Triune God — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit — is dispensing Himself into His believers in Jesus Christ. In the dispensing of Himself into us, God is triune. He is one, yet He is three — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Christ the Son is the embodiment and expression of the Father (vv. 7-11), and the Spirit is the reality and realization of the Son (vv. 17-20). In the Son the Father is expressed and seen (the Son is even called the Father — Isa. 9:6), and as the Spirit the Son is revealed and realized (2 Cor. 3:17). The Father in the Son is expressed among the believers, and the Son as the Spirit is realized in the believers. God the Father is hidden, God the Son is manifested among men, and God the Spirit enters into man to be his life, his life supply, and his everything. Hence, this Triune God — the Father in the Son and the Son as the Spirit — dispenses Himself into us to be our portion that we may enjoy Him as our everything in His Divine Trinity.
John 14:7-11 unveils that as the expression of the Father, Christ the Son coinheres with the Father. In studying the deep truths concerning the Trinity, we may use three particular words: the verb coinhere, the noun coinherence, and the adjective coinherent. The Son not only coexists with the Father but also coinheres with the Father. What is the difference between coexisting and coinhering? To coexist is to exist together at the same time. To coinhere is to exist in one another, to dwell in one another. To say that the Father and the Son coexist means that They exist together, but to say that the Father and the Son coinhere means that They dwell in one another.
We have a word concerning this coinherence in John 14:10a: “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me?” Here we have the mutual indwelling of the Father and the Son. In verse 11 the Lord goes on to say, “Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me.” The Lord says that the Son is in the Father and the Father is in the Son. What a mystery this is! The Father dwells in the Son, and the Son dwells in the Father. When the Son was living on this earth, His living was a mutual abiding. He was abiding in the Father, and the Father was abiding in Him.
The New Testament says not only that Christ the Son and the Father are with each other, but also reveals that the Son and the Father coinhere. For the Son to be coinherent with the Father means that the Son is in the Father and the Father is in the Son. John 17:21 is another verse that reveals this coinherence: “That they all may be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us.” The Son and the Father coexist in the way of coinherence. This means that while they coexist, the Father exists in the Son and the Son exists in the Father.
It is easy to see the matter of coexistence, but it is much more difficult to realize the matter of coinherence. The coexistence of the Son and the Father means that They exist together. The coinherence of the Son and the Father means that the Son is in the Father and that the Father is in the Son. Because of this coinherence of the Father and the Son, we may say that the Father and the Son are two-one.
As One who coinheres with the Father, Christ the Son also works with the Father. In John 14:10, the Lord says, “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak from Myself, but the Father who abides in Me does His works.” Here we see that the Son speaks and the Father works. The Son’s speaking is the Father’s working. Everything that the Son does is in coordination with the Father who abides and works in Him for the accomplishment of His economy. Since the Father is in the Son, when the Son speaks, the Father, who abides in the Son, does His work. The Father does His work in the Son’s speaking because They are in one another.
Since Christ the Son coinheres with the Father, to see the Son is to see the Father. The Son did not express Himself; He expressed only the Father (vv. 7-9). Christ was the Son, yet He expressed the Father. Because the Son expresses not Himself but the Father, the Son’s expression is the Father’s expression. Therefore, when we see the Son, we see the Father. This is proved by the exchange between the Lord Jesus and Philip in John 14. In verse 7 the Lord Jesus pointed out to the disciples that if they had known Him, they would have known His Father also. Then He said, “Henceforth you know Him and have seen Him.” However, Philip replied, “Lord, show us the Father and it is sufficient for us” (v. 8). To this the Lord Jesus answered, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how is it that you say, Show us the Father?” (v. 9). In the Son the Father is expressed and seen, for the Son is the expression of the Father. If we have seen the Son, we have seen the Father because the Father is embodied in the Son to be expressed through Him.
The Son’s coinhering with the Father is not for doctrine. Rather, this coinherence is for our experience of God’s dispensing. Christ the Son coinheres with the Father so that He with the Father may be dispensed into our being.
John 14:16-20 reveals that Christ as the expression of the Father is realized as the Spirit. The Father is embodied and expressed in the Son among the believers, and Christ the Son is realized as the Spirit entering into and abiding in the believers. In order to abide in us, the Lord had to be transfigured, transformed, from the flesh into the Spirit. He came in the flesh to be among us, but He had to be transfigured into the Spirit before He could come into us. How was the Lord transfigured? He was transfigured from the flesh into the Spirit by His death and resurrection.
