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Scripture Reading: John 11:25a; 1 Cor. 15:45b; 2 Cor. 3:17-18; Phil. 3:10; Rom. 8:4; Phil. 1:19b-21a; Gal. 5:16, 25; 2:20; Phil. 2:13; 1 Tim. 3:15b-16a
I. Christ being the resurrection — John 11:25a.
II. The resurrection being the pneumatic Christ as the processed, consummated, compound, and life-giving Spirit, who is the consummation of the processed Triune God — 1 Cor. 15:45b; 2 Cor. 3:17-18.
III. The power of Christ’s resurrection being the power of the consummated Spirit for us to be conformed to Christ’s death — Phil. 3:10.
IV. Our walking according to the spirit equaling our living the pneumatic Christ — Rom. 8:4; Phil. 1:19b-21a.
V. To walk by the Spirit (Gal. 5:16, 25) and to walk according to the spirit (Rom. 8:4) being to be a person in Christ’s resurrection.
VI. To live by the Spirit being that not I as the natural man live but that Christ in His resurrection lives — Gal. 2:20.
VII. This kind of living of ours in Christ’s resurrection being altogether the move of God in man (Phil. 2:13), so it becoming the history of God in our daily life.
VIII. This meaning that God lives in our living in order that we may becoming Him in all His attributes as our virtues for His manifestation — 1 Tim. 3:15b-16a.
In this chapter we want to see the move of God in man in our living in the resurrection of Christ. In the resurrection of Christ, God moves in us, and this is God’s move in man.
The resurrection of Christ is crucially related to us. Christ’s resurrection was not for Himself, just as His death was not for Himself. His death and resurrection were altogether for us. If a man has no relation to Christ’s death, he is fallen and will perish. Only the death of Christ saves us from our fall and from eternal perdition. Christ not only accomplished an all-inclusive death for us but also completed an all-surpassing resurrection for us. Today many saved, regenerated Christians know to some extent how much the death of Christ is related to them. But we need to go further to see how the resurrection of Christ is related to us and how God moves in us in the resurrection of Christ.
A number of Christians know that the Christian life is something related to the Spirit, but few know that the Christian life is related to Christ’s resurrection. Surely the Christian life is related to the Spirit, but we need to see that the Spirit is the reality of the resurrection of Christ. Without the Spirit we cannot have the resurrection of Christ today. God moves in man as the Spirit, and the Spirit is the reality of Christ’s resurrection.
God’s move in man is God’s history. Our Christian life today should be a part of God’s history in man. If your Christian life is not a part of God’s history in man, you are a false Christian. You are not a genuine, spiritual, divine Christian. Our daily life should be a part of God’s history in man.
We need to see that the Christian life is altogether a life in the resurrection of Christ. We should live a life in Christ’s resurrection. The inner-life people stressed that the Christian life is a crucified life, but the Christian life is not only a life of death but also a life of resurrection. We are not only terminated persons but also resurrected persons. Galatians 2:20 says that it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. No longer I means crucifixion; but it is Christ who lives in me means resurrection. If Christ had never resurrected, He could not live in us. Actually, the inner-life people did not adequately stress the highest peak of the divine revelation. To speak of the Christian life being a crucified life is like being three thousand feet above sea level, but to speak of the Christian life being a life in resurrection is like being six thousand feet above sea level. Of course, if a person really lives a crucified life, this crucifixion will usher him to the goal. The goal of Christ’s death is resurrection.
The Bible says that Christ died and after three days resurrected (Matt. 12:40; 16:21; 1 Cor. 15:4). These three days were not a full period of seventy-two hours. According to the Jewish calendar, the day begins in the evening at sunset. Genesis 1 says a number of times that the evening and the morning are one day.
We can see the period of time between the Lord’s death and His resurrection by considering the final days of His life on this earth. John 13 tells us that the Lord washed the feet of the disciples just before He established His table. After He washed their feet, He gave a morsel to Judas and told him, “What you do, do quickly” (v. 27). Then Judas went to see the chief priests to betray the Lord. After that the Lord gave a long word of three chapters in John 14—16. This word was concluded by His prayer in John 17. Then He went to the Garden of Gethsemane. When He was there, Judas brought the chief priests, the Pharisees, and the soldiers to arrest Him (18:1-3). In the morning the Lord Jesus was sentenced to death by Pilate, and He was brought to Calvary to be crucified there. He died on the cross at the ninth hour, 3:00 P.M. (Matt. 27:45-50). He was buried in a new tomb for a full day and then resurrected early in the morning on the first day of the week (28:1-6). This shows that the period of time from His death to His resurrection was much less than a full three- day, seventy-two-hour, period of time.
