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Scripture Reading: Exo. 30:22-30; 2 Cor. 1:21-22; 1 John 2:20, 27; Eph. 1:11, 13-14; 4:30b; Gal. 3:8, 14; John 3:5-6; Heb. 2:10; Gal. 4:6; Rom. 8:14-16, 8:26; 15:16; Titus 3:5b; 2 Cor. 5:17
In the previous two chapters we have seen that the Lord Jesus had the divine Spirit in Him for His incarnation, human living, and ministry, but at that time He had not yet become the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b) to flow out of His believers as rivers of living water (John 7:38-39). In order for the Spirit to come into the believers and flow out of them, the Lord had to take two more steps. First, He had to die. Second, He had to resurrect. In His death He cleared away the obstacles of sin, the flesh, the world, and Satan so that we could receive the Spirit for the Spirit to flow out of us. Then in His resurrection He became a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). After the Lord’s crucifixion and resurrection the Spirit can enter into the believers to regenerate them and flow out of them as rivers of living water.
The Spirit eventually became the consummation of the processed Triune God. In the Old Testament the Spirit was the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Jehovah, and the Spirit of holiness. The Holy Spirit is the first title used for the Spirit of God in the New Testament. The birth of Christ was directly of the Holy Spirit. His source was the Holy Spirit, and His element was divine.
The thirty-three and a half years from Christ’s incarnation to His ascension was a transitory time. Before this transitory time began, before Christ’s incarnation, God was purely God. He was merely divine. But the Bible shows us that God intended to enter into man. For Him to enter into man, He needed to become a man. Before that time He was eternally perfect, complete, but not yet perfected, completed. He was unprocessed, “raw,” “uncooked.” In those thirty-three and a half years, He passed through the processes of incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. These are the five steps through which the “raw” God passed to become the “cooked” God. It was after this that He sat down in the heavens and became the consummated Triune God.
Before His incarnation He did not have the human element. He did not have the experience of human living or human suffering. After He created man, He remained separately from man for four thousand years. But one day He became a man to bring Himself into humanity. Matthew 1:20 says, “That which has been begotten in her is of the Holy Spirit.” This means that God was born, begotten, into Mary and remained in her womb for nine months. Then He was born out of that womb to become a God-man. From that time God and man became one. But this is not the consummation; this is the beginning of the process. He grew up as a young man and passed through human living. Then at the age of thirty He came out to be baptized. He worked for God and ministered God to man for three and a half years. Then He entered into His crucifixion and was buried in a tomb for three days. He visited Hades and came out of that region of death into resurrection. Then in resurrection He became the life-giving Spirit.
Also, in resurrection He was begotten to be the firstborn Son of God (Acts 13:33; Rom. 8:29). As the only begotten Son of God (John 3:16), He had merely divinity, not humanity. But as the firstborn Son of God, He has the elements of humanity, human living, crucifixion, and resurrection. In resurrection He became the life-giving Spirit, and He was also begotten to be the firstborn Son of God. His being the firstborn Son implies that there are other sons to follow Him. In resurrection He begot us to be the many sons of God. In such a condition and status, He ascended. Before He came down from the heavens in incarnation, He was purely God. But He went back into ascension as a God-man with the elements of humanity, human living, crucifixion, and resurrection. Now the Triune God is completed, consummated, “cooked.” He has become the life-giving Spirit, who is the consummation of the processed Triune God. The processed Triune God today in His consummation is the Spirit.
In the previous chapter we saw that this consummated Spirit who is the consummation of the Triune God is five things to us. He is the Paraclete, the reality, the reaching, the access, and the fellowship. As the Paraclete, He is always with us, going along with us and living in us to be our everything. This One is the reality. Without this One, God is not real, Christ is not real, righteousness is not real, holiness is not real, life is not real, light is not real, and love is not real. The Spirit as the consummation of the processed Triune God is the unique reality in the entire universe. Who is God? He is God. Who is Christ? He is Christ. Who is the Savior? He is the Savior. Who is the Redeemer? He is the Redeemer. Who is the Lord? He is the Lord. Who is the Master? He is the Master. Who is the Father? He is the Father. He is the reality. First John 5:6b says, “The Spirit is the reality.” When He comes to us, He is the reaching of God to us. Also, He brings us back to God, and this is our access. Then as we remain in Him, He is our fellowship.
We need to know the Spirit in such a detailed way. If we do not know the Spirit thoroughly, we cannot have a proper, normal Christian life. The normal Christian life depends upon our knowing and experiencing the Spirit.
