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In the progressing stage of God's full salvation, the stage of transformation, the believers experience and enjoy the processed Triune God in the dispensing of the Divine Trinity. The previous five lessons covered the believers' experience and enjoyment of God as the Father in the love of the Triune God. Beginning with this lesson we will go on to see the believers' experience and enjoyment of Christ as the Son in the grace of the Triune God.
According to the New Testament, grace is what Christ is to us for our enjoyment (John 1:16-17), that is, Christ as the embodiment of the Triune God (Col. 2:9) experienced and enjoyed by us through the divine dispensing. Second Corinthians 13:14 says, "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." The love of God is the source, the grace of Christ is the course, and the fellowship of the Spirit is the transmission of the course with the source. Hence, grace issues from God's love. The divine love is with the Father. When this love comes with the Son, it becomes grace (John 1:17). Therefore, grace is not separate from love; love and grace are one reality in two aspects. With the Father we experience and enjoy the divine love; with the Son we experience and enjoy the divine grace. As we experience and enjoy the processed Triune God in the dispensing of the Divine Trinity, we experience and enjoy Christ as the Son in the grace of the Triune God.
As we experience and enjoy Christ as the Son in His grace, we enjoy Him as our portion. In Colossians 1:12 Paul speaks of Christ as the portion of the saints. The Greek word for portion here may also be translated "lot." Paul used this term with the allotment of the good land among the Israelites in the Old Testament as the background. Among the twelve tribes, every tribe was given a lot, a portion of the good land, as their inheritance. The good land is a type of the all-inclusive Christ. Today, as the New Testament believers, we do not have the physical land as our portion; rather, our portion is Christ. As the portion of the saints, Christ becomes our divine inheritance for our experience and enjoyment.
First Corinthians 1:2 says that Christ is "theirs and ours." Christ as the all-inclusive One belongs to all the believers, for He is the portion given to us by God. We have been called by the faithful God into the fellowship of such a Christ (v. 9), that is, a fellowship in which we partake of the union with, and participate in, God's Son, Jesus Christ, that we may have Him as our portion.
As the believers' portion, Christ is God to us (Titus 1:3; 3:4). Most Christians regard God merely as an object of worship. However, from the Bible we see that God is not only an object of worship; He is our portion for us to enjoy.
In the conversation between the Lord Jesus and the Samaritan woman, John 4 indicates that the real worship of God is to drink of the living water in our spirit. In verse 14 the Lord said, "But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall by no means thirst forever; but the water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water gushing up into eternal life." In verse 24 the Lord went on to say, "God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truthfulness." These two verses show us that the worship of God is the enjoyment of Him as the real drink in our spirit. Hence, Christ as our God is the portion for our enjoyment.
Christ is also our Redeemer. In Him we have redemption (Rom. 3:24). To redeem means to purchase back something which originally was ours but which has become lost. Thus, redemption means to repossess at a cost. Originally, we belonged to God; we were His possession. However, because we became fallen and were lost, we became involved in sins and many other negative things that were against God's righteousness, holiness, and glory. We were under the threefold requirement of God's righteousness, holiness, and glory. It was impossible for us to fulfill the requirement, for the price was too great. However, Christ paid the price for us, repossessing us at a tremendous cost. He died on the cross to accomplish eternal redemption for us (Gal. 3:13; 1 Pet. 2:24; 3:18; Heb. 10:12; 9:28), and His blood has obtained eternal redemption for us (Heb. 9:12, 14; 1 Pet. 1:18-19). Therefore, He is our Redeemer.
Ephesians 1:7 says, "In whom [the Beloved] we have redemption through His blood." This indicates that we have been redeemed in the Beloved, the One in whom God delights. In the sight of God redemption is something to be delighted in. We have been redeemed through the blood shed for us on the cross by God's Beloved. Now we can enjoy the Beloved as our Redeemer.
In the book of 1 Corinthians Paul took the history of the children of Israel in the Old Testament as a type of the New Testament believers. In 5:7 Paul said, "Our Passover, Christ, also has been sacrificed." Paul considered the believers God's chosen people, who have had their Passover, as typified by the children of Israel's experience of the Passover in Exodus 12. In this Passover, Christ is not only the Passover lamb but also the entire Passover. To be our Passover, He was sacrificed on the cross that we might be redeemed and reconciled to God. Thus, we may enjoy Him as a feast before God.
