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Scripture Reading: Matt. 28:19; Gal. 3:27; 1 Cor. 12:12-13; Eph. 4:4; Rom. 12:2-5, 11; Eph. 4:23; 3:16-18
God’s mystery is to have the church, and God’s economy is to bring forth the church. Both God’s mystery and God’s economy are just to have the church. We must see how this has been done and how this is still being done.
First, let us look at Matthew 28:19. This verse has been altogether misused by Christianity, mainly due to an inadequate translation. The King James Version says, “Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” The Greek preposition here for in actually means “into.” It does not mean baptizing them in the name but baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Spirit. The preposition into is crucial, and the name is also crucial. This verse does not say, “Baptizing them into the Father, into the Son, and into the Holy Spirit,” but rather, “Baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” These two words into and name are hard for Christians to understand.
This kind of composition, baptizing into, is used in the New Testament several times. Besides Matthew 28:19, this phrase baptizing into is used in Romans 6:3, where it says that we have been baptized into the death of Christ. This verse also says that we have been baptized into Christ Jesus. The same kind of verb and the same kind of preposition are used to reveal that we are baptized into the name, into Christ, and into the death of Christ. Galatians 3:27 has the same phrase, baptized into Christ. First Corinthians 12:13 says that “we were all baptized into one Body.”
We have to baptize people into four things: into the name, into Christ, into the death of Christ, and into the Body. Physically speak ing, we baptize people into the water, but we all know that the water is not the real thing. The water denotes something. When we baptize people into the water, it denotes that we baptize them into the name, into Christ, into His death, and into His Body.
In Christianity I never heard that we should baptize people into the name. I heard just a little about baptizing people into Christ. After I was saved and had advanced in the Lord, I read some books saying that baptism is to put us into the death of Christ. Also, I never heard that to be baptized is to be baptized into the Body. Have you ever heard this? To baptize people is to baptize them into the name, into Christ, into His all-inclusive death, and into His Body.
After the resurrection of the Lord Jesus the first mention of baptism is not to baptize people into the water, into the tomb, or into death. The first mention of baptism after Christ’s resurrection is to put people into His name (Matt. 28:19).
The New Testament goes on to tell us in Romans 6 that to baptize people is to put them into Christ. This Christ, into whom we baptize people, is no more just the Lamb. We can never baptize people into a lamb. This Lamb has been crucified, buried, and resurrected as the Spirit. Now the very Christ in Romans 6 is no more just the Lamb but the life-giving Spirit.
One day while I was speaking in Indianapolis, a sister interrupted my speaking and asked how we could abide in the Lord and the Lord abide in us. She had tried and tried to abide in Christ but could not make it. I told her that it was so easy for us to abide in the air and for the air to abide in us. Right now we are abiding in the air, and the air is abiding in us. After Christ’s resurrection He became the pneuma, like the air. He is the pneuma. Pneuma means “spirit” or “breath” as the air. Christ is the living pneuma. We have our being in Him just like we have our living in the air. If you take away the air from this room, after five minutes we will all be dead. We have our life in the air. We are abiding in the air, and the air is abiding in us. Hence, we can easily baptize people into Christ because Christ today is the Spirit. The Spirit is the pneuma, and the pneuma is like the air.
How could we be baptized into the death of Christ? Where is the death of Christ? I have read some books that say we have to reckon ourselves dead by faith. I reckoned and believed that I was baptized into His death, but it never worked. In Brother Watchman Nee’s book The Normal Christian Life, there is a chapter on reckoning. However, those messages were given by Brother Nee in his earlier ministry, before 1939. Those were elementary. After 1942 he learned that to experience the death of Christ is not just a matter of reckoning. After 1942 Brother Nee gave messages telling us that the real experience of Christ’s death is not in Romans 6 but in Romans 8. What Romans 6 says is just an objective fact. If we are going to experience this fact subjectively, we must be in Romans 8. The real death of Christ today is not in the tomb. The real death of Christ today is in the all-inclusive Spirit.
In the typology of the Old Testament, the compound ointment signifies the compound Spirit (Exo. 30:23-33). In this compound ointment Christ’s divinity, Christ’s humanity, Christ’s death, Christ’s resurrection, the power of His death, the power of His resurrection, and the ascension of Christ are all included. This is a compound, an ointment, compounded with all kinds of spices. The Spirit of God before Christ’s crucifixion was not a compound. It was just a divine Spirit without humanity in it, without the very element of the effective death of Christ in it, without the resurrection in it, and without Christ’s ascension in it. After Christ was processed through death, resurrection, and ascension, He came down to descend upon us. Now He is the compound Spirit. We have all these good elements compounded in this one compound Spirit. This compound Spirit is Christ as well as the life-giving Spirit. When we baptize people into this compound Christ, we put them into His death. There is no need for us to reckon. We put them into the name, into the compound Spirit, and into the death of Christ, which is one of the compounding elements of the Spirit. When we put them into the name, into Christ, and into His death, at the same time we baptize them into the Body.
