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In the first six verses of John 14 the Lord revealed that He was going in death and coming back in resurrection in order to bring the disciples into the Father, that He will be the way and the Father the destination, and that where He is the disciples also will be. In the following fourteen verses the Lord goes further to reveal the details regarding how He can get into the disciples and bring them to the Father.
John 14 unveils the Triune God for the dispensing of Himself into the believers. He is one God, the only God, yet He is three — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The Son is the embodiment and expression of the Father (vv. 7-14), and the Spirit is the reality and realization of the Son (vv. 16-20). In the Son the Father is expressed and seen, and as the Spirit the Son is revealed and realized. The Father in the Son is expressed among the believers, and the Son as the Spirit is realized in the believers. God the Father is hidden, God the Son is manifested among man, and God the Spirit, entering into man to be his life, his life supply, and his everything, is realized within man. The Father in the Son and the Son as the Spirit are man’s portion that man may enjoy God.
When the Lord said that He was the way and that He was going to bring the believers into the Father, Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father and it suffices us” (v. 8). The Lord replied, “Am I 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). The Lord seemed to be saying, “I have been with you for three and a half years and all this time you have been seeing Me, and still you have not known the Father? Don’t you know that if you see Me, you see the Father, that if you know Me, you know the Father? I am in the Father and the Father is in Me.” Even up until this very moment, the Lord’s word here remains a mystery. What does it mean? On the one hand it means that the Father and the Son are just one and on the other hand that They are still two. If you were to ask me how this could be, I would say, “I don’t know. I know only that on the one hand the Father and the Son are one, that if you see the one then you see the other because the two are one. The Father is in the Son. If you see the Son, then surely you see the Father. But, on the other hand, They are still two.” This is the mystery of the Triune God.
Here I must issue a warning: Never consider that the Father and the Son are two separate gods. That is heresy. We do not have three gods. We have one unique Triune God — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. At this point I am even careful not to use the word person. Although sometimes, for our speaking and understanding, we use the word person, we should not press this term too far into tritheism. We cannot explain the Triune God adequately, but it is a fact that God is triune. If you have seen the Son, you have seen the Father because the Father is embodied in the Son to be seen among the believers. The Son is the embodiment and the expression of the Father.
The Son is in the Father and the Father is in the Son (vv. 10-11). What a mystery this is! The Lord says that the Son is in the Father and that the Father is in the Son! Since the Father is in the Son, when the Son speaks, the Father, who abides in the Son, does His work. The Father does His work in the Son’s speaking because They are in one another.
In 10:30 the Lord tells us clearly that He and the Father are one. Again I say, we cannot explain this matter adequately because it is very difficult for our limited mentality to understand how They two could be one. In our limited understanding, the Son is the Son, the Father is the Father, and the two are distinctly separate one from the other. But the Lord tells us clearly that the Son and the Father are one. Here I strongly say that the Lord never says that He and the Father are two. We have to take the mystery of the Trinity according to the Lord’s definite and clear word, not according to our suppositions.
Isaiah 9:6 reveals that the Son is even called the Father. This verse says, “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given...and his name shall be called...The mighty God, The everlasting Father.” A son is given, yet His name is called the everlasting Father, just as a child is born, yet He is called the mighty God. Is He the Son or the Father? We must say that He is both, just as He is both the child and the mighty God. How can the Son be the Father? I do not know. I know only that the Bible tells me so. Praise the Lord that the Bible tells us that the Son is called the Father, just as the Bible tells us that the child is called the mighty God. Therefore, according to the clear word of the Bible, the Son is the Father. None of us should be a Philip. But at that time even Philip was made clear.
When the Son was there with the disciples to express the Father, He was able only to be among them, but He was unable to be in them. Since He was the embodiment of the Father in the flesh, He was among the disciples to express the Father and to be seen by them. But while He was in the flesh, He had no way to enter into the disciples. So there is the need of the following section of this chapter, verses 16 through 20.
We have seen that the Father was embodied and expressed in the Son among the disciples. Now we must see that the Son is realized as the Spirit entering into and abiding in the believers. Notice that we do not say in the Spirit but as the Spirit. In order to abide in us the Lord had to be transfigured, transformed, from the flesh into the Spirit. He came in the flesh to be among us, but He had to be transfigured into the Spirit before He could come into us. After coming in the flesh to be among us, His next aim was to be in us. How was the Lord transfigured? He was transfigured from the flesh into the Spirit by His death and resurrection. His going was not His leaving; it was another step of His coming. He was coming in another form, in the form of the Spirit. The first step of His coming was in the flesh; the second step of His coming was as the Spirit. This chapter has the Lord’s going and it also has His coming. His going was by death and resurrection, and His coming was as “another Comforter.” The other Comforter is His other form, His other figure. By His coming as the Spirit, He enters into us and makes us to live just as He does. The life He lives is the resurrection life. After His resurrection He comes to enter into us as the Spirit. So He lives, and we live by Him also. He lives by the resurrection life, and we live by Him, sharing Him as the resurrection life.