John 20 tells us that He appeared to Mary early in the morning, and then in the evening He appeared to the disciples and breathed Himself into them as the life-giving Spirit (v. 22). He was away from the disciples a short time so that He could pass through death to usher Himself into resurrection. Therefore, when He breathed Himself into the disciples as the life-giving Spirit, that was to bring all the disciples out of death into His resurrection. After the breathing of the Spirit into them, they had the processed and consummated Triune God indwelling them as the all-inclusive, life-giving, and indwelling Spirit, who is the pneumatic Christ. Such a One is the resurrection.
Peter, John, and all the disciples had received something they did not know how to designate. What they received was the resurrection, and resurrection is the processed and consummated Triune God, the pneumatic Christ. Before His death and resurrection Christ had already declared, “I am the resurrection” (11:25a). Now, because the disciples were not accustomed to His indwelling, invisible presence, He stayed with them for forty days to train them to live by His invisible presence in resurrection.
Before the Lord’s death, Peter had boasted that he would never deny the Lord (Matt. 26:33-35), but later he took the lead to deny Him (John 18:27). However, in John 20 when the Lord breathed Himself as the reality of resurrection into the disciples, Peter was transformed from the oldness of death to the newness of resurrection. But even by the last chapter of the Gospel of John, Peter was not yet fully in resurrection. In John 21 the Lord was training Peter to live according to the new part of his being, the part of resurrection.
Right after John 21 there is Acts 1. In Acts 1 Peter was altogether in resurrection with the one hundred twenty, which included the sisters and the Lord’s flesh brothers. They all had entered into resurrection. They could stay together and be blended together for ten days to pray in one accord (vv. 14-15). They were living, acting, staying, and praying together in resurrection. Then Peter stood up among them and began to expound the Bible (vv. 15-22). That was also something of transformation in resurrection. Of course, Peter was not absolutely transformed because transformation is not something once for all. In chapter 1 of Acts Peter was very good, but in Galatians 2 Paul speaks of Peter’s hypocrisy by shrinking back from eating with the Gentile believers out of fear of those of the circumcision (vv. 11-14). This is an illustration of our need to live and remain in resurrection.
To stay in the full-time training you must be those who stay in resurrection. If you are out of resurrection, you are wasting your time. The purpose of the full-time training is to bring you into resurrection. Even when you take your meals in the dining area, you should be in resurrection. You should have a set time to partake of your meals together. You should be on time, sit down together, and offer a proper prayer to the Lord. Then all of you should eat at your designated tables to fellowship together. If you eat in this way in the training, your eating together is in resurrection.
Merely to come on time for the training classes does not in itself build up your character. Your character must be built up in resurrection, and character is built up mainly in the sundry things, the small things in your daily life. When you place a book on a desk, it should be placed there in a straight, orderly way, not in a haphazard way. If I do not leave a book on my desk in an orderly fashion, something within tells me to go back and adjust it. After working at a desk, some of us would leave the things on our desk in disarray and would not put our chair under the desk. This shows that we do not have a character that is built up in resurrection.
After the Lord fed the five thousand, He charged the disciples to gather the leftovers, and they filled twelve baskets full (John 6:12-13). He did not leave in excitement and forget about the leftovers lying all over the ground. Nobody took care of the leftovers, so the Lord and His disciples bore the responsibility to pick them up. That was a display of the Lord’s character, a display of resurrection.
We can also see what kind of character the Lord Jesus had when He resurrected. After Christ resurrected, Peter and John entered into the tomb, and they saw the linen cloths lying there and “the handkerchief which had been over His head, not lying with the linen cloths, but folded up in one place apart” (20:6-7). All the things left in the tomb were a testimony to the Lord’s resurrection. If these things had not been left there in a good order, it would have been difficult for Peter and John to believe (v. 8) that the Lord had not been taken away by someone but had risen by Himself.
If we were the ones who had been resurrected, we would have been very excited, leaving everything in the tomb a mess. Even though the Lord resurrected from the tomb, He still left everything in good order. He got up in resurrection and made His bed. His making of that bed in the tomb was a display of resurrection. I can testify that I cannot go away after rising in the morning without making my bed. After rising up, the first thing I do is to make my bed; then I am released.
