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John 6:63 says, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” Here the Lord said that the words which He has spoken to us are spirit, meaning that the Word is spirit. John 14:17-20 says, “Even the Spirit of reality, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not behold Him or know Him; but you know Him, because He abides with you and shall be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I am coming to you. 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.” On one hand, the Word is spirit, and on the other hand, the Spirit is the Spirit of reality.
Second Corinthians 3:17 says, “The Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” Then verse 18 continues, “But we all with unveiled face, beholding and reflecting like a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit.” The Spirit is not only the Spirit of reality but also the Lord Spirit.
Ephesians 3:16-17 and 19 say, “That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit into the inner man, that Christ may make His home in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love...may be filled unto all the fullness of God.” This portion mentions three things—first, that God would grant us to be strengthened through His Spirit into our inner man; second, that Christ may make His home in our hearts through faith; and third, that we may be filled unto all the fullness of God.
Spiritual reality hinges on the Spirit of God entering our spirit and fellowshipping with our spirit. This is what produces spiritual reality. Spiritual reality originates from God’s desire, which is for Him to mingle Himself with man. God is Spirit, and for the purpose of mingling Himself with man, He created a spirit in man. The human spirit is of the same nature as the Spirit of God. Hence, the human spirit is a vessel to receive the Spirit of God. The truth and the center of the entire Bible is concerning God as the Spirit entering into the human spirit to mingle with man as one spirit.
In the Old Testament we can see that God has a desire, an intention, which is for Him to enter into man and be joined to man. However, such an intention was not realized in the age of the Old Testament. It was not until the time of the New Testament that God became flesh. Incarnation was the first union of God and man. John 1:14 says that the Word became flesh. This verse reveals two things—the Word and the flesh—and also unveils that the Word and the flesh were mingled to be one. Since the Word is God, and the flesh is man, the Word becoming flesh is God becoming man. This was the first union of God and man in the universe.
From the creation of Adam to the birth of the Lord Jesus is a total of approximately four thousand years. In these four thousand years God greatly desired to achieve the goal of entering into man and mingling Himself with man as one. However, from Adam to John the Baptist, there was not a proper man who could allow God the opportunity to enter into him and mingle with him as one. This was the case until one day when something happened in Bethlehem—the God who is the Word became flesh, entered into a man, and became a man. The baby Jesus who was lying in the manger was the issue of God’s mingling with man.
Jesus was very mysterious. Outwardly speaking, He was indeed a man, but inwardly, He was truly God. God’s mingling with man began with this God-man Jesus Christ. He was the first man who had God mingled with Him. Many historians know that the man Jesus was special, but they do not know how or why He was special. The reason that the God-man Jesus was special is that God was in Him and was mingled with Him. Although He was a man, God was mingled with Him. He was special because of God.
When the Lord Jesus was walking on the earth, He asked those around Him, “Who do you say that I am?” (Matt. 16:15). Surprisingly, those around Him also asked the same question concerning Him. They asked, “Who is He? Who is He really?” He asked people this question, and they also were asking the same question. The Lord Jesus was truly a mystery. He was born from His mother’s womb with flesh and blood, and outwardly speaking, He was the same as everyone else—He shed tears, He grieved, He suffered pain, and He experienced sorrow, exhaustion, hunger, and thirst. In all these things He was exactly the same as other people. However, there was something mysterious about Him—He had surpassing power and wisdom, His words were beyond human imagination, and His character and morality were many, many times higher than that of others. While many people were astonished when hearing Him speak and wanted to hear Him more, others marveled at His acts and wondered who He really was. People asked questions like, “How can this man have such wisdom?” “How can He speak this word of authority?” “Is He not the son of a carpenter?” “Is He not from a small town of Nazareth?” The Lord was a man whose visage and form were marred, yet He was able to calm the winds and the sea, cause the dead to be raised, cause the blind to see, and cause the dumb to speak (Isa. 52:14; Matt. 8:26; 11:5). Who was this man?
The Lord Jesus was the first man who had God mingled with Him. He was the mingling of God and man, and because of this His wisdom was God’s wisdom, His power was God’s power, His authority was God’s authority, and His acts were the expression of God. Sadly, however, those who were beside Him did not know Him. The highest human evaluation of Him was that He was the greatest of the prophets. No one knew that this Jesus the Nazarene was a God-man, a man who was the mingling of God and man.