Now we want to see a further aspect of the Spirit in the New Testament. The Spirit is the compound anointing Spirit typified by the compound ointment in Exodus 30:22-30. Oil is purely one element, but an ointment is a compound. Paint is a good example of a compound of oil with a number of elements. Today in the New Testament the Spirit is the compounded Spirit to be the anointing ointment.
Brother Watchman Nee taught us that in order to experience Christ’s death in Romans 6, we must enter into the experience of the Spirit in Romans 8. We can experience Christ’s death only in the Spirit. But in his earlier ministry he told us that to experience Christ’s death, we have to reckon ourselves dead. That was based upon Romans 6:11. Later, he found out that reckoning does not work. Reckoning was stressed by A. B. Simpson, the founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Without the Spirit, however, reckoning does not work. The more you reckon yourself to be dead, the more you are alive. The death of Christ is in the Spirit. Brother Nee also taught us that the reality of resurrection is the Spirit.
Later, I read Andrew Murray’s book The Spirit of Christ. I heard Brother Nee say twice that if anyone would translate that book into Chinese, he would pay for the printing costs. Around 1951 some of my helpers translated it, and I polished it. So today we have the Chinese translation of The Spirit of Christ. One of the most striking chapters in this book is chapter 5, entitled “The Spirit of the Glorified Jesus.” I would like us to take note of the following parts of this chapter so that we can be impressed with the divine revelation of the Spirit in the New Testament. We have underlined certain parts of the text for emphasis.
We know how the Son, who had from eternity been with the Father, entered upon a new stage of existence when He became flesh. When He returned to Heaven, He was still the same only-begotten Son of God, and yet not altogether the same. For He was now also, as Son of Man, the first-begotten from the dead, clothed with that glorified humanity which He had perfected and sanctified for Himself. And just so the Spirit of God as poured out at Pentecost was indeed something new...When poured out at Pentecost, He came as the Spirit of the glorified Jesus, the Spirit of the Incarnate, crucified, and exalted Christ, the bearer and communicator to us, not of the life of God as such, but of that life as it had been interwoven into human nature in the person of Christ Jesus. It is in this capacity specially that He bears the name of Holy Spirit, for it is as the Indwelling One that God is Holy.
...Christ came...to bring human nature itself again into the fellowship of the Divine life, to make us partakers of the Divine nature...In His own person, having become flesh, He had to sanctify the flesh, and make it a meet and willing receptacle for the indwelling of the Spirit of God...From His nature, as it was glorified in the resurrection and ascension, His Spirit came forth as the Spirit of His human life, glorified into the union with the Divine, to make us partakers of all that He had personally wrought out and acquired, of Himself and His glorified life. In virtue of His atonement, man now had a right and title to the fulness of the Divine Spirit, and to His indwelling, as never before. And in virtue of His having perfected in Himself a new holy human nature on our behalf, He could now communicate what previously had no existence—a life at once human and Divine.
...In our place, and on our behalf, as man and the Head of man, He was admitted into the full glory of the Divine, and His human nature constituted the receptacle and the dispenser of the Divine Spirit. And the Holy Spirit could come down as the Spirit of the God-man—most really the Spirit of God, and yet as truly the spirit of man...Just as in Jesus the perfect union of God and man had been effected and finally completed when He sat down upon the throne, and He so entered on a new stage of existence, a glory hitherto unknown, so too, now, a new era has commenced in the life and the work of the Spirit. He can now come down to witness of the perfect union of the Divine and the human, and in becoming our life, to make us partakers of it. There is now the Spirit of the glorified Jesus: He hath poured Him forth; we have received Him to stream into us, to stream through us, and to stream forth from us in rivers of blessing.
Andrew Murray’s writing on the Spirit of Christ is marvelous. He pointed out that the Spirit of the glorified Jesus has His human nature. No doubt, the Spirit always had the divine nature, but in Christ’s resurrection the glorified human nature along with the elements of human living, crucifixion, and resurrection were added to the Spirit, who is now the consummation of the processed Triune God. When I studied what Andrew Murray said concerning the Spirit of Christ, I was strengthened, confirmed, and assured to speak on the all-inclusive Spirit of Christ. I have been speaking on this wonderful truth for almost forty years.
The best type of the all-inclusive Spirit of Christ as the compound anointing Spirit is the compound ointment spoken of in Exodus 30 (see Life-study of Exodus, msgs. 157-166). This type reveals that the compound anointing Spirit is compounded with the unique God, as the base, as the divinity of Christ, typified by the one hin of olive oil (v. 24b).
The compound anointing Spirit is compounded with God’s Divine Trinity, typified by the three units of five hundred shekels of the spices (vv. 23-24a). The middle unit of five hundred shekels was split into two units of two hundred fifty shekels each. This signifies that the second of the Divine Trinity was split, crucified, on the cross.
