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Scripture Reading: John 14:19-20; 6:57b-58; Gal. 5:25; Phil. 1:20-21a; Gal. 2:20c; Phil. 1:19; Gal. 6:18
In this chapter we want to continue our fellowship concerning our living in the Divine Trinity. When we use the word living, we mean abiding. Living in the Divine Trinity is abiding in the Divine Trinity. To abide is not merely to remain, to stay, but to dwell, to have our home in a place. Our abiding in the Divine Trinity includes our entire living, our daily walk. Thus, to abide in the Triune God is to dwell in the Triune God, to have our home in the Triune God, to live in the Triune God. The Triune God is embodied in the Son, and the Son as the embodiment of the Triune God with all His members is the organism of the Divine Trinity to produce fruit for the expression of the Triune God. As we abide, live, in the Triune God, we bear fruit for His expression.
Our living in the Divine Trinity is wrapped up with the resurrected Christ. Before Christ’s resurrection transpired, no one could live in the Triune God. Our Christ is the resurrected Christ, the pneumatic Christ. John 6 unveils to us how Christ was processed to become the resurrected Christ to indwell us. The outline from the Recovery Version can be a great help to us in seeing this revelation. The outline tells us that verses 32 through 71 show that Christ is the food abiding to eternal life. To become our food, Christ was first incarnated. Verses 32 through 51a show the incarnation of Jesus. Jesus as the food abiding to eternal life was incarnated.
Verses 51b through 55 show that Jesus was slain, because the shedding of blood is indicated. In verse 54 the Lord spoke of eating His flesh and drinking His blood. When blood is separate from flesh, it indicates death. Furthermore, His blood has become drinkable, and His flesh has become eatable. This also indicates His being slain.
Verses 56 through 59 show that Christ was resurrected to indwell. In verse 56 the Lord said, “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me and I in him.’’ This indicates that the Lord had to be resurrected that He might abide in us as our life and life supply. In verse 57 He said, “As the living Father has sent Me and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me.’’ Because of indicates the factor. We live because we have a living factor that supports us to live. This factor is the resurrected Christ. Christ, the One who was slain and resurrected, can be the very living factor by which we live. We eat Him and live because of Him, the resurrected One. Our living because of Him means that He is the factor of our living.
Verses 60 through 62 show us Christ ascended. Verse 62 says, “Then what if you saw the Son of Man ascending to where He was before?’’ Verses 63 through 65 show us Christ becoming the life-giving Spirit. The Lord was talking about Himself in the flesh, but in verse 63 He said, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing.’’ At this point the Spirit who gives life is brought in. After resurrection and through resurrection the Lord Jesus, who had become flesh, became the Spirit who gives life, as is clearly mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15:45. In the next section of verses in John 6, verses 66 through 71, Christ embodied and realized in the word of life is revealed.
It is wonderful to see such a sequence in John 6. In this chapter we see Christ as the food abiding to eternal life incarnated, slain, resurrected to indwell, ascended, becoming the life-giving Spirit, and embodied and realized in the word of life. After being slain, the very Christ entered into His resurrection to be our eatable food. We are now eating a resurrected One.
John 14:19 and 20 show the very Christ as the resurrected One. These verses say, “Yet a little while and the world beholds Me no longer, but you behold Me; because I live, you also shall live. In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.’’ For a little while, while He was buried, the world would behold Him no longer, because He was slain. For Him to live is for Him to be resurrected. First Peter 1:3 says that we all were regenerated through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. John 14:19 corresponds with 1 Peter 1:3. When Christ lives, we also live. When Christ became living in His resurrection, we all were resurrected with Him. He, including us, came out of death. He lives, and we also live because of Him.
The Lord went on in verse 20 of John 14 to tell the disciples that in the day of resurrection, they would know that He is in His Father, that they are in Him, and that He is in them. We are now in the One who is in resurrection, and the One who is in resurrection, the pneumatic Christ as the life-giving Spirit, is in us. When the Lord was in the flesh, He was only among the disciples and outside of them, but He was not in them. On the evening of the day of His resurrection He came back to His disciples as the pneumatic Christ and breathed Himself into them. When He breathed into them, He told them to receive the holy breath, the Holy Spirit, the holy pneuma, which was just Himself (20:22). After breathing Himself into them, He remained within them as the pneumatic Christ, the life-giving Spirit.