Matthew 28:19 was spoken after Christ’s resurrection. In other words, Christ spoke this word in His resurrection. While He was speaking this word, He was the resurrected One. As the resurrected One, the life-giving Spirit, He is the ultimate issue of the Triune God. We have seen that God is triune—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—not for doctrine but for dispensing. The Father was in the Son, and the Son became the life-giving Spirit. Whatever the Father is and has is embodied in the Son. The Son is the embodiment of the Father, and this Son through the process of crucifixion and resurrection became the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit.
If, at the time the Lord spoke this word in His resurrection, He had said to baptize people into the Father, into the Son, and into the Spirit, this would have caused a misunderstanding. This would have caused the disciples to think that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are separate. This is why some Christians argue for three immersions—one immersion in the name of the Father, another in the name of the Son, and the third in the name of the Spirit. They neglect to realize that the Lord never used the plural word names, that is, baptizing the believers into the names of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. If this were the case, it would be right to immerse people into three names, but the name is singular in number, that is, three with one name. Matthew 28:19 says, “The name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Is this the Father’s name, the Son’s name, or the Spirit’s name? If the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are three distinct persons, how could three distinct persons have just one name? The Lord wisely spoke in this way. If He had said, “Baptizing them into the Father and the Son and the Spirit,” this would have caused the disciples to understand that these are three separate persons.
Furthermore, if we had only Romans 6:3 and Galatians 3:27 telling us to baptize people into Christ, we would think that baptism has nothing to do with the Father. Many Christians think that to baptize people into Christ means only into the Son, that is, into the Lord Jesus, and that it has nothing to do with the Father or with the Spirit. If we did not have the Greek text of Matthew 28:19, we could not understand that our being baptized has very much to do with the Father as well as with the Son and with the Spirit. The baptism is to put us into the Father, into the Son, and into the Spirit. To be baptized into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Spirit is not a small matter. This means to put us into the Triune God who is from eternity past to eternity future. We have been baptized not only into Christ; we have been baptized into the Triune God. These three have only one name.
The name of the Father and of the Son and of the Spirit is the person, and the person is the reality. To baptize new converts into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Spirit means that we put them into the reality of the Triune God, into the person of the Triune God. So here we can see the wisdom and the profoundness of the Lord’s word. To baptize people is just to put them into the reality of the Triune God, into whatever the Triune God is. We put people into whatever the Father is as the source, whatever the Son is as the course, and whatever the Spirit is as the flow. This reality is altogether embodied in Christ. Christ is the reality of the Triune God. In other words, to baptize people into the reality of the Triune God is to baptize them into Christ. This is why in Matthew we have the baptizing into the name of the Triune God.
In Romans we have the baptizing into Christ. To baptize people into Christ is equal to baptizing people into the name of the Triune God because Christ is the reality of the Triune God. The Triune God is embodied in Christ. Also, it is equal to being put into His death because His death is one of the elements of His compounding. To baptize people into Christ, and spontaneously into His death, is to terminate their past. Yet this is not the end. To baptize people into the Triune God is not only to baptize them into Christ and into His death, negatively, but also, positively, into the Body. Hence, in baptism we all have been put into the reality of the Triune God. We all have been put into Christ. We all have been put into His death to have a thorough termination. On the positive side, we have also been put into His Body. This is altogether a matter of the wonderful Spirit.
First Corinthians 12:13 says, “In one Spirit we were all baptized into one Body.” Again, this is something too profound and too deep. The Body today is just the church. This is an interchangeable term for the church. The church is the Body, and the Body is the church. The Body is something altogether in the Spirit. We all have been baptized in the Spirit into one Body. In one Spirit, Peter, John, James, Paul, Stephen, Martin Luther, John Nelson Darby, Brother Watchman Nee, you, and I—we all have been baptized at the same time in the same place. Do not think that we were baptized at a different time or in a different place than Martin Luther or Peter.
We must all realize that the Body of Christ is the church. By baptism the Body is produced, brought forth, and constituted. In this universe in the sight of God there is something wonderful called the baptism. Many Christians do not realize this universal baptism.