The compound anointing Spirit is also compounded with Christ’s humanity, typified by the four kinds of spices.
The Spirit is compounded with Christ’s death and its killing effectiveness, typified by myrrh and cinnamon (v. 23a).
Christ’s resurrection and its repelling power, typified by calamus and cassia (vv. 23b-24a), are also elements of the compound anointing Spirit. Calamus is a reed shooting up into the air out of a marsh or a muddy place. Thus, it signifies the rising up of the Lord Jesus from the place of death. Cassia in ancient times was used as a repellent to drive away insects and snakes. Thus, it signifies the repelling power of Christ’s resurrection.
All the above elements compounded together create an ointment for the anointing of all the things and persons related to the worship of God (vv. 25-30; 2 Cor. 1:21; 1 John 2:20, 27).
In the New Testament we see the compound anointing Spirit operating as the Holy Spirit to seal the believers of Christ (Eph. 1:13; 4:30b; 2 Cor. 1:22a). To seal means to anoint. When a person puts his seal on something, that sealing is the anointing. The Spirit is a living seal that saturates us with the divine element. We have to pray, “Lord, don’t just seal me once, but saturate me all the time. I need Your sealing; I need Your saturating.” When we live by the Spirit, we have the sense that something within us is saturating us, and that saturating is the continuous sealing. This sealing dispenses the divine element of the processed Triune God into the believers and saturates them with it. It also transforms the believers into the inheritance of God (Eph. 1:11). It is remarkable that we sinners can be transformed to such an extent that we are considered by God as His inheritance. How could we, the constitution of sin, be God’s inheritance? Surely, this implies transformation.
Our being God’s inheritance, as spoken of in Ephesians 1:11, is related to Christ’s redemption (v. 7). We were lost in sin, but Christ’s redemption brought us out of sin and unto God. Then we became persons in Christ. Christ has become our sphere and our realm in which His element is always saturating us, and that saturating is the Spirit’s sealing to transform us into God’s treasure. Today, in Christ, God considers us as His treasure to become His inheritance. The life-giving Spirit anoints us, seals us, saturates us, with the divine element. This saturating is the dispensing, and the dispensing is transforming us, making us the treasure of God. If we walk in the Spirit every day, even every moment, we are under this sealing, this saturating, to transform us into a treasure for God’s inheritance.
The sealing Spirit becomes a pledge to the believers (v. 14; 2 Cor. 1:22b), guaranteeing God as the inheritance of the believers and giving the believers a foretaste of God as their heritage. We are God’s inheritance, and God is our inheritance. For us to be God’s inheritance, we need the sealing. For us to have God as our inheritance, we need the pledging. In ancient times the Greek word for pledge was used in the purchasing of land. The seller gave the purchaser some soil from the land as a sample. Hence, a pledge, according to ancient Greek usage, is also a sample. The Holy Spirit is a sample of what we will inherit of God in full.
In the New Testament the Spirit is also revealed as the blessing of the gospel (Gal. 3:8, 14). The blessing of the gospel is the Spirit, the consummation of the Triune God. Nothing is greater than the consummated Triune God.
The Spirit regenerates the believers, begetting them as the many sons of God (John 3:5-6; Heb. 2:10).
The Spirit is the Spirit of the Son to cry “Abba, Father” in the believers’ heart and to lead the believers to walk as the sons of God (Gal. 4:6; Rom. 8:14-16). Whenever we say “Abba, Father,” we touch the Spirit. Galatians 4 says that it is the Spirit within us who cries “Abba, Father,” whereas Romans 8 says that it is we who cry “Abba, Father” in our spirit. This means that the Spirit and our spirit do the same thing. When we cry “Abba, Father” in our spirit from our heart, that is the Spirit’s crying.
The Spirit is for the priesthood of the gospel to sanctify the believers (15:16). Whenever we preach the gospel, we fulfill our priesthood of the gospel, and when we fulfill our priesthood, the Spirit goes along with us to sanctify the new believers.
According to Romans 8:26, the Spirit intercedes for the believers. This is another aspect of the Spirit as the blessing of the gospel.
The Spirit also functions to renew the believers, making them the new creation of God (Titus 3:5b; 2 Cor. 5:17). Thus, we have seen the Spirit’s regenerating, crying and leading, sanctifying, interceding, and renewing to make us not only the sons of God but also the new creation. Such a wonderful Spirit is the blessing of the gospel.
The Spirit is the reality of the new testament. The unique bequest of the new testament is the Spirit as the consummated Triune God. He is within us. He is sealing us, saturating us, transforming us, and causing us to walk as the sons of God to make us a new creation.
