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Scripture Reading: John 15:5, 7-8, 16; 14:17; 1 John 3:24a; 21-22, John 14:23; Gal. 2:20b; 2, 6, Rom. 8:9-11
We have seen that to live in the Divine Trinity is to dwell in Him as our home. To live in Him is to abide in Him, to remain in Him. The Lord said, “Abide in Me and I in you” (John 15:4). Thus, abiding in Him is a condition of His abiding in us. Whether or not He would abide in us depends upon our abiding in Him. To live in Christ, to abide in Christ, is the first part of our enjoyment of the Triune God. In this chapter we come to the second part of our enjoyment. This part of our enjoyment is conveyed by the Lord’s word concerning His abiding in us. His abiding in us brings His presence to us, so we live with Him. To live in Him puts us into the position of the enjoyment of the Lord. To live with Him is the enjoyment itself. To live with the Divine Trinity is to enjoy the Divine Trinity. To live with a person is to enjoy that person. Thus, to live with the Triune God is our enjoyment of the Triune God.
According to my rough estimation, one-fourth of the New Testament is for our living in the Triune God, but three-fourths of the New Testament is for our living with the Triune God. To live with the Triune God covers nearly the entire New Testament revelation. The final revelation of the entire Bible, in Revelation 22, is the eternal part of our living with the Triune God. Revelation 22 reveals the throne of God and of the Lamb, out of which proceeds the river of water of life (v. 1). On the two sides of this river grows the tree of life, yielding its fruit each month to be the food of God’s redeemed for eternity (v. 2). God’s redeemed will be His slaves and His priests (v. 3). While they are serving God, they will see God’s face, and the Triune God’s name will be on their foreheads (v. 4). This indicates that they are one with the Triune God. Bearing the name of the Triune God not only indicates that we belong to Him but also that we are one with Him.
In eternity we all will have the name of the Triune God on our foreheads. We will drink the river of water of life, eat the tree of life, and enjoy God as our light of life. According to Revelation 22:5, we will not need the light of a lamp made by man or the light of the sun created by God. We will only need and only have God Himself as our illumination. We will enjoy Him as our light, and we will also enjoy reigning in and with Him as kings forever and ever. This is the last view, the last vision, of the entire Bible. This is the eternal part of our enjoying the Triune God. This revelation is under the section of living with the Triune God. Our living with the Triune God today will bring us into that enjoyment in eternity.
In eternity the fallen angels and the fallen human beings will live with Satan. Because they will be with Satan, they will partake of whatever Satan will suffer. They will suffer Satan’s eternal judgment, the torment of the lake of fire. In the same principle, we will be with our Triune God, so we will enjoy whatever He is. To live with the Triune God is to enjoy Him. We need to see this last vision revealed in the entire Bible. We need to have a bird’s-eye view of the entire revelation of the New Testament. This bird’s-eye view is that one-fourth of the New Testament is concerning our living in the Triune God, whereas three-fourths is concerning our living with the Triune God.
To live in the Divine Trinity is to abide in Christ, and to live with the Divine Trinity is to have Christ abide in us (John 15:5). When we abide in Christ, Christ abides in us, and His abiding is His presence with us. When He abides in us, we have His presence. We have Him with us for our enjoyment.
To have Christ abiding in us is to have the words of Christ abiding in us for the bearing of remaining fruit (vv. 7-8, 16). In John 15:7 the Lord said, “If you abide in Me and My words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you.” This kind of asking is related to fruit-bearing (v. 8) and surely will be fulfilled. If we are to be those who go forth to preach the gospel, we must be those who love the word of Christ. We must be those who have the living word, the word of life, abiding in us. If we are not such persons, our preaching of the gospel will not last long. The living word of Christ stirs us up to go forth and bear fruit. The word of Christ abiding in us brings us the enjoyment of all that the Triune God is. This encourages us, stirs us up, burdens us, and charges us to go forth to preach the gospel to people.
If we do not have the word of Christ abiding in us, we may go out to reach people, but what we do will be in a poor way. The content and the issue of what we do will be vain, empty. If we are going to do a rich work, a work full of the riches of the Triune God, we must have the word of Christ abiding in us. Then when we talk to people, we will not talk to them with our own opinion, our own thought, our own word, our own expression, or our own utterance. We will talk to people with the word of Christ. This is why Paul charges us in Colossians 3:16 to let the word of Christ dwell, abide, in us richly. We need to have a storage of the word of Christ in us. Then what we speak will be the word of Christ, which expresses the very riches of Christ. To have the word of Christ abide in us is a rich enjoyment of the Triune God.
To have Christ abiding in us is to have the Spirit of reality abiding in us (John 14:17). John 14—16 is a long message given by the Lord just before He was betrayed. In chapter 15 the Lord mentioned His words abiding in us, and in chapter 14 He spoke of the Spirit of reality abiding in us. Actually, the words of Christ and the Spirit of reality are one. In John 6:63 the Lord told us that the words which He has spoken are spirit. God’s word and God the Spirit are both God’s breath. When this breath gets into us and remains in us, this breath is the Spirit. When this breath comes out of us through our speaking, it becomes the word. When we breathe in the word of the Bible, the word becomes the Spirit in us. We contact our Triune God through the Spirit and in the word. We enjoy Him through the Spirit in our spirit and in the word. As long as we have His words abiding in us, this issues in the Spirit abiding in us. The more His words abide in us, the more the Spirit abides in us. These are two aspects of the breath of our Triune God.
First John 3:24a speaks of God abiding in us. The word, the Spirit, and God are one. Both the word and the Spirit are the reality of the Triune God. The word is the Spirit, and the Spirit is God. These three are one for our enjoyment.
