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Scripture Reading: Psa. 133:1-3; John 1:14, 16-17; Acts 4:33; 11:23; 13:43; 14:26; Rom. 5:2, 17, 20-21; 1 Cor. 15:10; 2 Cor. 1:12; 9:8, 14; 12:9; 13:14; Eph. 2:7; 1 Tim. 1:14; 1 Pet. 3:7; 4:10; 5:10a; Gal. 6:18; Rev. 22:21
According to the New Testament, the oneness of the believers, or of the church, is mysterious, for it is intimately related to the processed Triune God. John 17:21-23 indicates that the believers are to be one in the Triune God just as the Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father. By being in the Triune God, the believers are one. Furthermore, John 17:22 says that the glory the Father has given to the Son has been given by the Son to the believers so that they may be one even as the Father and the Son are one. Then verse 23 goes on to speak of being perfected into one. When we believed, we entered into this mysterious oneness. Now we must go on to be gradually perfected into this very oneness.
In Ephesians 4:4-6 Paul lists seven aspects of oneness: one Body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father. These verses also show the mysterious mingling of the Triune God with the Body of Christ. This mingling is the oneness of the believers. The Spirit in verse 4 is no doubt the compound, all-inclusive Spirit who is within the Body and gives life to the Body. According to 1 Corinthians 12:13, the Body came into existence through the baptism of this all-inclusive Spirit. Having been baptized in one Spirit, we must go on to drink of this Spirit. This indicates that the existence of the Body depends on the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit. Furthermore, the Body continues to exist through our drinking of this Spirit. Anything we drink becomes mingled with our inward being, with our blood and with the very fiber of our organic tissue. It is the same with the life-giving Spirit.
In Ephesians 4:5 Paul puts together the one Lord with the one faith and the one baptism. We get into the Lord through faith and baptism. To have faith in the Lord means to believe into Him. Of course, to be baptized into Him is to be put into Him. When we believed into Him and were baptized into Him, we became one with Him; that is, we were mingled with Him.
In verse 6 Paul says, “One God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” The one God and Father is over all objectively, through all in a way that is partly objective and partly subjective, and in all subjectively. Hence, the Spirit is mingled with the Body, the Body is in the Lord, and the Father is over all, through all, and in all. This is a picture of the mingling of the Triune God with the Body of Christ. In this oneness we have the one hope, the hope of our coming glorification.
This oneness is altogether different from the oneness in today’s Christianity, which is a mere oneness of addition. Such a oneness of addition can also lead to subtraction. The oneness revealed in the Bible is the mingling of the processed Triune God with His chosen people. Hence, the oneness in the Scriptures is a mingling of persons, a mingling of the divine person, the Triune God, with human persons who believe in Christ. The Triune God who is mingled with us has passed through the process of incarnation, human living, crucifixion, and resurrection. That genuine oneness referring to such a marvelous mingling is the clear revelation in John 17 and Ephesians 4.
We thank the Lord that for nearly all the spiritual things in the New Testament there are types in the Old Testament. One of the types of genuine oneness is found in Deuteronomy 12. In this chapter the good land typifies the all-inclusive Christ, whereas the mountains, hills, and flourishing trees typify various centers of worship. The offerings mentioned in this chapter typify various aspects of the riches of Christ. Yes, Deuteronomy 12 is a record of a charge given to the children of Israel upon entering into the good land. But the details of this charge are also types, not only instructions that were to be taken literally by God’s people at the time. We may use the passover lamb as an illustration of something that has both a literal and typical significance. The very lamb that was slain at the time of the passover is also a type of Christ as our Redeemer. In the same principle, the manna eaten by the children of Israel in the wilderness is a type of Christ as our heavenly food. This principle also applies to the good land in Deuteronomy 12. The land was not only a physical realm possessed by the children of Israel; it is also a type of the all-inclusive Christ. In this chapter God’s chosen people were commanded to go to the unique place of God’s choice. This place was selected in order to preserve the oneness of the children of Israel. This place was not only an actual location in the land of Canaan but is also a type of the genuine oneness of the believers in Christ today.
