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In the previous chapter we saw that God is the Triune God who is mingled with man. This is further confirmed in Romans chapter eight. Verses 9-10a of this chapter say, “You are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Yet if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not of Him. But if Christ is in you...” These verses mention the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ interchangeably, indicating that the Spirit of God is the Spirit of Christ. Furthermore, Christ is mentioned interchangeably with the Spirit of Christ, indicating that the Spirit of Christ is Christ Himself. These three titles—“the Spirit of God,” “the Spirit of Christ,” and “Christ”—refer to one person, because the Spirit of God is the Spirit of Christ, and the Spirit of Christ is Christ Himself. These three are one Spirit, for Christ is God (9:5) and Christ is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17). Verse 11 in Romans 8 continues, “If the Spirit of the One who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who indwells you.” In verses 9 through 11 there are actually four different titles: the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, Christ, and the Spirit. Actually, these titles refer not to four different persons but to one person.
As Christians who have received the Lord Christ as our Savior, we must know two things. The first is that the One whom we have received as our Savior is not only God but also a man. He is a God-man, man as well as God and God as well as man. Because God is the Triune God, our Savior is also a Triune God-man. Moreover, we have pointed out that this Savior whom we have received is God mingled with man. He was mingled with man before we received Him. It is not that after we receive Him, He becomes God mingled with man. On the contrary, two thousand years ago He was already mingled with man. Before He was incarnated, He was only God, but through His incarnation He became God mingled with man. He died on the cross, resurrected from the dead, ascended to the heavens, and was poured out as the Spirit not only in the divine nature but also in the human nature. Therefore, now He is not merely God but God mingled with man. It is wrong to think that the time when God mingled with man was when we received Him as our Savior and that before then He was only God. A very long time before we received Him, He was mingled with man already.
We have seen that the Savior whom the gospel of God brought to us is not only God Himself but also God mingled with man, a God-man who has become our Savior. Yet many people are not clear concerning this. They have received Christ, who is God mingled with man, but they think that it is only God whom they have received. When we received the Lord Jesus, we might not have apprehended or understood that the Lord, the Savior, whom we had received is not only the almighty God but also a man. He is a God-man, the very God mingled with man. On the one hand, He is the mighty God; on the other hand, He was a human child who was born to us but was called Mighty God (Isa. 9:6). Today Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, is not merely God but God mingled with man. Within Him there is the divine nature as well as the human nature.
The second thing that we should know as Christians is that the Spirit whom we received from God is not only a Spirit of the divine nature but also a Spirit of the human nature. The Holy Spirit, after the Lord’s ascension, came down as the Spirit of God as well as of man, the Spirit not only with the divine nature but also with the human nature. Within Him there is divinity and also humanity. Therefore, the God whom we Christians worship is the Triune God mingled with man, the Triune God-man.
Having seen what God is, we must now see what man is, that is, what it is to be human. Genesis 1:26-27 says, “God said, Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness....And God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him.” Man was created in the image of God. Although man himself is not the image of God, he was created according to God’s image. Every person has an image. A person’s photograph is a picture that is according to his image. Mankind is a “photograph,” a picture, of God. However, since God is invisible, how could the invisible God have an image, and what is this image? The answer is found in Colossians 1:15 and 2 Corinthians 4:4, which clearly tell us that Christ is the image of God. An image is an expression. Without an expression, a person cannot be known by others. We know a person by his expression, and his expression is his image. Christ is the image of God because it is through Christ, by Christ, and in Christ that God is expressed. Without Christ, no one has ever seen God; it is Christ who has expressed God and declared Him. Therefore, John 1:18 says, “No one has ever seen God; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.” Christ is the expression of God, and Christ is the image of God. Because man was created in the image of God and the image of God is Christ, man was created according to Christ. Thus, man is a “photograph” of Christ.
It is possible that we have been a Christian for years but have never realized that we are a “photograph” of Christ because we were created in the image of Christ and according to Christ. If we study Genesis 1:26-27 carefully, we will see that verse 26 speaks of “Our image” and verse 27 of “His own image.” His own image refers to Christ, who is the image of God. Human beings were created according to Christ.
