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Baptizing believers in water signifies that they are being immersed into the Triune God (Matt. 28:19). We were born outside of God, and we have drifted far away from Him. One day we heard the gospel, and the gospel brought us back to Him. However, it is not adequate merely to be brought back to God; we must also be put into Him. For this, we need to be baptized. Whenever we baptize believers into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, we are placing them into the Triune God. After we have been baptized, we have not only come back to God and belong to Him; we are also in Him. Therefore, we can declare, “I used to be a sinner outside of God and far away from Him. But now I have been discipled and baptized into the Triune God. Angels, do you know where I am today? I am in the Triune God. Oh, I am in the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Satan, don’t touch me! I am valuable and precious because I am in the Triune God.” After we have been baptized into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, wherever we are and whatever we do, we are in the Triune God.
Do not consider baptism a ritual or an empty form. I say again, to baptize believers is to put them into the Triune God. In the past I saw some who shouted and danced after they came out of the baptismal water. Some even waved their arms and rejoiced, so glad were they to be in the Triune God. Hallelujah, we are in the Triune God! As those in the Triune God, we are the material for the building of the church. The church is not a physical building, nor even merely a gathering of believers. The church is a corporate composition of those who have been immersed into the Triune God.
Galatians 3:27 says, “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” Those who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. In this verse Christ is likened to a garment that we put on. When we are baptized into Christ, we are put into Christ, and we put Christ upon us. This is our union with Christ. Now that we have been baptized into Christ, we are one with Christ, and we are one with the Triune God.
In Matthew 16:18 the Lord prophesied and said, “I will build My church.” In Matthew 28:19 He commanded His disciples to baptize the nations into the Triune God. Hence, the first step in producing the church is to immerse the believers into the Triune God.
On the day of His resurrection the Lord Jesus appeared to His disciples in a mysterious way. After entering the room where the disciples were gathered, He breathed into them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22). We need to be very clear regarding the significance of this action. By breathing into the disciples and telling them to receive the Holy Spirit, the Lord indicated that from then on He would be in them and that He would never leave them.
The Gospel of John reveals that in eternity past the Lord was the Word, that the Word was God, and that, in His incarnation, the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us as a man. This man was the Lamb of God (1:29). After dying on the cross to take away our sins, He was resurrected. On the day of His resurrection He came to the disciples as the holy breath. Here we have a problem in language. In the Greek language the same word, pneuma, is used for both breath and spirit. The Lord Himself was actually the very breath, the pneuma, that He breathed into His disciples after His resurrection. After accomplishing the work of redemption as the Lamb, He went into death and was resurrected. In resurrection He became a mysterious One, for He became the pneuma breathed into His disciples. How wonderful! Although Peter, John, and all the other disciples had already been baptized into the Triune God, on the day of resurrection Christ as the Spirit, the pneuma, the breath, was breathed into them to be their content. In the past we were sinners outside of God and far from Him. Now, as saved ones, we have been brought back to God and baptized into Him. However, we still may not have the Lord as our content within. Our content must be the incarnated, crucified, and resurrected Christ as the Spirit of life, the holy breath. As He breathes Himself into us, we need to breathe Him in. He breathes out, and we breathe in. After the Lord breathes Himself out as the Spirit of life and we breathe Him in as the reality of life, He becomes our content. Now not only are we in the Triune God, but the resurrected Christ as the Spirit of life is also in us. Thus, our content is the Spirit of life, the resurrected Christ, as the resurrection life within us. This content, which is Christ Himself, is the very substance of the church.
The church is not something outside the Triune God. Neither is the church merely a group of believers who meet together. The church is the constitution of Christ. It is not an organization; it is a constitution with Christ and of Christ. Consider your physical body. It is not an organization but a living constitution including many parts. When you go to a dentist, he may fix your teeth by placing a golden element in them. However, that element is not part of your constitution. No matter how pure, valuable, and beautiful it may be, it cannot be constituted into you, because it does not contain your life. Likewise, the church is not just a group of believers in Christ who have been cleansed of defiling germs, who have been made righteous, clean, and pure, and who regularly gather together. This is not an adequate understanding of the church. The church is the constitution of Christ. It is Christ constituted into the very fiber of our being. The Christ constituted into us is the church. The church is the constitution of the resurrected Christ who embodies the reality of the Triune God. Thus, the church is a living constitution of the Triune God who has been wrought into our humanity. Yes, we are human beings, but in our humanity we have the constitution of the Triune God, for He has been wrought, constituted, into us. Hence, we are not merely human beings; we are also the church. We are not simply a group of believers meeting together. We are those who have been immersed into the Triune God and who have Christ constituted into our being. This is the church. The church people are not merely those who have been redeemed, cleansed, purified, and adjusted. They are those who have been reconstituted with Christ, who is the very embodiment of the Triune God.