Christ realized as the Spirit is another Comforter. In verse 16 the Lord said, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Comforter, that He may be with you forever.” This verse shows that the Spirit is “another Comforter.” The Greek word for “Comforter,” paracletos (anglicized “paraclete”), means “advocate,” “one alongside who takes care of our case, our affairs, and all of our needs.” The Greek word for “Comforter” is the same as that for “Advocate” in 1 John 2:1. Today we have the Lord Jesus both in the heavens as well as the Spirit within us as our Paraclete taking care of our case. The Holy Spirit, the reality of Jesus and the realization of the Lord, is such a One who is alongside us, ministering to us and taking care of all of our needs.
Christ realized as this Spirit, this Comforter, is the Spirit of reality. In John 14:17, the Lord said, “Even the Spirit of reality, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not behold Him or know Him; but you know Him, because He abides with you and shall be in you.” He is the Spirit of reality because whatever the Father in the Son is and whatever the Son is, are realized in the Spirit. The Spirit is the realization of what God the Father and God the Son are. God the Father is light, and God the Son is life. The reality of this life and light is just the Spirit. If we do not have the Spirit, we cannot have the light of God the Father. If we do not have the Spirit, we cannot have God the Son as our life. The reality of all the divine attributes of both God the Father and God the Son is the Spirit.
Verses 16 and 17 of John 14 also reveal that Christ is realized as the Spirit to be with us and in us. Not only does He abide with the believers (v. 16) but also in them (v. 17). As we have seen, when the Lord was in the flesh, He was only able to be among the disciples, to be with them. But after becoming the life-giving Spirit, the Spirit of reality in His resurrection, He is able now to abide not only with us but also in us. It is by being the Spirit that Christ enters into us and abides in us.
Christ is realized as the Spirit to live with us in resurrection that we may live. This is indicated by the Lord’s words to the disciples in verse 19: “Yet a little while and the world beholds Me no longer, but you behold Me; because I live, you also shall live.” This refers to Christ’s resurrection. When the Lord was resurrected, we were resurrected with Him. First Peter 1:3 tells us that Christ regenerated us in His resurrection. In His resurrection we were made alive together with Him. Thus, because He lives in resurrection, we also live, for we were regenerated in His resurrection. By His coming as the Spirit, He enters into us and causes us to live just as He lives. The life He lives is the resurrection life. After His resurrection, He comes to enter into us as the Spirit. So He lives and we live by Him also (Gal. 2:20). He lives by the resurrection life, and we live by Him, sharing Him as the resurrection life.
Christ is realized as the Spirit so that we may realize that He is in the Father, we are in Him, and He is in us. The Lord said in John 14:20, “In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.” The day mentioned in this verse is the day of resurrection. On the day of resurrection the disciples were to know that the Lord was in the Father, that the disciples were in Him, and that He was in them. This is coinherence. As Christ is in the Father, so the disciples are also. Now where He is, there the disciples are also. He died to prepare the way that we might get into God and that God might get into us. Then by being in us and by bringing us into the Father, the Lord can build us together in the Triune God to be His eternal abode.
As the expression of the Father realized as the Spirit, Christ comes to us with the Father and makes an abode with us (vv. 21-23). In verse 23, the Lord said, “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.” According to this verse, the Triune God in Christ comes to the believer to make a mutual abode with him. The abode mentioned in verse 23 is one of the many abodes found in verse 2. It will be a mutual abode, in which the Triune God abides in the believers and the believers abide in Him. We should not forget that each of us is one of so many abodes in the Father’s house. The Father and the Son take the lover of Jesus as Their abode. The Father and the Son come to the believer to make an abode with him that he and They may have an abiding place. The believer will be Their abode and They shall be his abode. This verse is the basis of 15:4-5: “Abide in Me and I in you.” Most Christians do not realize that the basis of 15:4-5 is 14:23, where we have the mutual abode made by the appearing of the Father and the Son as the Spirit to the believer who loves Him. In other words, this abode is prepared by the visitation of the Triune God. When the Triune God grants us a visit, His visitation makes us His abode and it makes Him our abode. Eventually, we and He, He and we, become a mutual abode. We will abide in Him, and He will abide in us. In such a situation there is no place for sin, the world, Satan, the old man, or the flesh. All such things have been chased away.
