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I. The organism of the processed and consummated Triune God:
А. John 14—16 is a long discourse given by Christ to His disciples on the night before He was crucified concerning the issue of His glorification by the Father with His glory.
B. The issue is a divine and human constitution of the processed and consummated Triune God with His regenerated, transformed, conformed, and glorified elect as an organism of the processed and consummated Triune God — 14:7-20:
C. The Father is embodied in the Son, coinhering with the Son, and seen among the believers — vv. 7-11.
D. The Son is realized as the Spirit to abide in the believers — vv. 15-20.
E. In this constitution God the Father is the source, God the Son is the element, and God the Spirit is the essence, constituted with the believers as the constituents (Eph. 4:4-6). It is expressed:
а. As the Father’s house for His dwelling (John 14:2), referring to:
1) The divine family with the children born of God — 1:12-13.
2) Bethel (the house of God) as the place for the heavenly ladder to bring heaven to earth and join earth to heaven — v. 51.
3) The temple of God as the house of God, which was Christ Himself before His resurrection and was enlarged with His believers through His resurrection — 2:16-22.
4) A mutual abode for the Triune God and the believers built up by the Father and the Son (14:23), consummating in the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21).
b. As the Son’s vine for His spreading to express the Father — John 15:1-16:
1) An organic union of the Son as the tree with His believers as the branches — vv. 1-5.
2) To bear fruit for the glorification of the Father, that is, the expression of the Father as its source and husbandman — vv. 1, 4-16.
c. As the Spirit’s child for His moving — 16:20-22:
1) Created by Christ on the cross by abolishing in His flesh the law of the commandments in ordinances — Eph. 2:15.
2) Regenerated by the Father in Christ’s resurrection to be God’s children, who are the constituents of the house of God — 1 Pet. 1:3; John 1:12-13.
3) Born by the Spirit in the believers’ spirit — 3:6b.
4) God’s elect are the suffering, delivering woman — 16:20-21.
5) As the returning Christ who left them by His death — v. 22.
6) To be the new man — Col. 3:10-11.
7) Put on by the believers through the renewing in the spirit of their mind — Eph. 4:23-24.
8) Consummating the Body of Christ.
II. The believers’ oneness incorporated with the oneness of the Triune God:
А. In the Gospel of John, chapter 17 is Christ’s closing prayer to His discourse in chapters 14—16.
B. The Son lifting up His eyes to heaven to pray to the Father indicates the economical Trinity working together — the Son praying on earth and the Father hearing in heaven — 17:1a.
C. For the glorification of the Son that the Father might be glorified as the Son has glorified the Father in His earthly living and ministry — vv. 1b, 4-5.
D. Based upon the oneness of the believers — vv. 2-3, 6-23a:
1. By the Father’s eternal life conveyed in the Father’s name and in the Father’s word — vv. 2-3, 6-12.
2. By the Father’s sanctifying word as the truth — the divine reality — through the coinhering of the Triune God and the believers — vv. 13-21.
3. By the glory given to the believers by the Son through the coinhering of the Triune God incorporated with the believers — vv. 22-23a.
E. Incorporated with the oneness of the economical Trinity for the church life constituting the Body of Christ:
1. The Divine Trinity is economically one in harmony.
2. The Father gives His glory to the Son that the Son may express Him in His nature, life, and attributes in the divine sonship for the Father’s glorification.
3. The Son gives the divine glory in the divine sonship to His believers, who are the many sons of God sharing the divine sonship with Him.
F. Kept in the Father’s love through their coinhering for eternity as the New Jerusalem — vv. 23b-26.
The Lord’s most mysterious, organic speaking to the disciples is in John 14 through 16. This took place in the night when He was betrayed and arrested, before His crucifixion, which happened the next day. After His long discourse of mysterious speaking, He offered a prayer to God, saying, “Father,...glorify Your Son that the Son may glorify You” (17:1). Then He went on to pray about the oneness of the believers.