Now we need to ask why it is that man was created according to Christ. Most Christians consider that we were created to serve and worship God. However, this thought is not correct. A glove is made according to a hand, with five fingers, for the purpose of containing a hand. Likewise, man was created according to Christ in order that man may contain Christ. The common human thought concerning man’s relationship with God is that God is high and almighty and that we are low and small; thus, we should kneel down and prostrate ourselves before God. However, it would be ridiculous for a glove to say to a hand, “You are so high and so great. I must prostrate myself before you.” That is not the purpose for which the glove was made. As human beings, we were created and made according to Christ not mainly to worship or serve Christ, nor to do good things to please Christ, but to receive Christ, to contain Christ, and to be filled with Christ.
Man was created according to Christ because man is a container, a vessel, to contain Christ. Two passages of the Scriptures prove that man is a vessel. Romans 9:21 says, “Does not the potter have authority over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor?” We are clay, and God is the Potter. God made us out of dust to be vessels of honor to contain Christ, who is God. Second Corinthians 4:7 says, “We have this treasure in earthen vessels.” We are earthen vessels made of clay, and as Christians we have the treasure within us. This treasure is nothing else but God in Christ. We are worthless vessels of clay, but today we have a priceless treasure within us, that is, God Himself in Christ.
God created man according to the image of Christ because man was intended to be a container for Christ, who is the peerless One. Although we are merely vessels made of worthless clay, today we have something worthy and precious, that is, God Himself in Christ, as a treasure within us. We must all realize, therefore, that man is a vessel made of clay according to the image of Christ.
Now we must see how, or with what parts, man as a vessel was made. Man is tripartite; he is a trichotomy, having a body, a soul, and a spirit. Genesis 2:7 says, “Jehovah God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” This verse reveals the way in which God created man. First, He used the dust of the ground to form a body. Scientists tell us that the human body is composed of the same elements as the dust. Our body is a body of dust and may be considered to be just a lump of clay. After forming man’s body, God breathed the breath of life into man’s nostrils. This breath became the human spirit (cf. Prov. 20:27). The body is man’s outermost part, and the spirit is man’s innermost part. When these two came together, a third item was brought forth, that is, the soul. The soul is man’s person, man’s self. We must be clear that we have a body outwardly and a spirit inwardly. Outside we have a body, inside we have a spirit, and between these two we have a soul. The soul is the medium between the body and the spirit. Therefore, man is of three parts: spirit, soul, and body.
This is further confirmed by 1 Thessalonians 5:23, which says, “The God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly, and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This verse tells us clearly that man as a complete person is of three parts: spirit and soul and body. It is easy to know the body, because it is something physical and material, but it is more difficult to know the soul. In the Scriptures a person is called a soul (Acts 7:14; Gen. 12:5; 46:15; Exo. 1:5). Therefore, in actual fact we are a soul. The soul is our personality, our self, and our being. It includes the mind for thinking and considering (Psa. 139:14), the emotion for loving, hating, and being joyful and sorrowful (S. S. 1:7; 2 Sam. 5:8; Psa. 86:4; 1 Sam. 30:6), and the will for making decisions (Job 6:7; 7:15). This is the self, our very being. However, it is even more difficult to know the spirit, because the spirit is the innermost, the deepest, part of our being.
As Christians, in order to know and experience Christ as our life in a practical way, we must know the difference between the soul and the spirit. In other words, we must be able to divide the spirit from the soul. Hebrews 4:12 says, “For the word of God is living and operative and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit and of joints and marrow.” This verse tells us that the greatest help for dividing our spirit from our soul is the word of God, which is like a sharp sword with not one edge but two. Just as the joints and marrow are joined and sometimes mingled together, requiring a sharp, two-edged sword to pierce into them and divide them from each other, today our soul is very much joined with our spirit. The word of God is needed as a sharp, two-edged sword to pierce and divide the soul from the spirit.
We have seen that man is tripartite, of three parts, and that the soul and the spirit must be divided. Now let us consider the respective functions of the body, the soul, and the spirit. The body is not a person but a vessel, a container, to contain us as a person (1 Thes. 4:4). In actual fact we do not dwell in a house but in our body. Therefore, our body is both the vessel in which we are contained and the dwelling place in which we dwell (2 Cor. 5:1). This is illustrated by the fact that when a person dies, we often say that he has departed. Even though his ears, eyes, nose, and the other parts of his body remain, he himself has gone. After its contents are gone, a Coca-Cola bottle is an empty bottle; likewise, a body without the person is an empty body. Therefore, strictly speaking, the body is not the person but the vessel, the container, and the dwelling place of the person. Although I dwell in my body and am contained by my body, it is my soul, not my body, that is my person. I am a soul.