We have had this experience in the past. Deep within us there was a sweet appreciation toward the Lord Jesus, and we told Him that we loved Him. Then the Lord told us that since we loved Him, His commandment was that we should not do this and that. We said amen to the Lord, perhaps even with tears in our eyes. Immediately we had the sense of His manifestation within us. We were so much in His presence. At that time we had the sense that He was filling us up with Himself and that we were being drawn into Him. We were abiding in Him, and He was abiding in us. We were His abode, and He was our abode. We all have had this kind of experience, either in a deep way or in a shallow way, either for a long time or just for a few minutes. We need to have this experience all day long.
The Lord Jesus stirs up our love, and in response we may say, “Lord Jesus, I love You.” The Father responds to our love for the Son, and then the Father and the Son come to us to make an abode in our spirit. Actually, the Father and the Son come to take us over, to possess us. In this way the Father and the Son settle within us to make an abode with us, that is, to build the Father’s house. This is a great matter. The abode signifies that we human beings may and can become an abode of God. God in Christ desires, longs, to enter into us, possess us, and make us His dwelling place.
From our experience we know that the Father and the Son pay us a constant visitation. In our daily life the Father and the Son often come to visit us. We may be at home, at school, or at work, but wherever we may be, the Father and the Son come to visit us to do a building work in us, making an abode which will be a mutual dwelling place for the Triune God and for us.
Christ comes to us as the Holy Spirit sent by the Father in the Son’s name. In verse 26 the Lord said, “But the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things and remind you of all the things which I have said to you.” Here we see that the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, was to be sent by the Father in the Son’s name. Therefore, the Holy Spirit comes not only from the Father but also by the Son. Thus, the Holy Spirit comes not only from the Father but also from the Son, and He is the reality not only of the Father but also of the Son. Hence, when we call on the name of the Son, we get the Spirit (1 Cor. 12:3).
The Holy Spirit is not only sent by the Father but “from with” the Father (John 15:26). In Greek, the preposition translated from is para. This word means “by the side of” and often has the meaning of “from with.” This is seen elsewhere in the Gospel of John, for example, in 6:46: “Not that anyone has seen the Father, except Him who is from God.” The word from in this verse is para in Greek. The sense here is “from with.” The Lord is not only from God but also with God. While He is from God, He is still with God (8:16, 29; 16:27). Likewise, the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, is sent “from with” the Father. This means that the Spirit not only comes from the Father but also with the Father. When the Father sends the Spirit, He comes with the Spirit. The Comforter comes from the Father and with the Father. The Father is the source. When the Spirit comes from the source, it does not mean that He leaves the source but that He comes with the source.
The Comforter, the Holy Spirit, is sent by the Father in the Son’s name. Thus, the Holy Spirit comes in the Son’s name to be the reality of His name. The name is the Son Himself, and the Spirit is the person, the being, of the Son. When we call on the name of the Son, we get the Spirit (1 Cor. 12:3). The Son came in the Father’s name (5:43) because the Son and the Father are one (10:30). Now the Spirit will come in the Son’s name because the Spirit and the Son also are one (2 Cor. 3:17). Because the Spirit and the Son are one, the Spirit can be sent by the Father as the Son. This interpretation strongly indicates that the Spirit is the Son. The Father’s sending the Spirit in the Son’s name means that the Father sent the Spirit as the Son. This is the Triune God — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit — reaching us eventually as the Spirit.
The Spirit comes in the name of the Son. When we call on the name of Jesus, the Spirit comes. The name of the Son is Jesus, and His person is the Spirit. God the Father sends the Spirit, and the Spirit comes in the name of the Son. Eventually, it is the Triune God who comes. When the Spirit comes to us, the Father also comes. The Son is also here because the Spirit comes with the Father in the name of the Son. The Father sends the Spirit from with Himself, and the Spirit comes in the name of the Son. The Spirit comes as the Son. He is the Son coming, and this Son coming is from with the Father. Therefore, when one comes, all three are present. By calling on the name of the Lord, we may enjoy and experience Christ as the expression of God realized by the Spirit so that Christ the Son would come to us with the Father and make an abode with us.