One day when He told His disciples that He had to leave them, one of the disciples said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father and it is sufficient for us” (John 14:8). The Lord was surprised by this request and asked, “Have I been so long a time with you, and you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father...Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me?” (vv. 9-10). What the Lord meant when He said this was, “You see Me as a man, but God is inside of Me. We two—God and I—are one. When you see Me, you see God, because God and I are one. Apart from Me, you cannot find God, because God is in Me.” When the Lord Jesus was on the earth, outwardly He was a man, but inwardly He was God mingled with man.
When Jesus Christ was on the earth, outwardly He was a man, and inwardly He was God. Thus, since God is Spirit, the content of the Lord Jesus is Spirit, and since the Spirit gives life, as the Lord told the disciples, the words which the Lord spoke are spirit and are life (6:63). Why are the Lord’s words spirit? A person’s words are his representation, his expression. Since the Lord Jesus is God, He is also the expression of God, the Word of God, and as the Word of God, His words are spirit.
John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Who was this Word? This Word was Christ Jesus. John 1:18 says, “No one has ever seen God; the only begotten Son [Christ Jesus], who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.” Words are the declaration and the expression of man, the expression of the content of man. Why are the Lord’s words spirit? It is because the Lord Himself is the Spirit. The Lord’s words are the expression of the Lord, and the Lord is Spirit within. Thus, what comes out of the Lord is also spirit. The Lord’s words are spirit because the Lord’s words are the expression of the Lord Himself.
When the Lord was on the earth, although inwardly He was Spirit, outwardly He was flesh, a Nazarene. As such, the Spirit within was restricted by the flesh without. Because of this flesh, the Lord was limited not only by time but also by space. When He was in Jerusalem, He could not be in Samaria, and when He was in Judea, He could not be in Galilee at the same time. In fact, it was neither time nor space that limited Him; He was limited by His flesh. If He would have broken through the flesh, He would not have been bound by time or space. Spirit is beyond time and space. God is eternal; He is outside of time and space. However, when God became flesh, the flesh became His limitation. Hence, when the Lord Jesus was on the earth, He still could not enter into men. At most, He could be among men and face to face with men; He could not enter into them or mingle with them to be one, because He was under the restriction of the flesh. It was because of this restriction that He told His disciples that He would pass through death and be raised (Luke 9:22).
What is the significance of the Lord Jesus’ being raised from the dead? People in general think that the Lord Jesus died to shed His blood for us so that our sins would be forgiven and that He was resurrected because He was the powerful Savior and could not be held by death. However, the true significance of the Lord’s death and resurrection is more than this. Through death and resurrection the humanity that the Lord had put on was put to death, passed through resurrection, and was brought into the glory of God (24:26; John 12:23-24). In His incarnation the Lord put on a finite man. In His death and resurrection He brought this finite man through death and resurrection and returned with this man into the glory of God. When He appeared to His disciples after His resurrection, He was the Spirit, but He also had a body—the marks of the nails, which were still on His hands, and the mark of the spear, which was still on His side, could be touched by Thomas (20:24-28). This proves that after the Lord’s resurrection He still had a human body, but this body was not a body of the old creation. The Bible records that after His resurrection the disciples were meeting together in a certain place. Although all the doors and windows were shut, the Lord came and stood in their midst (vv. 19-23). A body in the old creation surely could not have done this.
In the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, the humanity that He put on in His incarnation was brought into glory (Luke 24:26). This brought man into God because only God Himself is glory. His incarnation brought God into man, and His death and resurrection brought man into God. His coming and going were His incarnation, death, and resurrection. Jesus’ coming to the world was God entering into man. Christ’s resurrection was man entering into God.