All these divine secrets have been written down in the Bible, but very few throughout the centuries have seen them. We are greatly blessed to see Christ’s incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, His becoming a life-giving Spirit, and His embodiment and realization in the word of life as revealed in John 6. Christ as the bread of life became a life-giving Spirit, and this life-giving Spirit has been embodied in the Word. Christ as the bread of life is the Spirit and the Word. The Spirit and the Word are life to us. The Spirit is within, and the Word is without. As we enjoy the Spirit and the Word, we enjoy the real essence of the life-giving bread. The life-giving bread is the Spirit with the Word, and the Spirit with the Word is the very Christ in resurrection, the pneumatic Christ.
We are now living in this Christ, who is the embodiment of the Triune God. When we live in Him, we abide in Him. When we abide in Him, we abide in the embodiment, the organism, of the Divine Trinity. We are not merely remaining in Him or staying in Him; we are living in Him and having our being in Him in the way that we live in a home. To live in a home is to have everything concerning your life in that home. This is what it means to live in the Divine Trinity. We are living in such a One who has gone through incarnation, crucifixion, and is now in resurrection. With Him there is nothing dead. With Him everything is living and organic. As we live in this living, organic One, His living Body is built up to express God and to fulfill God’s eternal purpose.
We need to be those living by Christ as the life supply (vv. 57b-58). The most important thing in living in a home is eating. In the home nothing is as crucial as food. If we are going to live in the Divine Trinity, to abide in the Divine Trinity as our home, we must enjoy Christ as our food. We need to live by Christ as our life supply. He is our food. He is eatable because He is now in resurrection. Because of His crucifixion, our redemption has been completed. Now Christ is good for us to eat. After accomplishing death and resurrection, He became perfected for us to eat Him. Because He is living in resurrection, He is good for us to eat organically.
After His resurrection the Lord trained His disciples to live by Him as their life supply. In John 21 we see the resurrected Christ moving and living with the believers. In this chapter Peter took the lead to go fishing, and the other disciples followed him because they did not have anything to eat. The resurrected Christ as the disciples’ life supply had been breathed into them, but Peter took the lead to go away from this life supply. This life supply was inside of the disciples, not in the sea. They should not have gone to the sea. Instead, they should have remained in their spirit. They became distracted from the life supply in them. Even though they fished through the entire night, they caught nothing. Then what was caught by their fishing? In a sense we can say that they “caught Jesus.” They were disappointed to the uttermost that they did not catch one fish. All of a sudden Jesus came. His coming indicated to them that He was their life supply.
The Lord Jesus was training them to realize where the life supply is. The life supply is not in the world, in the sea, but within us. The very Spirit breathed into our being is the life supply. We do not need to “go fishing.’’ We do not need to go to any other source to get our life supply. The only source of our life supply is in our spirit. This supply is the very pneumatic Christ, who is today the life-giving Spirit indwelling our spirit. John 20 and 21 reveal that the pneumatic Christ came into His disciples to dwell there as the life supply. We should not be distracted from this source to anyone or anything else. Day by day we need to live by the resurrected Christ as the life supply. This is what it means to live, to abide, to have our living, to have our being, in the Divine Trinity.
After this fellowship we may still wonder what it means to live in resurrection. This is very hard to explain. The only thing I can say to explain this is from the negative side. Whenever we are in ourselves, we realize that we are not in resurrection. Whenever we do or say something in a natural way, we know that what we do or say is not in resurrection. As long as we are natural, that is altogether not in resurrection. To be in resurrection is to reject ourselves, our natural man, our natural way, and our old man.
In 1932 a small church was raised up by the Lord in my hometown of Chefoo. Brother Nee heard the good news that a church was raised up in northern China. That was the start of the recovery in northern China, so he was happy. In the spring of 1932 he came to stay with us, and he was my guest. During that time he related an illustration to me that I will never forget. He spoke of the difference between putting a little rock or a living seed into the earth. If we plant the rock in the earth and wait for many years, nothing will come out. If we plant a seed, such as a grain of wheat, something will eventually come out. He asked me why nothing will happen with the buried rock, whereas something will happen with the buried seed. Of course, I responded by saying that this is because there is no life in the rock, whereas there is life in the seed. Then he came to his point. He said, “Brother, we are not a piece of rock. We are a seed. The more we reject ourselves, our flesh, our old man, and the more we become nothing, the more the life within us will rise up.”
