Search
In the previous chapter we saw that there are five stages in the progressive revelation of God in the Bible: the “bachelor” God, the incarnated God, the redeeming God, the indwelling God, and the incorporated God. In eternity past God was alone; He was a “bachelor” God. Then one day He came into His creation, becoming God in the flesh as the man Jesus. At that time, in His incarnation, He became God plus man, the incarnated God. After He lived on the earth for thirty-three and a half years, He was crucified to accomplish redemption, redeeming us not only from sin but also from death. Jesus walked into death and walked out of death. He resurrected not by Himself but with all of us (1 Pet. 1:3). Because Christ accomplished redemption, He became the redeeming God, God the Redeemer. The night after His resurrection He came to His disciples, breathed into them, and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22). The Greek word pneuma, translated in this verse as “Spirit,” also means “breath.” This indicates that Christ had become the holy breath, the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). Thus, when He breathed into His disciples, they received Him, and He never left them, for He had become the indwelling God. The indwelling God is for an incorporation, and at the end of the Holy Scriptures we see that, after all His stages, God ultimately and consummately becomes the incorporated God (Rev. 19:7; 21:2). He is incorporated with all His believers.
The divine revelation in the Bible eventually shows us the New Jerusalem, which is a corporate entity, an incorporation of God and all His redeemed. In the New Jerusalem, God is in Christ, and Christ is in all of us. God in Christ is the hub, the center, and we are the rim, the circumference. For eternity we will be one corporate entity together with the incorporated God. Nothing will separate us from God. We will be one with Him in life, nature, element, and appearance. Every believer will become a part of the incorporated God. God’s eternal purpose is to produce this corporate entity composed of all that God is, contained in, mingled with, and expressed through humanity. When the New Jerusalem is completed, the universe will marvel at this corporate entity, humanity constituted and mingled with divinity. This entity is the incorporated God.
At the beginning of the Bible God was alone; He was a “bachelor” God. However, Isaiah 7:14 prophesies, “The virgin will conceive and will bear a son, and she will call his name Immanuel.” Immanuel means “God with us.” Isaiah 9:6 says, “A child is born to us, / A Son is given to us;... / And His name will be called... / Mighty God, / Eternal Father.” Matthew 1:18 says, “Mary...was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit.” Verse 23 indicates that this child is the fulfillment of the prophecy in Isaiah 7:14—He is God with us. The Gospel of John reveals that the Word, who was God, became flesh and tabernacled among us, full of grace and reality (1:1, 14). “Of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace” (v. 16).
Christ attracted many people to follow Him during the three and a half years of His ministry. However, even after the disciples were with Him for three and a half years, they still could not understand Him. No doubt Isaiah did not fully understand what he was inspired to prophesy seven hundred years before Christ, yet even those who were with the Lord could not fully understand who He was. One day He said to them, “If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and henceforth you know Him and have seen Him” (John 14:7). Because Philip did not understand this, he said, “Lord, show us the Father and it is sufficient for us” (v. 8). Then the Lord said, “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; how is it that you say, Show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me?” (vv. 9-10). Perhaps Philip and the disciples began to understand that Christ and the Father were one, but the Lord went on to reveal something further. Even if the disciples were beginning to understand who the Lord was, He still could be with them only in an outward way; He could not enter into them. Therefore, He needed to pass through death and resurrection so that He could return to them in another form, a form in which He could enter into them (vv. 16-19). The disciples were bothered when the Lord revealed that He would go to the cross (13:33, 36-37). The Lord said, “I will not leave you as orphans; I am coming to you” (14:18). He explained that His going was actually His coming. He knew that if He did not go, He could never come into them. He needed to go so that He could come into them by being transformed from the flesh into the Spirit. In John 1 God became flesh, but in the last two chapters of John, Jesus became the Spirit. John 1 reveals Jesus coming in the flesh (v. 14), but chapter 20 reveals Jesus as the Holy Spirit (v. 22). By going through the further steps of His process, God in the flesh became the life-giving Spirit. Hallelujah!