John 14 through 17 reveals the organism of the processed and consummated Triune God and the believers’ oneness incorporated with the oneness of the Triune God. Two onenesses are incorporated into one. An organism, like a tree, is a frame to contain the inner life for the development of that inner life. The church, composed of God’s called ones, is such a frame to contain the invisible God as life so that this life can be developed and expressed. Our human body is an organism containing our human life for the development and expression of that life. The Body of Christ is just like our human body. It is an organism to contain God, not the original God but the processed and consummated God as life.
John 14 through 16 is a long discourse given by Christ to His disciples on the night before He was crucified concerning the issue of His glorification by the Father with His glory. Without Christ’s glorification these three chapters could not exist.
In the New Testament there are two major portions that speak of the Divine Trinity clearly and definitely. The first one is Matthew 28:19, where the Lord charged us to baptize people into the name (singular) of the Father and of the Son and of the Spirit. There is one name for the three of the Trinity. The second passage is in John 14. In Matthew it is the Triune God in name. But in John 14 it is the Triune God in person.
In John 14:16-20 Jesus said that He would ask the Father to give the disciples another Comforter, who would be the Spirit of reality coming to be with them and in them. Then He said, “In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you” (v. 20). The speaking here is simple, but the content is very mysterious and excellent. The Lord’s asking the Father to give the disciples another Comforter implies that He was the first Comforter. The two Comforters are one person in different stages. The first Comforter was Christ in the flesh in the stage of His incarnation. He comforted His disciples, but this comforting was outside of them. The Lord walked, lived, and ate together with the disciples. He was among them and with them, but He was not yet in them, and they were not in Him. The Spirit was not yet at that time (7:39). In His resurrection He became the second Comforter in the stage of Christ as the life-giving Spirit, the stage of His inclusion. On the day of resurrection, Christ was glorified to be the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). As the life-giving Spirit, He could be in the disciples, and they could be in Him.
The issue of Christ’s glorification is a divine and human constitution of the processed and consummated Triune God with His regenerated, transformed, conformed, and glorified elect as an organism of the processed and consummated Triune God (John 14:7-20). This kind of constitution is organic, with the divine life and the human life transformed with the divine life. These two lives are constituted together to become a divine and human constitution.
The Father is embodied in the Son, coinhering with the Son, and seen among the believers (vv. 7-11). The Son said that He was in the Father and the Father was in Him. This is not just coexisting but coinhering — coexisting one within another mutually. The Christian life is actually a life of coinherence because we are in Christ and Christ is in us. We and He are coinhering.
The Son is realized as the Spirit to abide in the believers (vv. 15-20). The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are one and abide in us; therefore, we are “four-in-one,” a divine and human constitution. The Father is embodied in the Son, the Son is realized as the Spirit, and They are all in us. God and man are united, mingled, and incorporated.
In this constitution God the Father is the source, God the Son is the element, and God the Spirit is the essence, constituted with the believers as the constituents (Eph. 4:4-6). Every substance has a source and an element, and every element has its essence. The essence is the intrinsic part of the element, the element is the reality of the substance, and the substance has a source. God is the source, the Son is the element, and the Spirit is the essence. We the believers are just the constituents containing the source, the element, and the essence to be a divine and human constitution. This divine and human constitution is expressed as the Father’s house in John 14, the Son’s vine in John 15, and the Spirit’s child in John 16.
The Father’s house for His dwelling (14:2) refers to the divine family with the children born of God (1:12-13) and to Bethel (the house of God) as the place for the heavenly ladder to bring heaven to earth and join earth to heaven (v. 51). The Father’s house is also the temple of God as the house of God, which was Christ Himself before His resurrection and was enlarged with His believers through His resurrection (2:16-22). Furthermore, the Father’s house is a mutual abode for the Triune God and the believers built up by the Father and the Son (14:23), consummating in the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21). The Spirit indwells this abode with the Father and the Son for the mutual dwelling place of the Triune God and His transformed elect.