We are not unbelieving Gentiles, who are like pieces of dead rock. We are regenerated believers. We were regenerated in Christ’s resurrection. Now we are living seeds. Within us there is something of resurrection. Within us is the resurrected Christ, the pneumatic Christ as the life-giving Spirit. Therefore, when we reject ourselves, our natural man, our old man, this gives the indwelling, pneumatic Christ the opportunity to grow within us. I received so much help when Brother Nee gave me that simple illustration fifty-five years ago. For fifty-five years I have been enjoying and experiencing the help from that illustration. I am always reminded of what it is to live in the resurrection life. To live in the resurrection life is to deny ourselves, to reject our old man, and to despise the natural way. When we do this, we are immediately in resurrection. This resurrection is a living person.
On another occasion Brother Nee gave a message telling us that the Spirit is the reality and essence of resurrection. Resurrection is the Spirit. This Spirit is not merely the Spirit of God as He was in Genesis 1, brooding upon the surface of the waters. Resurrection is the person of the Spirit of Jesus Christ after Jesus’ resurrection. This living person is the reality and the essence of resurrection. To live in resurrection is to live and to walk not by ourselves but by this Spirit. Where is this Spirit? He is right now in our spirit (Rom. 8:16; 1 Cor. 6:17). Thus, whenever we turn to our spirit, we meet the reality of the resurrection, which is a living person, the life-giving Spirit as the pneumatic Christ.
In order to live in the Divine Trinity, we need to live and walk by the Spirit. Galatians 5:25 says, “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.’’ To live by the Spirit is somewhat general, but to walk by the Spirit is particular. To live by the Spirit is to have our life dependent upon and regulated by the Spirit. To walk by the Spirit in verse 25 means to walk orderly or to march in military rank. The Spirit by whom we live and walk is the pneumatic Christ. The pneumatic Christ is resurrection itself. When we live by the Spirit and walk by the Spirit, we live and walk by and in resurrection.
The Lord Jesus told us that He is the resurrection and the life (John 11:25). Life and resurrection are not things but a person. Resurrection is a living person who is life that has gone through death. Resurrection is the expression of life that has passed through death and has been tested, checked out, by death. Before being checked out by death, life was purely life, not resurrection. But after being checked out by death and passing through death successfully, life has become resurrection. Both life and resurrection are the same wonderful, excellent person. This person is the pneumatic Christ as the life-giving Spirit. This Spirit is the resurrection, in which we Christians should live all the time.
To live in this resurrection is to forget about ourselves, to renounce ourselves, to deny ourselves. When we go out to preach the gospel or to do anything in service to the Lord, we should act not in ourselves but in Christ, in resurrection, in the pneumatic Christ, in the living Spirit, who gives life to us all the time as our life supply. Every item of the God-ordained way should be carried out in resurrection. Preaching the gospel, baptizing people, having home meetings, having group meetings, and prophesying in the larger meetings of the church should be done by our renouncing, rejecting, and denying ourselves. This means that everything should be done in resurrection.
To live in the Divine Trinity is to live Christ for His magnification (Phil. 1:20-21a). No one in himself can live Christ for His magnification. We live Christ for His magnification only through the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ (v. 19). When we live by the Spirit and walk by the Spirit, spontaneously we live Christ to magnify Him. The factor, the element, and the sphere of our living should be the life-giving Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus Christ as the bountiful supply. The term the Spirit of Jesus Christ means that the Spirit is Jesus Christ. He is the rich Spirit as our life supply, and He is in our spirit. This is why we need to stress the matter of our spirit. We cannot overstress this matter. We have to stress this matter again and again. We need to turn to our spirit, exercise our spirit, and stir up our spirit because in our spirit is the very resurrection, who is the living One, the pneumatic Christ, the life-giving Spirit.
