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II. The second aspect of the incorporation of the consummated God with the regenerated believers is the true vine — John 15:1-8, 16:
А. The true vine as a sign of the all-inclusive Christ is the organism of the processed and consummated Triune God.
B. Its branches are the believers of Christ, who by nature were branches of the wild olive tree and have been grafted into the cultivated olive tree (Rom. 11:17, 24) through their believing into Christ (John 3:15). Both the cultivated olive tree and the true vine signify Christ. Hence, to be grafted into the cultivated olive tree is to be grafted into the true vine.
C. Its grafted branches have been regenerated with the divine life, brought into the life union with the crucified and resurrected Christ, and incorporated with the processed and consummated Triune God.
D. For the unlimited Triune God’s multiplication as the increase of the immeasurable Christ, the embodiment of the processed and consummated Triune God (vv. 29-30), for His universal spreading:
1. Through the fruit-bearing of the believers of Christ as the branches by their faithful abiding in Christ — 15:4-5, 16.
2. For the glorification of the Father — v. 8.
III. The third aspect of the incorporation of the consummated God with the regenerated believers is the child of the Spirit — 16:13-16, 19-22:
А. A new child, a new man, was born by the consummated Spirit — vv. 21, 13-15:
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 with the resurrected Christ in His resurrection — 1 Pet. 1:3; Rom. 1:4.
3. Born by the Spirit in the believers’ spirit — John 3:6b.
4. The first group of Christ’s believers, who suffered Christ’s departure through His death, was the delivering woman — 16:20-21.
5. The Christ who returned in His resurrection was the newborn child — 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.
B. To consummate the Body of Christ.
Prayer: Lord, we thank You that we could come back to You to wait on You until You show us this universal view of Your universal incorporation. Lord, we are short of words to utter it. Forgive us. We need You to be our utterance. Lord, You have to defeat Your enemy, who has been cheating and deceiving Your saints for centuries. Your elect through the past twenty centuries have been blinded, veiled, from seeing this. Thank You that today at the consummation of this dark age You are so merciful to us. You have come to Your recovery to open up this matter, to show us something that the angels and the worldly people have never seen. We ask You to open our eyes, and we are here seeking after You to see this matter. Amen.
With these messages I feel that we all need to see a vision, not just learn the doctrine. We have to see that in the entire universe there is only one thing that God wants, that is, the universal incorporation of Himself as the consummated God with the regenerated believers. In these days this great universal incorporation is before me moment by moment. The entire world will go into the lake of fire. The only thing left will be this great universal incorporation. Although the word incorporation is not used in the New Testament, what is actually unveiled in the New Testament in the way of a vision is this universal incorporation. This incorporation started from God. The Triune God has three parties — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The three in the Divine Trinity were incorporated already in eternity past. Through His incarnation this incorporated One came into time. Whatever He does in time is to incorporate all His chosen ones into His incorporation to make a great universal incorporation.
We have seen that the way to be incorporated into this unique incorporation is to enjoy Christ, to eat Him, to partake of Him. This is why the New Testament stresses the matter of eating. The Lord said, “I am the bread of life...He who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me” (John 6:48, 57). When we eat Him, we live by Him in this great incorporation, which today is the corporate Body of Christ and which eventually consummates the New Jerusalem.
In John 16:12-15 the Lord said that He had many things to tell the disciples which they could not bear at that time. But when the Spirit of reality would come, He would unveil these things to them. These things were unveiled in the twenty-two Epistles of the New Testament, including Revelation. Revelation is the longest Epistle. The Epistles reveal that God’s goal is to have a great universal incorporation of Himself with His believers. Ultimately, this incorporation is the New Jerusalem, which is God’s goal.
In our ministry we have used three words to describe the believers’ relationship with the Triune God: union, mingling, and incorporation. When I was in mainland China before 1949, we mostly used the word union. We have a divine union in life with God. We are united to Him in life. When I went from mainland China to Taiwan, we began to put out a paper called The Ministry of the Word. That publication served all the churches in southeast Asia in the Chinese language. While I was writing for this publication, I realized that the relationship we have with our Triune God is not only one of union but also one of mingling. When I came to the United States, I began to use the word mingling quite much. In the early history of the church, some taught heresy by saying that the two natures of Christ were merged into one and became a third nature. This is not the proper understanding of the word mingle. We agree with the definition of this word in Webster’s unabridged dictionary, which says that to mingle is “to combine or join (one thing with another, or two or more things together), especially so that the original elements are distinguishable in the combination.” According to this definition, when two or more things are mingled together, their original natures are not lost but remain distinguishable. When God and man were mingled together, they became one entity, but no third nature was produced. This is according to the type in Leviticus 2:4-5 of the fine flour mingled with oil to make the meal offering.