This constitution is also expressed as the Son’s vine tree for His spreading to express the Father (John 15:1-16). The Father needs a dwelling place, a house, and the Son needs the spreading, which is an organic union of the Son as the tree with His believers as the branches (vv. 1-5). We are branches of the Triune God in the Son. A pine tree can be very tall, but a vine tree spreads along the earth. Years ago when I was in England, someone took me to see the Queen’s vine. I told them that I had seen a bigger vine, which spreads around the globe. That is not the Queen’s vine, but the King’s vine. The Son is the vine and we are the branches to bear fruit for the glorification of the Father, that is, the expression, spreading, and multiplication of the Father as its source and husbandman (vv. 1, 4-16).
The Father needs a house for His dwelling, the Son needs a vine for His spreading, and the Spirit needs a child for His moving (16:20-22). This child is the new babe growing up into the new man. The new man is Christ. He is all the members of the new man and in all the members (Col. 3:10-11).
This new child was created by Christ on the cross by abolishing in His flesh the law of the commandments in ordinances (Eph. 2:15). Christ abolished the ordinances of the law that separated people from one another. Through that He created the Jews and the Gentiles together into one new man. In one sense, the one new man was created; in another sense, he was born by the Spirit as a new child. His members were regenerated by the Father in Christ’s resurrection to be God’s children, who are the constituents of the house of God (1 Pet. 1:3; John 1:12-13). First Peter 1:3 says that we all were regenerated by God the Father through the resurrection of Christ.
The new child was also born by the Spirit in the believers’ spirit (John 3:6b). God’s elect are the suffering, delivering woman (16:20-21). On the one hand, we are the child born; on the other hand, we are the delivering woman. We are the mother and the child as well. This is a mystery. Furthermore, this child as the returning Christ left the disciples by His death. In John 16:22 the Lord told the disciples, “Therefore you also now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and no one takes your joy away from you.” That newborn child was Christ coming back. Thus, God’s elect are the mother as well as the child, and the child is Christ. Now He is the new man (Col. 3:10-11). In the new man there is no room for any natural person. There is only room for Christ. He is all the members, and He is in all the members. This new man is put on by the believers through the renewing in the spirit of their mind (Eph. 4:23-24) and consummates the Body of Christ.
John 17 reveals the believers’ oneness incorporated with the oneness of the Triune God. Our oneness, the oneness of the Body of Christ, is the oneness of the Triune God. The Triune God (the Father as the source, the Son as the element, and the Spirit as the essence) within us is our oneness (Eph. 4:3-6).
In the Gospel of John, chapter 17 is Christ’s closing prayer to His discourse in chapters 14 through 16.
The Son lifting up His eyes to heaven to pray to the Father indicates the economical Trinity working together — the Son praying on earth and the Father hearing in heaven (17:1a). One prayed, and the Other listened. This is the economical Trinity, not the essential Trinity.
Christ’s prayer was for the glorification of the Son that the Father might be glorified as the Son has glorified the Father in His earthly living and ministry (vv. 1b, 4-5).
This traffic of glorification, where the Son prayed asking the Father to glorify the Son that the Son may glorify the Father, is based on the believers’ oneness (vv. 2-3, 6-23a). If we are not one, the Son cannot be glorified, and the Father cannot be glorified by the Son. When we are one, Christ is glorified. When Christ is glorified, God the Father is glorified in Christ the Son’s glorification.
The oneness of the believers is by the Father’s eternal life conveyed in the Father’s name and in the Father’s word (vv. 2-3, 6-12).
Our oneness is also by the Father’s sanctifying word as the truth — the divine reality — through the coinhering of the Triune God and the believers (vv. 13-21). The sanctifying God is in us, and we are in the sanctifying God; therefore, we are spontaneously sanctified.
The oneness of the believers is also by the glory given to the believers by the Son through the coinhering of the Triune God incorporated with the believers. In John 17:22-23a the Son prayed to the Father, “The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, even as We are one; I in them, and You in Me, that they may be perfected into one.” The believers can be one as the three of the Trinity are one. The Father, the Son, and the disciples all coinhere. This is the glory. In this coinhering, Christ is glorified, and the Father is glorified in Christ’s glorification.