Man’s spirit also is not his person. The Scriptures never call a person a spirit. It is the angels, not we, who are called spirits (Heb. 1:14). We are souls with a spirit as a receiver. Whereas the body is the vessel, the container, and the soul is the person, the spirit is a receiver, an organ for us to receive God. Therefore, without our body we have no house in which to dwell, and without our spirit we have no receiving organ for us to receive God. Let us illustrate this by a small transistor radio. On the outside there is a box as the container, and on the inside there is a small receiver to receive the radio waves. Without this receiver, although there may be a box outwardly, and although there may be radio waves in the air, the radio cannot play any music. We must realize that we are a “radio” and that God today is the Spirit who is filling the whole universe with spiritual “radio waves” for us to receive. We cannot receive God by our ears, nose, hands, or mouth; we can receive Him only by our spirit. The receiver, the receiving organ, for us to receive Christ is our spirit. This means that we need to open our entire being, including our mind, our emotion, our will, our heart, and eventually our spirit, our deepest and inmost part, and say to the Lord, “Lord Jesus, I receive You.” It is not sufficient merely to talk about Christ and listen to a message about Him. We must open ourselves by opening our mind, our will, our emotion, our heart, our thoughts, our imaginations, and eventually our spirit, the deepest part of our being, to Christ to allow Him to come in.
We would emphasize the fact that our body is not the receiver but the container to contain our soul as our person. Furthermore, we cannot receive Christ by our soul, because our soul is not the receiving organ. The receiving organ is our spirit. We must be right with our spirit, which means that we must “tune” the receiver rightly, so that the “radio waves” will come in. This means that we must be right with our inmost part, our deepest part. Those who say that there is no God say this because they do not use their receiving organ. If they would exercise their receiving organ, that is, exercise to be right with their spirit, they would be touched by God and even convicted by Him. They would sense something convicting them within all the time.
We have seen clearly that we are made as vessels to contain God. If we are going to contain God, we must receive God in Christ. We do this not by our body, nor by our mind, our emotions, or our will, but by our inmost part, which is our spirit. The spirit is the receiving organ. This matter is vital and needs to be stressed very much. Without knowing the difference between the spirit and the soul, we will never be able to experience Christ as life in a practical way.
In recent days, after traveling and visiting many places and having contact with many believers, I have discovered that although they may know the doctrine that Christ is life, many simply do not know the proper way to experience Him. Although we may talk about Christ as life, we may not know how to experience Christ in a practical and real way. The reason for this is simply that we do not know that our human spirit is the recipient, the receiving organ, the receiver for us to receive Christ. There are two verses which prove that we must receive Christ. Both use the word receive. John 1:12 says, “But as many as received Him,” and Colossians 2:6 says, “As therefore you have received the Christ.” The organ by which we receive Christ is our spirit. In order to be exercised in the matter of experiencing Christ as our life, we must know how to exercise our spirit, and we must also know the difference between the spirit and the soul.
We have seen that man was created in the image of God for the purpose of containing God, and that man was made in three parts, having a body as a container to contain the soul, having a soul as the self, man’s very being, and having a spirit as the receiving organ to receive God in Christ. We must realize, however, that at the time of creation man did not have God as life. He was just an empty vessel without the life of God. For this reason, after creating man, God put him in front of the tree of life, which signifies God Himself as life to man (Gen. 2:9). Man was put before the tree of life with the intention that he would receive the tree of life. This indicates that at the time of creation man was an empty vessel without its intended content. He needed to receive God as life, that is, to receive Christ as life.
This explains why without Christ a person’s life is empty. If a person does not have Christ, if he does not have God, he does not have the content of his human life. He is just an empty vessel. Today the Triune God is mingled with man, and He is ready and waiting for you to receive Him. Such a wonderful One, God mingled with man, with the human nature as well as the divine nature, is the Savior waiting for you to receive Him. You are just a vessel with a body as the container, a soul as your self, and a spirit as the receiving organ to receive this wonderful One. Everything is ready. If you receive Him, He and you will be mingled together as one. This is the wonderful mingling of this wonderful One with our poor person. Nevertheless, regardless of how wonderful He is and how poor we are, we were made as the only right and proper vessels to receive Him and contain Him.
This receiving and mingling is the relationship of God with man in His new creation. The new creation is simply God who has mingled Himself with His creature, that is, with His created man. God mingled with man is the new creation. In this new creation, therefore, the relationship of God with man is simply God mingling Himself with man and man receiving God into him, with the result that God and man become one.