In Psalm 133 the oneness of God’s people is likened to the precious ointment and to the watering dew. The precious ointment upon Aaron’s head spread upon the beard and eventually went down to the hem of his garment. This picture of oneness is related to a person, Aaron, a type of Christ in His priestly ministry. As the High Priest, Christ served God, accomplished God’s purpose, and fulfilled the desire of God’s heart. However, in Psalm 133 Aaron typifies not only Christ Himself but Christ with His Body. This means that here Aaron typifies the corporate Christ, the Head with the Body. The church in a very real sense is the corporate Christ. The church is thus a universal, great person with a number of aspects: the aspects of the Body, the bride, the new man, and the warrior. All these aspects of the church are related to the person.
In Psalm 133 the oneness of God’s people is also likened to the dew of Hermon that descends upon the mountains of Zion. These mountains typify the local churches. Every local church is a mountain of Zion. There is one Zion but many mountains, signifying the many local churches. As a person, the church is uniquely one. As a place, the church, on the one hand, is the unique Zion; but, on the other hand, it is the many mountains of the one Zion. Although there is one church in the universe, there are nevertheless many local churches. Each local church is a peak among the many mountains of Zion. Therefore, the person is universal, but the mountains are local. Our oneness is like the precious ointment upon Aaron and like the dew upon the mountains of Zion. God’s dwelling place, the temple, was located in Zion. On the one hand, the church is a person; on the other hand, it is a place. Upon the person there is the ointment, and upon the place there is the dew.
The fine oil in Psalm 133 is the ointment described in Exodus 30. This ointment is a picture of the compound, all-inclusive life-giving Spirit with the elements of divinity, humanity, human living, the effectiveness of Christ’s death, and the power of Christ’s resurrection. This all-inclusive Spirit is the expression of the processed God. I am burdened of the Lord to speak about this matter again and again until we are all deeply impressed with it.
In the first chapter of the Gospel of John, we are told that the Word, which was in the beginning with God and which was God, became flesh and tabernacled among us, full of grace and reality (vv. 1, 14). This Word, Christ, lived on earth for thirty-three and a half years. Then He passed through crucifixion and in resurrection became the life-giving Spirit. The life-giving Spirit is the ultimate consummation of the processed God. In John 14 through 16 we see that the Lord Jesus was one with the Father. To see Him was to see the Father (14:9). In 14:10 the Lord Jesus said, “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.” As the Lord spoke, the Father worked. In this chapter the Lord went on to tell the disciples that the Spirit of reality actually was He Himself realized. This means that when the Spirit indwelt the disciples, the Lord Himself was indwelling them. Hence, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are the unique Triune God.
Passing through the various steps of a process, this very Triune God has become the all-inclusive Spirit. John 7:39 says, “The Spirit was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.” The Spirit promised in chapters 14 through 16 is the Spirit referred to in 7:39. By receiving the Spirit as the ultimate consummation of the processed Triune God, we are one with the Triune God. For this reason, after speaking of the Spirit in chapter 14, the Lord went on to say in chapter 15 that if we abide in Him, He will abide in us. According to 14:23, if we love the Lord, the Father and the Son will come to us and make an abode with us. This abode is a mutual abode for the Triune God to abide in the believers and for the believers to abide in the Triune God. This mutual abiding is a matter of mingling.
After speaking the words recorded in John 14 through 16, the Lord Jesus offered the prayer to the Father recorded in chapter 17. The language of this prayer is altogether divine. In this prayer the Lord referred to the wonderful and mysterious mingling of the processed Triune God with the believers. Once again we point out that this mingling is the oneness.
