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Scripture Reading: Gal. 5:16, 24-25; Rom. 8:4-6; 1 Cor. 6:17; Rev. 1:4, 1:10; 4:5; 5:6a; 22:17a; John 7:37-39
In this fellowship my burden is to turn us all to the mingled spirit. Two spirits — the divine Spirit and the human spirit — are entwined and mingled as one.
Genesis 1:1 says that God created the heavens and the earth. Then verse 2 says that the Spirit of God was brooding over the death waters. Later, after man had fallen to such an extent that he had become flesh, Genesis 6:3 says that the Spirit of Jehovah would not strive with man any longer. Throughout the Old Testament the Spirit is referred to as either the Spirit of God or the Spirit of Jehovah. In Psalm 51:11 and Isaiah 63:10-11 the Spirit is referred to as the Spirit of God’s holiness, but the divine title the Holy Spirit is not used in the Old Testament.
At the beginning of the New Testament, when Christ was to be conceived and born, the Holy Spirit is mentioned for the first time (Matt. 1:18, 20). Christ’s conception and birth were altogether by the Holy Spirit. Here the Holy Spirit is strongly stressed. Christ was conceived of this Spirit, and He was born through this Spirit.
While the Lord Jesus was walking on the earth and ministering for God, Matthew 12:28 tells us that He cast out demons by the Spirit of God. This indicates that the Spirit was with the Lord Jesus. However, John 7:37-39 says, “Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes into Me, as the Scripture said, out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water. But this He said concerning the Spirit, whom those who believed into Him were about to receive; for the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.” Although the Spirit was with the Lord Jesus in His living and working on the earth, John 7:39 says that “the Spirit was not yet.” The Lord lived on the earth for thirty years; then He ministered for three and a half years. He was born of the Spirit, and He worked through the Spirit of God. Then in John 7, near the end of His three-and-a-half-year ministry, He called the thirsty ones to come to Him and drink, and He said that they would have rivers of living water flowing out of their innermost being. The apostle John says that the Lord spoke here concerning the Spirit — not the Spirit of God or the Holy Spirit but the Spirit — whom the believers were about to receive; “for,” John says, “the Spirit was not yet.” The Spirit of God was there in Genesis 1, and the Holy Spirit was there in Matthew 1. Why, near the end of the Lord’s ministry on this earth, does John tell us that the Spirit whom the believers were about to receive “was not yet”?
Before us, Andrew Murray saw that the Holy Spirit of God is something particular, yet the Spirit is something more. In his masterpiece The Spirit of Christ, in the chapter entitled “The Spirit of the Glorified Jesus,” Andrew Murray wrote that “the Spirit of God as poured out at Pentecost was indeed something new.” According to Andrew Murray, this Spirit, who is the Spirit in John 7:39, is something more than the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Jehovah, the Spirit of the holiness of God, and the Holy Spirit. Even with the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God had not been wholly consummated; that is, He had not been completed in full. The Spirit was not consummated until the glorification of Christ. According to Luke 24:26, the glorification of Christ was His resurrection. When Christ entered into resurrection, He was glorified. His divine nature with the divine life in Him was released. Christ’s glorification was like the blossoming of a flower. When a flower blossoms, it is glorified; all the contents of its life and nature are released and expressed. The contents of Jesus Christ are just God with His holy nature and holy life. Before His death and resurrection these contents were concealed in the shell of Christ’s humanity. Once during the three and a half years of His ministry, on the Mount of Transfiguration, three of Christ’s disciples saw Him transformed, or transfigured, before their eyes. All of a sudden His face shone like the sun, and His garments became as white as the light (Matt. 17:2). That was His glorification, but it lasted only a short time. When He entered into resurrection, He was wholly glorified by releasing God with God’s nature and God’s life from within Him. Until that time the Spirit was not yet. It was at that time that the Spirit was produced. First Corinthians 15:45b tells us that “the last Adam [that is, Christ] became a life-giving Spirit.” This life-giving Spirit is the Spirit, produced through and in Christ’s resurrection.