In verse 16 the Lord said, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Comforter, that He may be with you forever.” First, the Spirit is “another Comforter.” The Greek word for Comforter, paracletos, anglicized paraclete, means “one alongside who takes care of our case, our affairs, and all of our needs.” The Greek word for Comforter is the same as that for Advocate in 1 John 2:1. Today we have both the Lord Jesus in the heavens and the Spirit within us as our Paraclete, who takes care of our case. The Holy Spirit, the reality of Jesus and the realization of the Lord, is such a One that is alongside of us, ministering to us and taking care of all of our needs.
This Spirit, this Comforter, is the Spirit of reality (v. 17). Why is He the Spirit of reality? Because whatever the Father in the Son is and whatever the Son is are realized in the Spirit. The Spirit is the realization of what God the Father and God the Son are. God the Father is light, and God the Son is life. The reality of this life and light is just the Spirit. If you do not have the Spirit, you cannot have the light of God the Father. If you do not have the Spirit, you cannot have God the Son as your life. The reality of all the divine attributes of both God the Father and God the Son is the Spirit.
The Spirit of reality is the Spirit referred to in 7:39 as the Spirit of the glorified Jesus. At that time, this Spirit was “not yet” because Jesus had not yet been crucified and resurrected. Even while the Lord was speaking here in this chapter, this Spirit was still “not yet.” It was not until the Lord passed through death and was glorified in resurrection that this Spirit was brought to the disciples.
The Spirit promised here and referred to in 7:39 is “the Spirit of life” (Rom. 8:2) as the breath. This promise of the Lord was fulfilled on the day of the Lord’s resurrection when the Spirit as the breath of life was breathed into the disciples by the Lord (20:22). This Spirit of life as the breath is the Spirit of the glorified Jesus.
This Spirit of life as the Spirit of the glorified Jesus is the Spirit of Jesus Christ and the Spirit of Christ (Phil. 1:19; Rom. 8:9). After the resurrection of Christ, the Spirit of God became the Spirit of the incarnated, crucified, and resurrected Christ. The Spirit of God is now the Spirit of Jesus Christ and the Spirit of Christ. The Spirit of Jesus Christ implies Jesus in His suffering and Christ in His resurrection, whereas the Spirit of Christ emphasizes only Christ in His resurrection. The Spirit of God had only divinity, but now the Spirit of Jesus Christ has both divinity and humanity as well as crucifixion and resurrection. All of these elements are included in the Spirit of Jesus Christ. He is the all-inclusive Spirit with the bountiful supply to meet our every need.
In this section, 14:16-20, the Lord refers first to the Spirit of reality, as “He” in verse 17. Immediately after this, He refers to Himself in verse 18. The very “He” who is the Spirit of reality in verse 17 becomes the very “I” who is the Lord Himself in verse 18. This means that after His resurrection the Lord became the Spirit of reality. First Corinthians 15:45 confirms this. In dealing with the matter of resurrection it says, “The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit.” The Comforter, the Spirit of reality, the Spirit of life as the breath, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, and the life-giving Spirit all refer to the same Spirit. Today, the Spirit of God is the Comforter, the Comforter is the Spirit of reality, the Spirit of reality is the Spirit of life as the breath, the Spirit of life as the breath is the Spirit of Jesus Christ, and the Spirit of Jesus Christ is the life-giving Spirit.
Eventually, the Lord is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17). Today some Christians accuse us of being heretical because we believe and teach that the Lord Jesus is the Spirit. But this is not our concept; it is a clear revelation in the clear word of 2 Corinthians 3:17. Our accusers only take care of their traditional concept of the Trinity, but they neglect and even would not care for the clear word in 2 Corinthians 3:17, which says, “And the Lord is the Spirit.” By the mercy and the grace of the Lord, we do not care for any traditional concepts but only for the pure word of the Bible. We believe and say strongly that according to the Bible the Lord Jesus today is the Spirit.
Verse 17 of John 14 also reveals that the Spirit abides with and in the believers. Not only does He abide with the believers but also in them. As we have seen, when the Lord was in the flesh, He was able only to be among the disciples, to be with them. But after becoming in His resurrection the life-giving Spirit, the Spirit of reality, He is now able to abide not only with us but also in us. It is by being the Spirit that the Lord enters into us and abides in us.