The secret of experiencing this One is to deny ourselves. As long as we deny ourselves, we are in resurrection, but it is different with the unbelieving Gentiles because they do not have this treasure of resurrection in their spirit. Their spirit is dead and has not been regenerated, but our spirit is different. Our spirit has been regenerated. Christ as the resurrected One is within our regenerated spirit as the very resurrection. Thus, we can live in the Divine Trinity because the very embodiment of this Divine Trinity is in our spirit as the resurrection. We can live in and by the resurrected Christ as the resurrection itself. Whenever we deny ourselves, renounce our soul, we enter into the full realization and experience of this resurrection.
This is altogether in faith, not in our feelings. We have to exercise our faith to believe this. Faith is the substantiating of the fact. In this universe and especially within us, there is a fact, a reality, which we cannot see. However, we can substantiate this fact. The verb substantiate comes from the noun substance. All the spiritual things, especially Christ being resurrection within us, must be substantiated by our faith. Faith comes out of the hearing of the word (Rom. 10:17). As we hear the word, the good things concerning Christ, we see a vision, and this seeing produces an appreciation, a faith, within us. Our faith is our appreciation of the Lord Jesus Christ. When we hear Him and see Him, spontaneously there is an appreciation within us. This appreciation is the believing, the faith, and this faith is the faith of the Son of God (Gal. 2:20c). The faith of the Son of God is actually the faith as the Son of God. This faith is Jesus Christ Himself.
Eventually, what we see, what we believe, what we appreciate, and what we get is the grace. Grace is the resurrected Christ as our enjoyment. The closing verse of the book of Galatians says, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen’’ (6:18). By this grace we experience the resurrected Christ, who is the embodiment of the Divine Trinity. Christ, the pneumatic One, is our resurrection producing the faith for our enjoyment of Him as grace. We live in the Divine Trinity by the grace of the Lord Jesus in our spirit.
Question: We are talking about living in resurrection by denying ourselves. When we live in this way, does this cause us to grow and be transformed, or do we need to grow and be transformed before we can live in this way?
Answer: Hymns, #481 is an excellent hymn on being identified with the Lord in His death and resurrection. The first two lines of stanza 2 say,
This hymn was written by A. B. Simpson. All those who know the inner life love this hymn. The question that was asked is actually a question concerning whether we have death first and then resurrection, or resurrection first and then death. By the illustration of the seed being buried in the earth, we can see the sequence. The seed has life in it; life is resurrection. But without being buried in the earth, the seed will not be glorified. Being buried in the earth is equivalent to denying, rejecting, and renouncing ourselves. The multiplication of life, the glorification of life, as resurrection is by this burial, this renouncing.
The Lord came with life, but He passed through death. Then He entered into resurrection for His multiplication, His increase, His glorification. Today we can receive Him as our life, making us a seed. In order for us as the seed to express the divine life for its multiplication, increase, glorification, we need to go through the death that He has gone through. Going through His death is the conformity to His death.
We can see in Philippians 3 that Paul had Christ as life and that he lived by that life, yet he aspired to know more. He wanted to know Christ and the power of His resurrection, being conformed to His death. We have Christ as life already, yet we need to know Him more. The increased knowing of Christ and of the power of resurrection will strengthen us to pass through His death. By knowing Him more, we can be conformed unto His death. This is clearly portrayed in the book of Philippians, which is a book on the experience of Christ. The conformity to His death is the renouncing of ourselves, the denying of ourselves, the rejecting of ourselves. Rejecting, renouncing, and denying mean the same thing. When we deny ourselves, we live in resurrection.
Question: Could you share something concerning Romans 8:13, which says, “If by the Spirit you put to death the practices of the body, you will live”?
Answer: Romans 8:13 also shows us something concerning the conformity to the death of Christ. We have the Holy Spirit within us, yet there are still many negative things in our mortal body. Life can enter into our mortal body by the indwelling Spirit (v. 11). The indwelling Spirit is the reality of resurrection. This reality of resurrection, as the very inner life within us, can reach our mortal body. In order for this to happen, we have to cooperate with Him by putting every action, every deed, of our body to death. This is our cooperation with the indwelling Spirit so that we can be conformed to the death of Christ and live in and by the resurrected Christ.