Union concerns our oneness in life with the Lord. Mingling is related to the divine and human natures. The Lord has gone further to show us that our relationship with Him is not only one of union and mingling but also one of incorporation. John 14 stresses the word in four times. Verse 17 says that the Spirit of reality, another Comforter, would not only be with the disciples but also in them. The Spirit of reality, the person, is in us. Humanly speaking, we can have our physical father’s life and nature, but our father as a person cannot be in us. But John 14:17 says that the Spirit of reality as a person would be in us.
Then in verse 20 the Lord said that on the day of resurrection the disciples would know that He is in the Father, that they are in Him, and that He is in them. The Son, the person, is in the Father, another person. Then we, the millions of persons, are in the Son, the person. Also, the Son is in us. Union and mingling refer to our relationship with the Lord in our life and nature but not in our person. Humanly speaking, no person can be in another person. But in the divine and mystical realm the consummated God and the regenerated believers, the persons, indwell one another. This is an incorporation. In this universal, divine-human incorporation, persons indwell one another; that is, they coinhere.
In the whole universe there are God, man, Satan, and the angels. The angels, including Satan and his fallen ones, are not considered persons. God and man are both corporate persons. God is not just a single person. He is three — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit — a corporate person. We, the millions of believers, are also a corporate person. These persons are now in one another. This is not a mingling but an incorporation.
The word incorporation also indicates that these persons are incorporated together to carry out their purpose, that is, to carry out God’s economy. God’s economy is a big career, a big business. In order to carry out His economy, God needs man to be incorporated into Him. Man and God, humanity and divinity, as persons, are incorporated together for the same purpose, for the same goal, to carry out the same career, that is, God’s eternal economy.
This divine-human, unlimited incorporation is the highlight of the Gospel of John. God’s intention, His desire, and His career are to carry out His economy. The centrality and universality of God’s eternal economy is Christ. Through His incarnation, death, and resurrection, Christ as the one grain of wheat became the many grains to be ground and blent together into one loaf. This loaf is the church, which is the Body of Christ (1 Cor. 10:17). Eventually, this Body of Christ, at the end of the sixty-six books of the Bible, will be the New Jerusalem. This holy city is the goal of God’s economy — the enlarged, universal incorporation of the consummated God with the regenerated believers. The Triune God intends and desires to have this. This is His purpose, His goal, to fulfill His desire to satisfy His heart. The conclusion of the entire sixty-six books of the Bible is the New Jerusalem. The Bible begins with God and ends with a city. The unique God is eventually enlarged into one city for His eternal enlargement and eternal expression as a great universal incorporation.
In order to see this revelation, it will be helpful for us to reconsider how the New Testament is composed. The first three books, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are called the synoptic Gospels; although they have some element of mystery, they are not Gospels of the eternal mystery. The eternal mystery is in the last Gospel, the Gospel of John. The synoptic Gospels can be more easily understood than John can. John begins by saying, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (1:1). Then verse 14 says, “The Word became flesh.” John the Baptist saw this One and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” (v. 29). He also saw the Spirit as a dove descending and abiding upon Christ (v. 32). Then at the end of chapter 1 of John, we can paraphrase what the Lord said to Nathanael in this way: “You recognize Me as the Son of God, but you will see the angels ascending and descending on Me, the Son of Man” (v. 51). All of these verses show that John 1 is a mystery. In order to see this mystery, we need to know how to interpret all these figures.
In chapter 12 of John this wonderful One was exalted by His disciples, but He did not accept their kind of exaltation. That meant nothing to Him. Instead, He said, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (v. 23). What a mystery glorification is! Then He explained that one grain of wheat, if it does not die, abides alone. But if it dies, it will be glorified (v. 24). Christ as the one grain of wheat, through His death and resurrection, became many grains, and these many grains are the issue of His being glorified.
The Gospel of John explains the issue of His glorification in chapter 14. This issue is the universal incorporation. First, the three of the Triune God were incorporated from eternity. In John 14:10 the Lord told Philip, “I am in the Father and the Father is in Me.” This reveals that the three of the Divine Trinity are incorporated into one incorporation by Their mutual coinhering. Verse 10 of John 14 unveils to us the beginning of this universal incorporation in eternity. Verse 11 shows that the three are also an incorporation by Their mutual work. They work together as one.
One day the second of the Divine Trinity was sent by this incorporation. Acts 2:23 indicates that the three parties of this universal incorporation had a council (1 Pet. 1:20). In this council it was agreed to send the second into time to become a man (Micah 5:2). Before the incarnation this universal incorporation consisted of three parties. Then the second of the Divine Trinity brought this divine incorporation into humanity. His disciples always wondered, “Who is this man?” They talked secretly among themselves about Him, but they did not know who He was intrinsically. In John 14:20 the Lord told them that on the day of resurrection they would know that He was in the Father, that they were in Him, and that He was in them. These three ins reveal that the consummated Triune God and the regenerated believers became an incorporation in the resurrection of Christ.