In John 14 through 17 the word in is especially significant. In 14:20 the Lord said, “In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.” In 17:21 He prayed, “That they all may be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us.” It is a wonderful fact that we are in Him and He is in us. In 15:4 He said, “Abide in Me and I in you.” How wonderful that Emmanuel, God with us, became the life-giving Spirit to indwell us! The Triune God today is the life-giving Spirit. He has come into us, and we have been brought into Him.
At the end of the Gospel of Matthew the Lord charged His disciples, “Go therefore and disciple all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (28:19). The way to disciple people is to help them to call on the name of the Lord (Rom. 10:12). If a person is willing to believe in the Lord Jesus, we should lead him to call on the Lord. We need to explain that Jesus is no longer the “raw” God but the processed God. God was processed in incarnation, human living, crucifixion, burial, and resurrection to become the Spirit. Now He is available to us. We can preach the gospel based on Romans 10:6-8, saying, “There is no need to bring Christ down from heaven, for He has come down already in incarnation. There is no need to go into the abyss to bring Him up, for He already passed through death and resurrected. Now He is the living word, and He is in your mouth. If you would open your mouth and say from your heart, ‘O Lord Jesus,’ this processed God will come into you.”
Once a person calls on the Lord, we need to baptize him into the Triune God. Our commission from the Lord in Matthew 28:19 is to baptize people not in the name of the Triune God but into His name. To baptize someone only in the name of the Triune God is a religious formality. The same Greek word translated “into” in Matthew 28:19 is used in Romans 6:3, which says, “All of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death,” and in Galatians 3:27, which says, “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” We need to baptize people into His name (Acts 8:16; 19:5). The name denotes the person. If we call the name of a person who is real, living, near, and available, that person will come to us. If we call the name of a person who is imaginary, dead, or far away, that person will not come to us. Because Jesus is real, living, near, and available, the more we call on His name, the more we receive His person (Rom. 10:8-9). Whenever we call on the name of the Lord, His person comes into our being.
The Lord’s charge in Matthew 28:19 is to baptize people into the name of the Triune God. Before the resurrection of Christ, the Bible does not reveal the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. After the Lord resurrected and was given all authority in heaven and on earth (v. 18), He told His disciples to baptize people into the name of the Triune God, because by then God had been processed. He was no longer “raw” but had passed through incarnation, thirty-three and a half years of human living, crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. God was fully processed and ready for man to receive Him.
Before the resurrection of Christ, mankind had many problems, and it was impossible for man to contact God. However, by Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, all man’s problems were solved, and now God is the processed God. The Triune God is like a great meal that has been prepared and served; He is ready for man to come and enjoy. God is triune not for our doctrinal understanding but so that He could pass through a process to become available for us to enjoy. God the Father purposed, God the Son accomplished everything, and God the Spirit is the realization of all the riches of what God is and has accomplished. All that God is and has accomplished, obtained, and attained is ready for us to enjoy.
Baptism is often practiced merely as an outward form. This should not be our practice. Baptism is not a formality; it is a reality. Once the Lord has entered into a person, we need to put that person into the Triune God. In the proper church life, after a person calls on the name of the Lord, the church should immediately baptize that one into the Triune God, not as a form but as a reality. I hope that all the churches have the faith and the assurance that baptism is not a formality. We need to have a living faith that we are baptizing people into the Triune God.
Baptism has a negative aspect and a positive aspect. Negatively, baptism is a burial to terminate people. After we believe in the Lord Jesus, our old man needs to be terminated by being buried. Positively, baptism is to put someone into the Triune God. If we compare Matthew 28:19 with Galatians 3:27, we can see that Christ equals the Triune God. To be baptized into Christ is to be baptized into the Triune God. Christ is not only the Baptizer but also the One into whom we are baptized. As the Baptizer, Christ baptizes us into Himself.