This oneness is made real and practical by means of the anointing that is upon Christ the Head and that spreads upon the Body. As long as we remain in the Body, we share the ointment. In this ointment we are one. Hence, the anointing of the compound, all-inclusive, life-giving Spirit is the element of our oneness. This means that to be one as members of the church is to be under the Spirit’s anointing. If we are not under this anointing, we cannot be one with anyone, not even with ourselves.
Oneness does not depend upon our natural ability to get along with others. Some believers may even be proud of having the kind of disposition that makes it easy for them to be one with other people. However, this kind of oneness is not the precious oneness revealed in the Bible. Actually, it is a very distasteful and uncomely sort of oneness. A person who boasts of this kind of oneness actually is not able to be one with others over a long period of time. On the contrary, he may eventually cause a great deal of disturbance. Genuine oneness consists in the anointing of the compound, all-inclusive Spirit as the ultimate consummation of the Triune God. Only under such an anointing do we have a genuine, unchanging oneness. Thousands of us can testify of the oneness we enjoy under the anointing of the compound Spirit. Our oneness has its source in the mysterious mingling of the processed Triune God with the believers. As we pointed out in the foregoing chapter, the more we are coated with the compound ointment, the more we are one. Praise the Lord that the all-inclusive Spirit is continually “painting” us!
The person aspect of the church is practical, but the place aspect is even more practical. Regarding the church as the universal person, we may not have any problems. However, concerning the church as the local mountains of Zion, we may have problems, for we may not be happy with the church in our locality, and we may desire to move elsewhere. But if we move to another city, we soon find the same problems in that place. The reason is that we ourselves are the same and that we are the cause of the problem. Some have assured me that they would never leave the church life. Nevertheless, discontent where they are, they like to have their choice of a “mountain.” I can testify that as far as I am concerned, every “mountain” is the same. No matter where I am, I still praise the Lord and experience His work of transformation.
Those who move from place to place may love the universal church, but they have problems with the local church. They may declare that they have seen the Body of Christ and that they love the Lord’s recovery. However, no matter in what locality they reside, they always have some difficulty with that “peak” of Zion. They may imagine that a church in a particular locality is outstanding. But as soon as they move there, they are disappointed, finding it no better than the “mountain” from which they have just moved. There is no need for us to move from “mountain” to “mountain.” We should simply dwell on one of the peaks of Zion and enjoy there the descending dew of Hermon.
In typology Hermon signifies the heavens, the highest place in the universe, and the dew signifies the grace of life (1 Pet. 3:7). Without the New Testament, it would be difficult for us to realize that dew signifies grace. Every Epistle written by Paul opens with a word about grace and closes with some mention of grace. When I was a young Christian in the denominations, I was told that grace denotes unmerited favor. According to this understanding of grace, to receive grace is to receive something that we do not deserve. Many Christians regard such unmerited favor as all the material blessings they receive from the Lord. For example, at the end of the year, some may count all the blessings God has given them that year: a good job, a bigger home, a late-model automobile. However, according to Paul’s word in Philippians 3:8, everything apart from Christ is “refuse.” He would regard things such as a job, a house, and an automobile as nothing but “refuse” in comparison to Christ. The grace spoken of in the Scriptures does not refer to mere material blessing. As many verses in the New Testament make clear, grace is the processed God as the life supply to be our enjoyment.
Strictly speaking, grace is a New Testament term. When used in the Old Testament, it has the meaning of “favor.” According to John 1:17, grace came through Jesus Christ. When the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, grace came also. This means that grace came with the incarnated God. Before the incarnation of Christ, grace had not come. Grace came through incarnation.
Many verses in Acts speak of grace. Acts 4:33 says, “With great power the apostles gave testimony of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.” This verse indicates that the great power in resurrection was the great grace. Christ in resurrection is grace. Such a grace is not a good house, job, or automobile. It is God experienced, received, enjoyed, and gained by the believers. In Acts 11:23 we are told that in Antioch Barnabas saw the grace of God. He, of course, did not see material blessings; he saw that the believers in Antioch were experiencing God in Christ as their life supply for their enjoyment.