In John 14 the Lord revealed that He came as the first Comforter and that another One would come as the second Comforter. The second Comforter is the reality of the first Comforter. He is the Spirit of reality, and verse 17 says that this Spirit of reality would be in the disciples. The in of verse 17 as a general statement is the totality of the three ins in verse 20 as a detailed statement. When the Spirit of reality is in us, the totality of the Triune God is in us to incorporate us into the universal incorporation. In eternity it was a divine incorporation. By being enlarged, this incorporation became a divine and human incorporation. This incorporation is the house of the Father, the universal vine tree of the Son, and the new man of the Spirit.
In John 16:12-15 the Lord told the disciples, “I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when He, the Spirit of reality, comes, He will guide you into all the reality; for He will not speak from Himself, but what He hears He will speak; and He will declare to you the things that are coming. He will glorify Me, for He will receive of Mine and will declare it to you. All that the Father has is Mine; for this reason I have said that He receives of Mine and will declare it to you.” The Spirit of reality declares all the things concerning Christ in the last twenty-two books of the New Testament, the Epistles.
I began to love the Bible from the day I was saved in 1925. I have spent the past seventy-one years studying the Bible, but it was not until recently that I saw so clearly that the goal of God’s economy is the enlarged, universal, divine-human incorporation of the consummated God with the regenerated believers. The unbelievers will go into the lake of fire. They have nothing to do with this universal incorporation. But all the believers will eventually be incorporated into this one great incorporation. The final consummation of this universal incorporation is the New Jerusalem. Mainly three apostles — Paul, Peter, and John — present this revelation to us in their Epistles piece by piece and bit by bit. By the Lord’s mercy we have put these pieces together to see a full and complete vision of this universal incorporation.
The three aspects of the universal incorporation of the consummated God with the regenerated believers are revealed in John 14 through 16: a house, a tree, and a child. John 16 shows the child born of the Spirit (v. 21). This child is Christ. Eventually, this child becomes the new man. In Colossians 3 we are told that Christ is this new man. He is every member and is in every member of the new man (vv. 10-11). In God’s eyes the house, the tree, and the man in John 14 through 16 are all Christ. Christ is the house, the temple, the dwelling place of God; Christ is the vine tree; and Christ is the new man. In the previous chapter we saw the Father’s house. In this chapter we want to see the true vine and the new child, the new man.
The Lord is not a tall pine tree but a spreading vine tree (15:1-8, 16). The fruit of a vine tree is easy to reach and eat. This is a picture of today’s Christ. Today’s Christ is spreading Himself everywhere throughout the globe. In 1958 I was invited to speak in London to a group of people who were considered the most spiritual people on this earth. I considered them the last group of saints in the line of the inner life. I stayed with them for four weeks. One day they took me to see a big vine tree, which is the vine of the queen. The British people are proud of this vine. When they asked me what I thought of it, I said that I had seen a vine tree that is much bigger. The vine tree I have seen is Christ as the true vine. This vine needs the entire globe for its spreading. In John 15 the Lord said, “I am the true vine” (v. 1). This means that actually all the other vine trees are false, including the Queen’s vine. Only one vine is uniquely true. This is Christ spreading around the globe. Christ as the true vine has spread Himself from America to places such as Russia, Poland, Romania, South Africa, South America, New Zealand, and Australia.
The true vine is a sign of the all-inclusive Christ as the organism of the processed and consummated Triune God.
Its branches are the believers of Christ, who by nature were branches of the wild olive tree and have been grafted into the cultivated olive tree (Rom. 11:17, 24) through their believing into Christ (John 3:15). Both the cultivated olive tree and the true vine signify Christ. Hence, to be grafted into the cultivated olive tree is to be grafted into the true vine.
Its grafted branches have been regenerated with the divine life, brought into the life union with the crucified and resurrected Christ, and incorporated with the processed and consummated Triune God.
This is for the unlimited Triune God’s multiplication as the increase of the immeasurable Christ, the embodiment of the processed and consummated Triune God (vv. 29-30), for His universal spreading through the fruit-bearing of the believers of Christ as the branches by their faithful abiding in Christ (15:4-5, 16) for the glorification of the Father (v. 8).
A new child, a new man, was born by the consummated Spirit (16:21, 13-15). This new man was created by Christ on the cross by abolishing in His flesh the law of the commandments in ordinances (Eph. 2:15). While Christ was dying on the cross, He was creating this new man. Also, this new man was regenerated by the Father with the resurrected Christ in His resurrection (1 Pet. 1:3; Rom. 1:4) and born by the Spirit in the believers’ spirit (John 3:6b). The first group of Christ’s believers, who suffered Christ’s departure through His death, was the delivering woman (16:20-21). The Christ who returned in His resurrection was the newborn child (v. 22) to be the new man (Col. 3:10-11). Now we believers have to put on this new man through the renewing in the spirit of our mind (Eph. 4:23-24).
Our putting on the new man by being renewed in the spirit of our mind will eventually consummate the Body of Christ, and this Body of Christ, which is the church, will consummate the New Jerusalem.