In chapter six of the Gospel of John, with the Passover feast as the background, the Lord Jesus fed five thousand with five loaves and two fish. After He did that, He revealed Himself as the bread of life and went on to speak concerning our need to eat His flesh and drink His blood (vv. 35, 51, 53-55, 57). At the Passover, people slew the redeeming lamb, struck its blood, and ate its flesh (Exo. 12:3-11). This typifies Christ as the redeeming Lamb of God who was slain so that we may eat His flesh and drink His blood, thus taking Him as the life supply for us to live by. In the Lamb of God there are two elements: the blood for redeeming and the flesh, the meat, for feeding. Therefore, our enjoyment of Christ as our Passover comprises two aspects, the redeeming aspect and the feeding aspect. As the Lamb, the center of the Passover, Christ is our portion for our enjoyment to redeem us and to feed us as well.
We enjoy Christ not only as our Redeemer but also as our Savior (Titus 1:4). On the one hand, the Lord Jesus died for us and thus accomplished redemption to be our Redeemer; on the other hand, He was raised from the dead and enters into us to be our Savior in life. Romans 5:10 shows us that while we were enemies, through His death, that is, through His redeeming death on the cross, we were reconciled to God; that is, the charge of sins against us before God was settled and we were redeemed. This is the redeeming aspect. But, having been reconciled, much more we will be saved in the life of the resurrected Christ. This is the saving aspect. Redemption, which is accomplished outside of us by the death of Christ, redeems us objectively, once for all. Saving, which is carried out within us by the working of Christ's life, saves us subjectively, daily through our whole life. As we enjoy Him as our Redeemer, we are delivered positionally from condemnation and eternal punishment; as we enjoy Him as our Savior, we are delivered dispositionally from our old man, our self, and our natural life.
First Corinthians 1:30 says, "But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became wisdom to us from God." This word indicates that at one time Christ was not wisdom to us but that later He became wisdom to us. Christ could not become wisdom to us before we were in Him. But when we believed in Christ, God put us into Christ, and then Christ became wisdom to us.
For Christ to become wisdom to us from God indicates that there is a transmission of Christ as wisdom from God to us for our daily experience. Christ is unceasingly transmitted to us to be our present and practical wisdom. Therefore, we should remain in the presence of the Lord to receive His dispensing, allowing Him to transmit Himself into us as our wisdom that we may be able to handle the various problems and matters that come to us daily.
First Corinthians 1:30 indicates also that Christ is our righteousness. Christ is the righteousness by which we have been justified by God so that we may be reborn in our spirit to receive the divine life. Here, it is not the righteousness of Christ that has become our righteousness; it is Christ Himself who has become our righteousness. God has made Christ, the embodiment of God Himself, our righteousness.
Christ as our righteousness is of two aspects: the objective aspect and the subjective aspect. As our objective righteousness, Christ is the One in whom we are justified by God. As our subjective righteousness, Christ is the One dwelling in us to live for us a life that can be justified by God and that is acceptable to God. When we live Him and express Him, He becomes our daily righteousness. This is the surpassing righteousness spoken of in Matthew 5:20. Therefore, objective righteousness is the Christ we received when we believed in Him in order to be justified before God. Subjective righteousness is the indwelling Christ lived out of us as the righteousness in our daily life. This is the issue of our daily experience and enjoyment of Him.
Colossians 3:4 speaks of "Christ our life." Christ is God and also life (1 John 5:12). The life which is God, the life that God is, is in Christ (John 1:4). Hence, the Lord Jesus said that He is life (14:6; 11:25) and that He came that we may have life (10:10). Therefore, he who has Christ has life (1 John 5:12), and now He dwells in the believers as life. Just as life is God Himself, so also life is Christ. Just as having life is having God Himself, so also having life is having Christ. Christ is God becoming life to us. Through Christ God is manifested as life. Therefore, Christ is now our life.
This life is very subjective to us. Nothing is more subjective to us, or more intimately related to us, than our life. Our life is actually we ourselves. To say that Christ becomes our life means that Christ becomes us. That Christ is our life is a strong indication that we are to take Him as our life and live by Him, that we are to live Him in our daily life in order to experience Him, so that all He is and has attained and obtained will not remain objective facts but will become our subjective experience.
With Christ as our life there are three characteristics. First, this life is a crucified life. When the Lord Jesus was on earth, He daily lived a crucified life. If we truly experience Christ as our life, we also will live a crucified life. Such a crucified life is a life that has been processed and thoroughly dealt with. Second, this life is a resurrected life. Nothing, including death, can suppress it. When we live a crucified life, the result is that we will have the resurrected life dispensed into us for us to live a life that manifests the resurrected life. Third, this is a life hidden in God, who is in the heavens (Col. 3:3). Hence, we should no longer be concerned for things on the earth. God in the heavens should be the sphere of our living. With Christ we should live in God.
To the believers Christ is also the Sanctifier. Hebrews 2:11 says, "For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of One." He who sanctifies is Christ as the firstborn Son of God, and those who are being sanctified are the believers of Christ as the many sons of God. Both the firstborn Son and the many sons of God are born of the same Father God in resurrection (Acts 13:33; 1 Pet. 1:3). Hence, both the firstborn Son and the many sons are the same in life and nature.