In 1 Corinthians 15:10 Paul says, “By the grace of God I am what I am; and His grace unto me did not turn out to be in vain, but, on the contrary, I labored more abundantly than all of them, yet not I but the grace of God which is with me.” We may compare this verse to Galatians 2:20, where Paul says, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” It was not Paul himself who labored more than the other apostles; it was the grace of God which was with him. This grace by which Paul labored more than others was no doubt Christ Himself as the life power and life supply to Paul in his experience.
In Romans 5:2 Paul says that through Christ “we have obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand.” The standing about which Paul is speaking here certainly is not something such as a house or a job. It is the Triune God who has been processed to become the all-inclusive Spirit as His ultimate consummation. Through Christ we can stand in the all-inclusive Spirit.
In Romans 5:17 Paul goes on to say that “those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.” If we have abundant grace, we will be able to reign in life. This verse implies that grace is life and that life is grace. In 1 Peter 3:7 Peter speaks of the grace of life, the inheritance of both a husband and wife. In Romans 5:21 Paul speaks about grace reigning unto eternal life. All these verses indicate that grace is nothing less than Christ as our life power and life supply for our experience and enjoyment.
If we are clear about this, we can have a greater appreciation of the dew as a type of Christ in Psalm 133. As the dew, the grace, becomes our enjoyment, we share in the genuine oneness. However, if we are not under the dew that waters, refreshes, and saturates us, we cannot be one with other believers. It is on the mountains of Zion that we experience this dew. If we would enjoy the dew, which typifies the all-inclusive grace, we must be on one of the peaks, the mountaintops, of Zion.
Although many of us have experienced grace, we still do not know grace. What a pity! It is possible to know only in a doctrinal way that Christ is our life supply for our enjoyment. We need to know grace experientially.
Suppose a brother is having a problem with his wife. If he consults a pastor in Christianity, the pastor may exhort him with Paul’s words about husbands and wives in Ephesians 5. The pastor then may proceed to advise the brother or to admonish him with respect to his wife. Such instruction, however, is altogether void of grace. What this brother needs is for someone to minister life to him and to pray with him. In this way, grace will be supplied to him, and he will be able to face the situation with his wife.
All married brothers and sisters must learn to go to the Lord and pray, “Lord, I need You. I cannot bear this situation any longer.” Simply by opening to the Lord in this way, grace is dispensed into us. Through such a supply of grace, we are able to go on.
Recently, a brother testified how the situation between him and his wife reached a stalemate. He rarely spoke to her, and she rarely spoke to him. One day he asked his wife to pray with him. After that time of prayer, everything was changed. This is a testimony of the Lord’s grace.
The brothers who live together may experience friction and feel that living in a brothers’ house is unbearable. When the brothers feel this way, they should go to the Lord, contact Him, and tell Him that they cannot bear their living situation any longer. As they pray in this way, the supply of grace will come to them.
A situation that took place in the church in Chefoo more than forty years ago illustrates the sufficiency of the Lord’s grace. Two brothers had a serious disagreement regarding finances. One brother claimed that the other owed him a certain amount of money. The other brother denied the first brother’s claim. Eventually, they brought the problem to the elders of the church who endeavored to straighten out the situation. However, no solution came forth. On the contrary, the brothers even argued in the presence of the elders. Eventually, I told these two brothers that whoever received the Lord’s grace would be willing to forget the debt altogether. I said that the “court” in the church is completely different from a worldly court. The difference is that the church “court” cares not for who is right or who is wrong; rather, it supplies grace to meet the need. If you receive the Lord’s grace, you will praise Him and be willing to regard the matter as settled. The two brothers and the elders were surprised. Then I suggested that we all pray together. After a time of prayer, the two brothers began to weep and then to praise the Lord. Eventually, they were willing to let everything go, and there was no further problem. Instead, we all feasted on the Lord’s grace.