To have Christ abiding in us is to have the Son and the Father coming to us and making an abode with us (John 14:23). When we have the words of Christ, the Spirit of reality, and the very God abiding in us, we surely have the Son and the Father abiding in us. We have both the Son and the Father coming to us and making an abode with us. This abode is a mutual abode. He becomes our abode, and we become His abode.
The New Jerusalem is a mutual abode. The Triune God in eternity will abide in His chosen people, and His chosen people will abide in Him. His chosen people will be His abode, and He Himself will be their abode. This is why the New Jerusalem, the holy city, is, on the one hand, a temple and, on the other hand, a tabernacle. It is a tabernacle for God’s dwelling and a temple for our dwelling in which we live to serve God. The New Jerusalem will be a tabernacle to God and a temple to us.
The Son and the Father come to us and make an abode with us because of our loving the Son. The Son and the Father’s making an abode with us depends upon whether or not we love the Lord Jesus. When we tell the Lord Jesus that we love Him, we will sense His coming to us and making His abode with us. If we neglect our love toward Him, we will lose His manifestation, His appearing. When Peter and the other disciples went fishing, as recorded in John 21, they thought that they were absent from the Lord. They did not know that the Lord was still with them. He was with them, but at the time of their fishing they did not have His manifestation, His appearing. If we say, “Lord Jesus, I love You,” we will not only have Him with us but also have Him appearing to us, manifesting Himself to us. His coming to us and making an abode with us is His appearing, His manifestation.
In John 14:23 the Lord said, “If anyone loves Me,...My Father will love him.” When we love the Son, the Father will love us. Then the Son will follow His Father to love us (v. 21). The Father and the Son both will love us because we love the Son. This issues in our enjoyment of the Son’s manifestation (vv. 21-22). Our enjoyment of the Son’s manifestation depends upon our loving Him. This is altogether not a doctrine but an experience. The Divine Trinity is not for doctrine but altogether for our experience. When we love the Son, both the Father and the Son love us, and at the same time the Son manifests Himself to us. We enjoy His appearing. In other words, we enjoy His presence.
To live with the Divine Trinity is to have the resurrected Christ living in us (Gal. 2:20b). The apostle Paul declares two wonderful things. In Galatians 2:20 he declares that he was crucified with Christ and that it was no longer he who lived, but Christ lived in him. In Philippians 1:21 he declares that to him to live was Christ. On the one hand, he lived Christ, and on the other hand, Christ lived in him. The Christ who lived in him was the resurrected Christ, the Christ in resurrection.
To live with the Divine Trinity is also to have the Spirit of God housing in us (Rom. 8:9-11). Romans 8:9 speaks of the Spirit of God dwelling in us. The word for dwells in this verse also means “to house,” “to reside.” The indwelling Spirit is housing in us. This means that we have the Spirit of Christ in us (v. 9), the pneumatic Christ in us (v. 10), and the resurrecting God in us (v. 11). Such a housing of the Spirit, with the pneumatic Christ and the resurrecting God, gives life even to our mortal bodies (v. 11).
Romans 8:9-11 reveals the living we have with the Triune God. The Triune God is a housing factor to impart life into our entire tripartite being — into our spirit, our mind, and our body. When the Spirit of God houses in us, we have the Spirit as the firstfruits (v. 23). The firstfruits of the Spirit means that the firstfruits are the Spirit. When we live with the Divine Trinity, we have the Spirit as the firstfruits, which means that we have the Spirit as our enjoyment.
We live with the Divine Trinity by the law of the Spirit of life (v. 2). The law of the Spirit of life referred to by Paul in Romans 8 is not the law in letters but a natural principle. There are natural principles that operate in the universe. These principles are laws, such as the law of gravity. If we drop something, it will fall to the ground because of the gravitational factor. Gravity is a spontaneous power and a natural principle. It is amazing that nearly two thousand years ago the apostle Paul saw the law of the Spirit of life. He was not a scientist, yet he understood the laws in nature and in the divine realm. The law of the Spirit of life is a natural power. It is a natural force just like the law of gravity. A plane is able to overcome the law of gravity by a higher law, which we may call the law of aerodynamics. We have a higher law within us, and this law is the law of the Spirit of life.
This law is a triune person. When the Father, the Son, and the Spirit move in us, They are the law. The law of the Spirit of life within us is the moving Triune God. When the Triune God is moving within us, there is a spontaneous force, a spontaneous power, to carry out something. However, there are some obstacles within us that prevent Him from going further. Thus, He is stopped. This is why this law, the moving Triune God, needs the cross to cross out all the obstacles. The killing of the cross brings in another law to annul all the obstacles. Romans 8:13 reveals that if we cooperate with the indwelling Spirit to put all the deeds and activities of our body to death, we will have the law of the Spirit of life working within us without any obstacles. Then we will live.
This law of the Spirit of life is the spontaneous working of the Divine Trinity — the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, and Christ (vv. 9-10). This law frees us from the law of sin and of death (v. 2b). The law of the Spirit of life is God, and the law of sin and of death is the devil. The devil, Satan, is another law. We have two laws within us. In our first birth, our natural birth, Satan was brought into our being as the law of sin and of death. In our second birth, our regeneration, the Triune God was brought into us as the law of the Spirit of life. The law of the Spirit of life frees us from the law of sin and of death.
Furthermore, this law of the Spirit of life imparts life into our spirit, mind, and body (vv. 10, 6, 11). This issues in peace (v. 6). This is not the outward peace in our circumstances but the peace within us, in our inner being. If we Christians do not have the inner peace, this is an indicator that we are wrong. This means that the law of the Spirit of life has no way to work in us. As long as we have peace in the depths of our inner being, that is a positive indicator that the law of the Spirit of life, the Triune God — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit — is working in us. We live with the Divine Trinity by the law of the Spirit of life. This is our enjoyment of the Triune God.