By passing through all the processes — incarnation, human living, the all-inclusive death, and the all-releasing resurrection — the Triune God, the God in the Divine Trinity, was consummated as one Spirit, that is, the life-giving Spirit. This life-giving Spirit is the totality of the consummated Triune God. This is the clear revelation in the New Testament. First, God became a man. That man was Jesus Christ, who is the God-man in the flesh. He was God, but one day He put on man. Thus, He became both divine and human, having put the flesh upon Him. When He was crucified, He brought this man, that is, His humanity, to the cross and died there to terminate humanity. Then He resurrected to bring His humanity into divinity. Through this resurrection His humanity was made divine (Rom. 1:4), and He was born to be the firstborn Son of God (Acts 13:33; Rom. 8:29). Such a One, in His resurrection and with His resurrection, became the life-giving Spirit. This Spirit is the consummation of the Triune God. We all need to see this.
This is not my teaching. This is the divine revelation in the holy Word. Although the Nicene Creed, issued at the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325, stresses the Divine Trinity and the person of Christ and also includes the Spirit, the Nicene Creed does not say anything concerning Christ as the last Adam becoming a life-giving Spirit. Therefore, the Nicene Creed is good but not complete. Many major denominations and the Catholic Church still accept this creed as their faith. However, they do not pay adequate attention to John 7:39 or 1 Corinthians 15:45. In my study of the Bible I read John 7:39 many times and wondered why this verse says that “the Spirit was not yet.” I also considered very much the significance of the last Adam becoming a life-giving Spirit in 1 Corinthians 15:45. It was not until 1954, while I was working for the Lord in Taipei and Manila, that I received a full revelation of what I am now passing on to you. That year, in a summer training in Hong Kong, I released this matter, telling the saints that today our Triune God is the consummated God, not the original God. The original God was merely divine, but after passing through incarnation, human living, death, and resurrection, this Triune God has been processed and consummated in the life-giving Spirit.
We were regenerated by this life-giving Spirit, not merely by the Spirit of God or the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God was for God’s creation, and the Holy Spirit was for Christ’s conception. Now, the life-giving Spirit is for God’s new creation (2 Cor. 5:17), for God’s producing of many sons (1 John 3:2; Rom. 8:29), who are the believers. Our spiritual origin, that is, the origin of our being God’s new creation, is the life-giving Spirit.
From the time of our regeneration this life-giving Spirit remains in us and indwells our spirit (v. 16). First, He regenerated our spirit; then He remains in us by indwelling our regenerated spirit. Hence, these two spirits — the divine, life-giving Spirit and our spirit, which has been regenerated by the life-giving Spirit — are mingled together as one (1 Cor. 6:17). In the New Testament there are a number of verses indicating that these two spirits are one. In Paul’s Epistles, especially in Romans and Galatians, when the Spirit is mentioned, it is difficult to discern whether the divine Spirit or the regenerated human spirit is referred to. Romans 8:4 says that God’s righteousness is with those who walk according to the spirit. It is difficult to discern whether the word spirit in this verse refers to the Spirit of God or to our spirit. In his New Translation J. N. Darby, a great teacher among the Brethren, also notes this difficulty. This is because spirit in verses like Romans 8:4-6 denotes the two spirits — God’s Spirit indwelling our spirit as one spirit. In 1 Corinthians 6:17 Paul says, “He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit,” indicating that we are one spirit with the Lord. In Romans 8 Paul also says that we must set our mind on this mingled spirit. In verse 6 he says that the mind set on the mingled spirit is life and peace, but the mind set on the flesh is death. Thus, today there are two possibilities in our Christian life. The first is to set our mind, which represents our natural, soulish man, on the mingled spirit. Such a mind set on the mingled spirit becomes life and peace. The second possibility is to set our mind on the flesh, which issues in death.