In the local churches we are daily under the dew, under the grace. Whether we are married or single, old or young, we are under the dew that descends upon the mountains of Zion. Oh, how we enjoy the Lord’s sufficient, exceeding, manifold, abundant grace! This grace is the very Lord Jesus Christ Himself as our life supply. If we wish to enjoy this grace in full, we need to be in the church life. According to Psalm 133, the grace does not descend upon the homes of individual believers; it descends upon the mountains of Zion, which typify the local churches. Thus, if we would enjoy the dew that descends from Mount Hermon, we need to be on one of the peaks of Zion. If those two brothers in Chefoo had separated themselves from the church life, they would have cut themselves off from the Lord’s grace. Instead of having their problem settled through the Lord’s grace in the church, they would have probably tried to settle it in a worldly court of law. Lacking the grace of the Lord, they would have continued to argue with one another according to right and wrong. But because they remained in the church life, the heavenly dew descended upon them, and they enjoyed a wonderful solution to their problem. In the church life the dew descends upon us richly. We are happy because we have the abundant supply of the all-sufficient grace.
The anointing oil and the watering dew are found in the church. Here we experience the anointing, the “painting,” of the processed Triune God. Simultaneously, we enjoy the processed God as grace, as the life supply for our enjoyment. By this grace we can live a life that is impossible for people in the world to live. The brothers can love their wives to the uttermost, and the sisters can submit to their husbands in a full way. Such a living is possible through the grace we receive on the mountains of Zion.
We should never underestimate the importance of the church as a corporate person who receives the ointment and as the place under the descending dew. If we separate ourselves from the church in these two aspects, we have no further share in the anointing, and we are finished with the enjoyment of the dew. Other Christians may criticize us for bearing such a testimony concerning the church life. They may accuse us of narrowness and support their accusation with a word about God’s omnipresence. These believers may say that as long as they pray and read the Bible, they can experience the Lord in a full way outside the church life. However, many of us can testify of the difference it makes to be in the church. Yes, we can pray and read the Word alone at home. When we do this, we receive a certain amount of grace. This measure of grace, however, is not as sweet, rich, powerful, inspiring, or sufficient as the grace we receive in the church. I can testify that, no matter whether the meetings of the church are high or low, rich or poor, I experience the ointment and the dew whenever I come to the meetings. The more I come to the meetings, the more I am preserved in the Lord’s grace. Those, on the contrary, who separate themselves from the church life, cut themselves off from the full supply of grace. Apart from the Lord’s mercy, they may find themselves wholly back in the world after a certain period of time.
Let us come to the church meetings, even when the meetings do not seem to be particularly rich. Simply by attending the meetings, we are preserved, for the dew still descends upon the mountains of Zion. Thus, simply by being in the meetings, we are under the watering dew. Our experience has confirmed this again and again.
The oneness about which we have been speaking is the precious ointment upon Christ the Head and the refreshing dew that descends upon the mountains of Zion. It makes a tremendous difference whether we remain in this oneness or forsake it. Christians today feel free to come and go because they do not see this genuine oneness. They do not have the preserving and keeping element that the oneness affords. In His recovery the Lord has shown us that real oneness is the mingling of the processed Triune God with His chosen people. On the one hand, the processed God is the compound, all-inclusive Spirit that anoints us and “paints” us day by day. On the other hand, the processed God is the life supply for our enjoyment. Under this anointing oil and watering dew we experience true oneness. As long as we remain in the experience of the ointment and the dew, it is not possible for us to be divided. Rather, we are preserved in oneness. This is the meaning of Paul’s word in Ephesians 4:3 about endeavoring to keep the oneness of the Spirit. Actually, this oneness is simply the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit Himself. We guard and preserve this oneness by remaining under the anointing oil and the watering dew.