Christ, our Sanctifier, sanctifies us not only positionally but also dispositionally. He gives us not only a change in our position but also a change in our disposition. In order to be the Sanctifier who sanctifies us dispositionally, Christ had to pass through the process of incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, glorification, and exaltation. Before His incarnation, Christ was the only begotten Son of God, having only the divine nature and not the human nature. At that time He could not be our Sanctifier dispositionally. When He was incarnated, He put on human nature. But His human nature was not the Son of God because His human nature had not been born of God. Therefore, He needed to pass through death and resurrection in order for that human part to be born of God. In this way He became the firstborn Son of God, having both the divine nature and the human nature. Now He can be the Sanctifier to us who have been regenerated as the many sons of God and who have both the divine nature and the human nature as He does; He can cause us to be sanctified in disposition as He is.
Furthermore, Hebrews 13:12 says, "Therefore also Jesus, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood, suffered outside the gate." This is typified in the Old Testament by the blood of the sin offering being brought into the Holy of Holies on the day of propitiation to make propitiation for the people and the body of the sacrifice being burned up outside the camp (Lev. 16:14-16, 27). The blood of Christ, who is the real sin offering, was brought into the true Holy of Holies to accomplish redemption for us, and His body was sacrificed for us outside the gate of the city of Jerusalem. He suffered the death of the cross, shed His blood on it, and entered the Holy of Holies in heaven with His blood (Heb. 9:12) that by the heavenly ministry (8:2, 6) of His heavenly priesthood (7:26) He might be able to do the sanctifying work, and we might enter within the veil by His blood to participate in Him as the heavenly Sanctifier, the One who sanctifies us positionally and dispositionally.
Christ is not only our Sanctifier; He Himself is our sanctification (1 Cor. 1:30). Whereas the crucified Christ is for our justification, the resurrected Christ is for our sanctification. As the life-giving Spirit, He indwells us today as our life, and He is saturating us with His holy nature until we are thoroughly sanctified dispositionally. This is not only positional sanctification by the Lord's blood but also dispositional sanctification by the divine life, even by Christ Himself. The Lord who sanctifies us is now working within our spirit, spreading Himself from the center of our being throughout every part of us until He reaches the circumference. Then, we will be completely saturated with His holy nature. The accomplishing of this dispositional sanctification requires our lifetime. If we remain under the dispensing of the Triune God to experience Christ as our dispositional sanctification, we will daily be saturated with the divine nature until we are thoroughly transformed in mind, emotion, and will.
According to 1 Corinthians 1:30, Christ is not only our righteousness and sanctification but also our redemption, the redemption of our body (Rom. 8:23). As the Redeemer of our body, Christ will transfigure the body of our humiliation, conforming it to the body of His glory (Phil. 3:21). The body of humiliation is our natural body, made of worthless dust (Gen. 2:7) and damaged by sin, weakness, sickness, and death (Rom. 6:6; 7:24; 8:11). The body of glory is the resurrected body, saturated with God's glory and transcendent over corruption and death (Rom. 6:9).
The redemption of our body is its glorification. In resurrection Christ became the Spirit, and this Spirit, according to the principle of His regenerating us in our spirit, completely saturates our body of sin, which is of death and is mortal, with the glory of His life and nature. Thus, He transfigures our body, making it the same as His resurrected, glorious body. This is the ultimate step of God's full salvation. Here He is expressed in full unto the ultimate manifestation in the New Jerusalem for eternity.
As we experience and enjoy the processed Triune God in the dispensing of the Divine Trinity, we experience and enjoy Christ as the Son in the grace of the Triune God. We then enjoy Christ as our portion. As our portion, Christ is God to us, not merely as the object of our worship but as our enjoyment. He is our Redeemer, who accomplished an eternal redemption for us to regain us that we may be delivered positionally from condemnation and eternal punishment. As our Passover, Christ is not only the Passover lamb, but also the entire Passover. As our Savior, Christ delivers us dispositionally from our old man, our self, and our natural life. As our wisdom, He enables us to handle all the problems and things that come to us daily. As our righteousness, Christ, on the one hand, makes it possible for us to be justified by God, and on the other hand, enables us to live a life that is acceptable to God. As our life, He becomes one with us that we may live by Him and live Him out. He is also the Sanctifier, sanctifying us not only positionally but also dispositionally. Furthermore, as our sanctification, He indwells us to be our life, saturating us with His divine nature until we are thoroughly sanctified. As our redemption, He will transfigure our body of humiliation, conforming it to the body of His glory.