Let me ask you, are we simply those who have been redeemed, cleansed, purified, and adjusted? We must answer this question by strongly saying no. In addition to all this, we have been reconstituted with Christ. Thus, we may need to say to Satan, “Don’t touch me! Don’t you know that I have Christ in me, that Christ has been constituted into the fiber of my being?” I can truly say that for me to live is Christ (Phil. 1:21). I am not only a redeemed person, nor merely a cleansed and purified person; I am a person filled with Christ, a person who has Christ wrought into my being. Now within me there is a heavenly, spiritual constitution. Therefore, I say once again that the church is the constitution of the Triune God into our being.
On the day of resurrection the church was conceived, but it was not yet born. When the Lord breathed Himself into the disciples, they were impregnated with the church, but the church had not yet been delivered. It had only been conceived within them. When the resurrected Christ came into the disciples, that was the conception of the church. On the day of Pentecost the ascended Christ, the Christ on the throne, poured Himself out upon His disciples. This pouring out of the ascended Christ upon the disciples was the birth, the delivery, of the church. Thus, the entering in of the resurrected Christ into the disciples was the conception of the church, and the outpouring of the ascended Christ upon the disciples was the delivery of the church. Therefore, on the day of Pentecost the church came into being. On that day the church, a corporate child, was born.
Consider the situation of the one hundred twenty on the day of Pentecost. They were the very church described in Matthew 16:18 and 19. Wherever they were, there was the kingdom of the heavens with the authority of God, and the gates of Hades could not do anything about it. Therefore, on the day of Pentecost the Lord’s promise spoken in Matthew 16:18 was fulfilled initially. However, that wonderful situation did not last very long. Nevertheless, on the day of Pentecost the church, the corporate child, was delivered.
This is not a matter of doctrine. Many Christians place too much emphasis on doctrine. The point here is to see how the church is produced, how the church comes into being. The church is produced by immersing the believers into the Triune God, by their receiving the resurrected Christ as their life, content, and constitution, and by the pouring out of the ascended Christ upon them to cause them to be wholly and thoroughly filled with the Triune God and immersed into Him. This is the way the church is produced. As those in the Lord’s recovery, we must know the church to such a degree.
Many Christians do not realize that on the day of resurrection the resurrected Christ came as the heavenly breath and breathed Himself into His disciples. This is one aspect of the formation of the church. Then, fifty days later, on the day of Pentecost, the ascended Christ on the throne poured Himself out upon the disciples. This is another aspect. The breathing out of the holy breath on the day of resurrection was for life, and the pouring out of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost was for power. On the day of resurrection there was the pneuma, the breath, the air. But on the day of Pentecost there was the violent wind (Acts 2:2). Air is for life, and wind is for power. The Spirit of life, who is the resurrected Christ, is our content of life, and the Spirit of power, poured out by the ascended Christ, is our outward equipment. Thus, we have the inward content of life and the outward equipment of power. Together these produce the church. The church is a group of believers in the Triune God who have the resurrected Christ as their life content and the ascended Christ as their outward equipment. This is the church, which is the kingdom of the heavens possessing the authority of God to defeat the power of Satan. The gates of Hades cannot prevail against such a church. This is also the kind of church the Lord is recovering today. My burden in this chapter is that we would all have a vision of such a church.
Praise the Lord that, by His mercy, we are becoming this kind of church. We all can testify that we are those in the Triune God, that we have the resurrected Christ within as our life content, and that we have the ascended Christ upon us as our equipment. Although the degree is not as high as it was on the day of Pentecost, we are nevertheless in this church. Now the degree must become higher and higher and greater and greater.
For this reason the apostle Paul prayed for us in Ephesians 3:14-19. He bowed his knees unto the Father and prayed that He would grant us to be strengthened with power through His Spirit into our inner man, that is, in our regenerated spirit, so that Christ might make His home in our entire being, possessing every area of our mind, emotion, and will. In this way Christ becomes settled and makes His home throughout our entire being. The more Christ makes His home in our heart, the higher will be the degree of the building of the church. Eventually, the church will be filled unto all the fullness of the Godhead. This church will be the house of God on earth, a house filled with the glory of God. It will also be the bride prepared for the coming back of Christ. This is the church the Lord is recovering today.