In this universe there is a prototype that has been successfully produced—the God-man, the man-God, Jesus the Nazarene. Jesus the Nazarene was man yet God, God yet man. He was God entering into man, and man entering into God. He was the God who originally had no part in humanity and was the uncreated, eternal Spirit. One day this God put on humanity and for thirty-three and a half years mingled with man as one. This caused man to have the divine nature and God to have the human nature. These two were mingled but were not exchanged. He brought God into man and was hidden in a man for thirty-three and a half years, mingling divinity with humanity. Divinity and humanity were mingled together, but humanity had not yet been mingled into divinity. For this reason the Lord Jesus needed further processing. As a man, He needed to pass through death and resurrection. Once He passed through death and resurrection, He brought humanity into divinity. The finite man now became infinite, and what was once limited by time and the space of the universe surpassed the limit of time and space. This was the accomplishment of Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection. He was God entering into man, and man entering into God.
The God who was uncreated and eternal, through incarnation, brought God into man, and through death and resurrection brought man into God. After the Lord’s resurrection the Bible calls Him the Spirit. The Lord who became flesh, who died and resurrected, and who was glorified is now the Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b; 2 Cor. 3:17). The definite article—the— in the Greek text of 2 Corinthians 3:17 indicates that the Spirit is the unique Spirit in the universe. The Spirit is God Himself, and the Lord is the Spirit. The Spirit referred to here, however, is different from the uncreated, eternal Spirit, because in this Spirit referred to here there is both divinity and humanity. Andrew Murray once said that there is both divinity and humanity in the glorified Spirit. The Lord being the Spirit is one of the accomplishments of the Lord becoming flesh, dying, and resurrecting.
Today Jesus is both in the heavens and on the earth. He is omnipresent because He is the Spirit. He is the Spirit, so He is beyond time, space, and all things in the universe from eternity to eternity. When as the Spirit He comes into contact with a person’s spirit, that person is saved. Everything having to do with the spirit and all spiritual reality hinges on the contact and mingling of the Spirit with our spirit.
During China’s War of Resistance against Japan, there was a man who was known for being ferocious. He was so mean that no one dared to approach him. However, one day this changed, and he told everyone joyfully, “The Lord Jesus has saved me.” Formerly, this person was so evil that he was very cruel even to his mother. But one day he heard the gospel, and mysteriously, he began to have a lack of peace within him. He began to feel that he was a person who did not honor his mother, and all the scenes in which he had treated his mother cruelly flashed before his eyes. One night he cried without control. The next day he knelt before his mother, telling her in tears, “Mother, I am rebellious and incurable, but today the Lord Jesus has entered me and given me the feeling that I have failed you.” People who saw this man weep were able to see in his tears that he had changed and was not the same. Why did he change? He changed because he received the Lord’s Spirit into his spirit, and when the Lord’s Spirit touched his spirit, he received the feeling, the consciousness, of life. This consciousness of life enabled him to realize his wrongdoings and confess to his mother. This is the story of many Christians. This is also spiritual reality.
The Lord in whom we believe is living. When we believe in Him, His Spirit stirs within us and touches our spirit. This brings about a response, an action, which may be to repent or confess. This response is expressed in a simple way in a person’s living and is not something that we can outwardly demand of him or place upon him as a restriction. The genuine Christian living is something that comes from the living Christ, the living Spirit, who enters into man, touches man’s spirit, and lives out from him. This produces an expression, which before man is love and before God is fear and spirituality. This is spiritual reality.
We should never say that to be a Christian is a suffering. It is true that we have to rid ourselves of drinking, smoking, favoritism, and bribery and that we must also honor our parents and love our neighbors. To do these things may be truly a suffering. We have to know, however, that genuine Christians do all these things not by outward regulation or teaching but by the inner power of life. History tells us that in the two thousand years of church history, because of this living Spirit, the more that Christians have suffered persecution, the stronger they have been inwardly. This is because even if the whole universe were to rise up to oppose the Spirit, it would not be able to overcome Him. Over these two thousand years there have been many kings who have persecuted Christians and the church. However, today all these kings have passed away, and the church is still here. The God of creation becomes a living power in those who believe in Him. He will never be defeated, and whoever opposes Him will suffer. He is the living God, the One who is without measure.
Today this God is the Spirit who is living in us and is one with us. Since we have such a Spirit in us, there is no difficulty that we are unable to overcome. Since we have such a Spirit in us, there are no situations that we are unable to pass through. Thus, we have to say, Hallelujah! The God who is the Spirit is in us, and He is greater than the world (1 John 4:4).