Our oneness is incorporated with the oneness of the economical Trinity for the church life constituting the Body of Christ.
The Divine Trinity is economically one in harmony.
The Father gives His glory to the Son that the Son may express Him in His nature, life, and attributes in the divine sonship for the Father’s glorification.
The Son gives the divine glory in the divine sonship to His believers, who are the many sons of God sharing the divine sonship with Him. The Father gives His glory to His Son. The Son has the right to express God in the sonship. Such a right to glorify God in the sonship has been given to all the disciples of Christ because they are God’s sons and have His sonship.
Eventually, the incorporated oneness is kept in the Father’s love through the coinhering of the Triune God with the believers in Christ for eternity as the New Jerusalem (vv. 23b-26).
John 17 shows us two kinds of oneness that are incorporated together through the coinhering of the Triune God with the believers in Christ. The believers in Christ are many, and the Triune God is three; among the three there is no division but only harmony and oneness. Their oneness becomes the oneness of the believers in Christ, which becomes the oneness of the Body of Christ. The Body is the new man, and the new man is Christ. The new man came into being by being created by Christ on the cross and by being regenerated by the Father and born by the Spirit. We now need to put on this new man.
Because the revelation in John 14 through 17 is so mysterious and complicated, I want to share some crucial points.
John 14:16-20 unveils that the Triune God is both essential in His being and economical in His moving.
Verses 16 and 17 say that the Son would ask the Father to give the disciples another Comforter — the Spirit of reality — indicating that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are distinctly three in Their move in the economical Trinity.
Verse 17 says that the Spirit of reality will come and verse 18 says that the Son will not leave the disciples as orphans but He is coming to them, indicating that the Spirit and the Son are essentially one in the essential Trinity.
Verse 17 says that the Spirit will be in the disciples and verse 20 says that the Son will be in the disciples, also indicating that the Spirit and the Son are essentially one in the essential Trinity.
The Father, the Son, and the Spirit coinhere with the disciples mutually, indicating that the Triune God and the disciples are not only united but also mingled and incorporated into one.
John 16:21 unveils that the travailing and delivering woman is the believers and that the child delivered is also the believers. This is a mystery.
This child delivered eventually will be the new man, whose very constituting element is Christ being all the members of the new man and in all the members of the new man (Col. 3:10-11).
John 16:22 unveils that Christ is both the One who left the disciples in His death and the One who came back to the disciples as the new delivered child in His resurrection, and He will be all the members of the new man and in all of them.
That the new man was created by Christ with Himself as the element on the cross (Eph. 2:15) should be considered the conceiving of the new man by Christ. Ephesians 2:15 reveals that Christ created in Himself, with Himself as the element, the Jews and the Gentiles into one new man. This creation should be considered the conceiving. A child cannot come into being without being conceived. What Christ had conceived was born by the Spirit through His death and resurrection (John 3:5). This is the regeneration by the Father to bring in millions of sons in His species (1 Pet. 1:3). Christ did not have any brothers before His death, but after His resurrection early in the morning, He told Mary, “Go to My brothers” (John 20:17). It was on the day of resurrection that Christ began to have brothers because all the believers, His brothers, were regenerated by the Father through His resurrection.
The main revelation of all these matters indicates that God’s desire and intention was to be united, mingled, and incorporated into one corporate New Jerusalem (Rev. 21). The New Jerusalem is the conclusion of the entire sixty-six books of the Bible. All the revelations and visions of the Scriptures consummate in the holy city. The New Jerusalem is the processed and consummated Triune God incorporated into one with His regenerated, transformed, and glorified elect. It is also a couple with the Husband and the bride, the wife. The Husband is the wife, and the wife is the Husband because they coinhere. This is God’s eternal economy to incorporate Himself with His elect, to be one universal, divine, mystical incorporation, which is the New Jerusalem.