The Bible tells us that we the believers have all been crucified with Christ. Actually, that word crucified should be translated “co-crucified.” We all were co-crucified with Christ when He was crucified at Golgotha. We were crucified and resurrected before we were born. We were even seated in the heavens before we were born. This is the gospel. The glad tidings are that before we were born, we were already crucified, terminated, and buried. Before we were born, we were even resurrected. The good news tells us that before we were born, before we committed any sin, we were crucified, buried, terminated, resurrected, and raised to the heavens. After crucifixion we have resurrection, ascension, and baptism. He came down from His ascension to immerse all God’s chosen ones. This is baptism. We, the God-chosen ones, were all immersed in the crucified, resurrected, ascended, and descended Christ. We were immersed in the all-inclusive Christ for the Body. After He accomplished everything, He came down and immersed all God’s called ones. By this baptism, by this immersion, all God’s called ones have been baptized into one Body. Christ’s descension has immersed us into the Body.
We are not only enjoying Christ’s crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension; we are now experiencing His immersion. This means that we are experiencing His Body. Now we are no longer individual persons. We are members of His Body. By His immersion we were made members of His Body. We are no more only men; we are members. So we all have to pray, “Lord, show us Your Body.” We were made a part of the Body in Acts 10. In the whole universe there was a time when the ascended Christ came back to immerse all God’s chosen ones. Before we were born, we were baptized and made members of the Body of Christ. We must forget about our mentality and believe the good tidings. We have to believe the good news. We are no more sinners, no more a complete entity, no more individual persons, but members of the Body. We all have been baptized into the Body because of this wonderful Spirit. Two thousand years ago we all were baptized into Him. With God there is no clock. There is no before or after. In the eyes of God there is no element of time. There is only the fact. In the whole universe there is the immersion, the baptism.
We have to realize that we who believe in Christ have all been immersed into the Body of Christ. How are we going to realize this? First Corinthians 12:13 says, “We were all baptized into one Body...and were all given to drink one Spirit.” To realize what has been accomplished is to drink. Drinking has not been accomplished. Immersion has been accomplished, but drinking is our job. Immersion was Christ’s accomplishment, but drinking is our daily, hourly job. The simplest way to drink is to call on the Lord Jesus. If we call on the Lord Jesus for a few minutes, we will love Him more. Then we will desire to have the church life. Some may say that the church is not so good or so satisfactory. However, the more we say, “O Lord, the church is not so good,” the more the Lord says, “Go to the church.” We may say to the Lord, “I do not like the church.” The Lord says, “I like it; I love it so much.” No one can criticize, condemn, or accuse the church when calling on His name. When we called on the name of the Lord, we did not have the intention to drink Him, yet we drank.
Similarly, if we get into the open air and shout, we breathe the air in. Whether we like it or do not like it, the air gets into us. This all-inclusive Spirit is here. When we believe in the name of Christ, we recognize all that He has accomplished. When we say, “Lord Jesus, we believe in You,” we do not realize how much this implies. Just to say such a simple word is to sign a contract; it implies everything. This signature implies His crucifixion, His resurrection, His ascension, and His coming down to immerse His whole Body.
To drink is just to experience what Christ has accomplished. The more we drink of this one Spirit, the more we are saturated and permeated. Romans 12 tells us to be transformed in our mind. To be transformed in our mind means that a new element comes in to replace the old. By transformation the element of God’s divine nature gets into us. The divine nature gets into our being and permeates our mind, not to change our mind but to transform it. Hence, Ephesians 4:23 says that we are being renewed in the spirit of our mind. Our mind is being soaked with the Spirit, and the Spirit, which was separate from our mind, is becoming the spirit of our mind. Then our spirit will permeate our whole being. Our mind, emotion, and will—the way we think, the way we love, and the way we make decisions—will all be permeated by this spreading spirit. So this spirit becomes the spirit of our mind, the spirit of our emotion, and the spirit of our will. This is the full transformation and also the growth in life.
The more we are permeated, the more we are in the church life. The more we are soaked with all the divine attributes, the more we are in the Body. It does not mean much to say that we would like to be in the Body and that we are one. This is good to say, but it does not mean much. What counts is that we drink of the one Spirit by calling on His name. To drink is not to think. The more we think, the more we do not drink. To drink is just to call, to forget about our thinking, and to forget about our mentality. We all have been baptized into this one Body and positioned to drink. Now we are drinking and drinking. Eventually, we can do everything, not by our self but by what we have drunk. This is the church life. Hallelujah! Here we also have the building because the building is by such a drinking.
Eventually, Ephesians 3:17 tells us that Christ will make His home in our heart. He will take full possession of our whole being. This means that we are really one with Him. Then we can say that we are the church, we are the mystery of Christ, and we are parts of Christ in a mysterious way. Here is the testimony of Jesus. This is the church, and this is the Body life.