After the Lord’s charge in Matthew 28:19, He promised in verse 20, “Behold, I am with you all the days until the consummation of the age.” After the Lord comes into us by our calling on His name, and after we are put into Him through baptism, He will never leave us, and we can never get away from Him. Even if we regret receiving the Lord and ask Him to leave us, He will not leave. We are involved with Him for eternity. We may get away from Him outwardly, but we can never get away inwardly. The Lord has come into us, and we have been put into the Triune God.
Matthew 28:19 reveals that we are baptized into the name of the Triune God. Romans 6:3 and Galatians 3:27 reveal that we are baptized into Christ. First Corinthians 12:13 says, “In one Spirit we were all baptized into one Body.” Thus, we are baptized into the name of the Triune God, into Christ, and into the Body of Christ. This is the proper baptism in the proper church life, not an empty formality.
When a person calls upon the name of the Lord Jesus, we should baptize him into the Triune God, into the living Christ, and into His Body. From the day a person is baptized, that person is in the Body. Wherever he goes, he brings the Triune God, Christ, and the Body with him. For over forty years I have been experiencing this reality. I have been put into the Triune God, into Christ, and into the Body of Christ.
Most Christians agree that Matthew 28:19 refers to water baptism, but there is argument about Romans 6:3 and Galatians 3:27. Some say that these verses refer to water baptism; others say that these verses refer to Spirit baptism. According to the Bible, however, there is no such distinction in our experience; water baptism is Spirit baptism (Acts 8:35-38; 1 Cor. 12:13). When the church baptizes people properly, the baptism is in water and in the Spirit. We should explain to every new believer, “Now that you have called on the Lord and He has entered into you, the church will baptize you into the Triune God, which is also to baptize you into Christ and into the Body of Christ.” This is both water baptism and Spirit baptism. If it were only water baptism, the Body would not go with each member wherever he goes. Water alone would not be that effective; such a reality requires the Spirit. The proper baptism involves both the physical element, water, and the spiritual reality, the Spirit. The Spirit honors this.
Now that we have seen that we have been baptized into the Body, we need to see what the Body is. First Corinthians 12:12 says, “Even as the body is one and has many members, yet all the members of the body, being many, are one body, so also is the Christ.” This verse does not end, as we might expect, by saying, “So also is the church.” It ends with the words so also is the Christ. “The Christ” at the end of this verse is the Body-Christ, Christ as the Body. First Corinthians 12:12 clearly reveals the fact that Christ is a Body with many members. This is the Body-Christ, the incorporated God.
Because we are in the Body and are part of the Body, we are enjoying the Body-Christ. Some believers may feel that there is no need to go to a meeting in order to enjoy Christ. If they stay by themselves, they may enjoy a small portion of the individual Christ, but they will never enjoy the riches of the Body-Christ. In the meetings of the church every member of the Body has a portion of Christ. For this reason, we each need to open our mouth to release the riches of Christ within us. If we do not come to the meetings and open up our mouth to release the riches of Christ, we will have only our individual portion of Christ. We all need to share our portion of Christ and enjoy the portion of others.
This mutual sharing of Christ by all the members in the Body can be compared to the circulation of blood in our physical body. If any member of our body does not participate in the circulation of blood, that member will eventually become unpleasant and infected. The more a member sends out blood to the rest of the body, the more blood comes into that member. The more we open up our mouth to release Christ, the more Christ comes into us. Therefore, we all need to release our portion of Christ in the meetings.
The Body-Christ is full of riches. Each member may have only a small portion, but all the portions added together become a great sum of riches. We should not keep our portion to ourselves. If we do, our portion will become stagnant. Regrettably, many brothers and sisters are old because they do not release their portion of Christ. Because each of us is a member of Christ’s Body and has a portion of Christ, we all need to release our Christ to one another. This is the way we can all enjoy the Body-Christ.
The Jews know only the “bachelor” God, the God of creation. The fundamental Christians know only the incarnated God and the redeeming God. The more advanced Christians know the indwelling God, the Spirit. However, in the Lord’s recovery today, we not only know the “bachelor” God, the incarnated God, the redeeming God, and the indwelling God, but we also are enjoying the incorporated God, the Body-Christ. We need to be in the Body, in the church life.