Resurrection is the very living God who has been consummated to be the life-giving Spirit to live in us a life in order. Look at the universe God created. Everything is in good order. God has His divine character. I am sharing these things to impress us that resurrection should become our life. We should live in resurrection. When we live in the resurrection of Christ, the processed God is living in us, so that is a part of God’s move in humanity. That becomes a part of the history of God living within man. Thus, our living becomes His history. This means that He has become us to make us Him. He and we, we and He, are mingled together. We two live one life, so we have one living and one history. Our story is His history, and His history is our daily life in resurrection. The move of God in man is in our living in the resurrection of Christ.
Without this person, in the whole universe there is no resurrection. Christ is the resurrection (11:25a).
Hence, the resurrection is the pneumatic Christ as the processed, consummated, compounded, and life-giving Spirit, who is the consummation of the processed Triune God (1 Cor. 15:45b; 2 Cor. 3:17-18). The real resurrection is the consummated Triune God, the pneumatic Christ, the all-inclusive compounded Spirit.
To live a life conformed to Christ’s death is not an easy job. Our natural life just cannot make it. It does not have this capacity. We need the power of Christ’s resurrection, which is the power of the consummated Spirit. We need the consummation of the Triune God so that we may have the capacity and the power to live a life that is conformed to the death of Christ (Phil. 3:10).
Romans 8:4 says that we need to walk according to the spirit. To walk according to the spirit equals our living the pneumatic Christ (Phil. 1:19b-21a). Philippians 1:19 speaks of the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. The Spirit of Jesus Christ is the pneumatic Christ, the Christ in resurrection. The Spirit of Jesus Christ is the Spirit as the resurrection, and this Spirit has the bountiful supply that enables us to live Christ.
No one has the ability to live Christ by his own strength. To live as a sinner is easy. We were born sinners, so we spontaneously live as sinners. But in order to live Christ, we need another power. Electrical power is a good illustration of this. By electrical power a room can be made bright with light, and the volume of someone’s speaking can be increased through a microphone. In the same way, we need an extra power so that we can have the capacity, the ability, to live Christ. This power is the Spirit of Jesus Christ, who supports us with a bountiful supply, and the bountiful supply is the effectiveness of the power of Christ’s resurrection.
In our Christian life we should be related to the resurrection of Christ every moment of every day. The life of modern cities today is an “electrical life.” If the electricity stops, the cities are paralyzed. In recent years the electricity in New York was cut off, and everything stopped. Some people were held in the elevator with no way to go up or come down. Some were held on the subway. The life of a modern city is a life of electricity, and our Christian life is a life of spiritual electricity. Christ’s resurrection to us is the spiritual electricity. Just as electricity is related to our daily life in every aspect, so Christ’s resurrection as the spiritual electricity is related to our Christian life in every aspect.
To walk by the Spirit (Gal. 5:16, 25) and to walk according to the spirit (Rom. 8:4) is to be a person in Christ’s resurrection. Everything we do should not be in our natural life but in resurrection.
Galatians 2:20 says, “I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” This verse shows that to live by the Spirit means that not I as the natural man live but that Christ in His resurrection lives. No longer I means that I died. But it is Christ means that now Christ as the resurrection lives in me.
Philippians 2:13 says that God operates in us. God is operating all the time in us in the way of resurrection. It is only when we live in resurrection that God operates. If we do not live in resurrection, the operation of God in us is quenched. When we live, not in the natural life or in the fallen flesh but in the resurrection of Christ, God operates in us.
If we do things in resurrection in a good order, many virtues will be exhibited, and those virtues are the expression of the divine attributes. Thus, what we do will be a manifestation of God in the flesh. First Timothy 3:15-16 says that God is manifested in man’s flesh. This does not mean merely that God was manifested for a while in His incarnation. This means that all the time in the church life, God is manifested in the flesh. Even though we are in the flesh, we do not live by the flesh. We live in and by resurrection, so God lives in our living in order that we may become Him in all His attributes as our virtues for His manifestation.
When the Lord Jesus was on earth, He acted in the attributes of God to have His virtues expressed. That expression of His virtues was the manifestation of God in the flesh. Outwardly, people saw Him as Jesus from Nazareth, but He was God manifested in the flesh. We saw that after the feeding of the five thousand, there were many leftovers. If they would have been left there as a mess, this would have been a poor testimony. But after all the leftovers were picked up, everything was clean and in order. That was the virtue of the One who is resurrection. When the Lord left the things in the tomb in good order, this was also a testimony of His resurrection.
When we exercise our spirit to do things in good order, this is a display of our Christian virtues. These Christian virtues are expressions of the divine attributes and are the manifestation of God in the flesh. This is God’s move, God’s living in man, so this living becomes God’s history.