The New Testament tells us that our being regenerated, dispositionally sanctified, renewed, transformed, and conformed to Christ’s image are all accomplished through the life-giving Spirit in our spirit (John 3:6; Rom. 15:16; 1 Cor. 6:11; Titus 3:5; 2 Cor. 3:18; Rom. 8:2, 29). Apart from the mingled spirit there is no regeneration, no sanctification, no renewing, no transformation, and no conformation. Thus, all our spiritual experience is by the two spirits mingled together as one.
As believers in Christ who are seeking Him, we all must learn to remain in this spirit. We must set our entire being on this mingled spirit and do things according to this spirit. We must have our being altogether in this spirit. This is my burden in this chapter. There are many books written to tell Christians how to do things, such as how to be holy and how to be victorious. However, not one of these how-tos is prevailing. Only one way prevails, that is, to set our entire being on the mingled spirit. If we will do this, life and peace will be ours, and we will walk, have our being, and do things continually, not only every day but even every moment, in and according to this mingled spirit.
Even with such an all-inclusive Spirit, the church still became degraded. This forced God to intensify this life-giving Spirit sevenfold. This sevenfold intensifying of the Spirit is referred to in Revelation as the seven Spirits of God (1:4; 4:5; 5:6). Actually, these are not seven different Spirits of God. The Spirit of God is uniquely one, but to meet the need of the degraded church, this Spirit has been intensified sevenfold. Thus, Revelation 1:4 says that the book of Revelation was written from the seven Spirits to the seven churches. Since the seven churches were degraded churches (chs. 2—3), they needed the sevenfold intensified Spirit.
In Revelation 1:10 the apostle John says that he was in spirit — the mingled spirit — on the Lord’s Day. This means that John was a person who continually lived and walked in the mingled spirit. Then, at the end of Revelation, as a closing of the entire Bible, the Spirit and the bride speak together (22:17). The bride is the church (2 Cor. 11:2; Eph. 5:31-32), and the Spirit is the Triune God consummated to be the Spirit. This Spirit is the Husband to the church. This indicates that the consummated Triune God will marry the transformed tripartite church. Thus, these two will become a couple — the Triune God consummated to be the Husband, and the tripartite man transformed to be the bride. The issue of such a union is the New Jerusalem. In the New Jerusalem we can see the bride and also the consummated Triune God, that is, Christ as the Lamb (Rev. 21:2, 9).
Dear brothers and sisters, I urge you to forget everything. Do not listen to all the distracting things. We simply need to take care of one thing. We need to realize that God has been consummated to be the life-giving Spirit, and now this Spirit, after regenerating us, indwells our spirit to be one with our spirit, to sanctify us, to renew us, to transform us, to conform us, and to seal us (Eph. 1:13; 4:30; 2 Cor. 1:22). Sealing means saturating, and saturating means dispensing. The Spirit seals us with His divine element by dispensing the entire God into our being. The issue of this is the church, the Body of Christ. Ephesians 4:4-6 says that there is one Body, one Spirit, one Lord, and one God and Father. These four constituted together are the Body of Christ, and this Body of Christ will consummate in the New Jerusalem. Today we must realize this. Then we will forget everything and simply walk, live, and have our being in and according to the mingled spirit. This is all that we need. When we live in this way, spontaneously we put our natural man, our old man, on the cross (Rom. 6:6). The cross brings in resurrection, which is not merely a thing but a living person, who is the consummated Triune God as the life-giving Spirit.
I hope that this fellowship will impress you to the extent that you will never forget it. I hope that you will not be able to erase this message from your being. Now you should be clear that to be a believer in Christ is simply to have your being in and according to the mingled spirit. In your family life, in your daily life, in your church life, and in your social life, you should live by this mingled spirit. When you live such a life, spontaneously you are crucified all the day. Actually, you are crucified to live. Crucifixion always leads you to live in resurrection, and this resurrection is just the processed Triune God as the life-giving Spirit.