In verse 20 the Lord said, “In that day you shall know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.” The day mentioned in this verse is the day of resurrection. On the day of resurrection the disciples were to know that the Lord was in the Father, that the disciples were in Him, and that He was in them. We need to see that verse 17 says that the Spirit will be in us and that verse 20 says that the Son will be in us. Since both the Spirit and the Son are in us, tell me, how many are in us — one or two? The answer is one. We do not have two in us. We do not have the Spirit plus the Son, nor the Son plus the Spirit. We have just one, the wonderful One who is both the Son and the Spirit. Therefore, as we have seen, Paul says, “Now the Lord is that Spirit” (KJV). As long as the Spirit is in us, the Son is in us, and as long as the Son is in us, the Spirit is in us. Now we can see that He has brought Himself into us. Before these verses, in the first part of this chapter, the Lord was still not in the disciples. But by the time of verse 20, He is in the disciples, and the disciples are in Him. As He is in the Father, so the disciples are in the Father. Now where He is, there the disciples are also. He died to prepare the way, the standing, that we might get into God and that God might get into us. Then by being in us and by bringing us into the Father, the Lord can build us together as one in the Triune God to be His eternal abode.
By these two sections of John 14 we can see that the Trinity of the Godhead is for dispensing the Triune God into us. The Father is embodied in the Son, the Son is realized as the Spirit, and the Spirit comes and enters into us to be our life and whatever we need. It is by this process that the Triune God is dispensed into us as our eternal portion.
In verse 17 of John 14 we find the first mention of the Spirit’s indwelling. This matter of the Spirit’s indwelling is fulfilled and developed in the Epistles (1 Cor. 6:19; Rom. 8:9, 11). The central and main concept of the Epistles is that Christ today as the life-giving Spirit indwells our spirit as our life and everything necessary for the building up of His Body.
The Lord’s promise of the Spirit here in John 14 is different from the Father’s promise of the Spirit in Luke 24:49. The Lord’s promise is of the Spirit of life, whereas the Father’s promise is of the Spirit of power. The Lord’s promise of the Spirit of life was fulfilled on the day of His resurrection when He breathed the Spirit of life into the disciples in John 20:22. This is not the Spirit of power as the promise of the Father which was fulfilled on the day of Pentecost when the Spirit came as a mighty wind blowing upon the disciples in Acts 2:1-4. On the day of Pentecost the Spirit was the Spirit of power, but here, in the book of John, the Spirit is the Spirit of life. In Acts the symbol of the Spirit of power was the blowing wind. Wind mainly signifies power. But the Spirit of life in the Gospel of John is symbolized by the breath, for breath is for life. Since the Gospel of John is a book on life, it covers the Spirit of life, not the Spirit of power. Since Acts is a book on the work of preaching and since this preaching needs power, in Acts we have the Spirit of power as the blowing wind. In John 14:16 we see the Lord’s promise, for He said, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Comforter.” In Luke 24:49 we see the Father’s promise, for there the Lord said, “Behold, I am sending forth the promise of My Father upon you; but you, stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” On the day of the Lord’s resurrection, the disciples received the Spirit of life promised by the Lord in John 14, but they had to wait for the Father’s promise until they received the Spirit of power on the day of Pentecost. The Lord’s promise of the Spirit of life in John 14 is not fulfilled in Acts 2 on the day of Pentecost, but in John 20 on the day of the Lord’s resurrection. Fifty days later, on the day of Pentecost, the Father’s promise of the Spirit of power in Luke 24 was fulfilled.
I hope that by now we all are clear concerning the revelation of this chapter. We should not consider that this chapter speaks about the Lord going to heaven to build a heavenly mansion and of His returning to take us up to that mansion. This is altogether an understanding according to the natural human concept. We must drop this concept. God does not have two buildings, a mansion in heaven and a church on earth. No, He has only one building — His building among and with His redeemed ones, that is, His living dwelling place. In the past, God’s building was with Israel, today it is with the church, and ultimately it will consummate in the New Jerusalem. This is God’s building. The way for God to accomplish this building is to dispense Himself into us all, and the way for God to dispense Himself into us is by His being the Father, Son, and Spirit. God the Father is the source, origin, substance, and element. God the Son is the expression, manifestation, and way for God to touch man and for man to touch God. Finally, God the Spirit is the reality of all that God the Father and God the Son are. Whatever God the Father and God the Son are, is fully realized in God the Spirit. The Father in the Son and the Son as the Spirit reach our spirit, first coming into our spirit as our life, second as our life supply, and finally as our everything. This Triune God first dispenses Himself into our spirit. Then He is continually spreading Himself from within our spirit to our whole being. He wants to spread from our spirit throughout our entire being. He wants to spread from our spirit to our soul and even into our body (Rom. 8:11), until our whole being is fully saturated and possessed by Him. This saturation is the actual building of His eternal habitation. The more we allow Him to saturate and possess us, the more He will accomplish His building in, through, and among us. Eventually, in this age He will have local churches in different localities as the expression of this building. Ultimately, when we all are in the new heaven and the new earth, God will have the New Jerusalem as His eternal dwelling place to express His glory forever.
