The Spirit is the reality of God, of Christ, and of the divine life, imparting the element of God, Christ, and the divine life into us as the life supply for our divine and spiritual support (1 John 5:6; John 14:16-20; Phil. 1:19b). According to 1 John 5:6 the Spirit is the truth, the reality. The reality mentioned in this verse must be the reality of the Triune God, Christ, and the divine life. This reality supplies us divinely and spiritually, causing us to have the divine and spiritual support. As mentioned in Philippians 1:19, this supply and support eventually become the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. John 14:16-20 speaks of the Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—telling us that the Father is embodied in the Son and the Son is realized as the Spirit. Thus, the Spirit is the realization of the Son, and the Son is the embodiment of the Father. When we have the realization, we have the embodiment, and we also have the Triune God. This becomes the bountiful supply that supports us in our spiritual life.
The all-inclusive Spirit is also the reality of Christ's resurrection with His death, dispensing Christ's death with its effectiveness and Christ's resurrection with its power into our being that we may be identified with Christ and experience His death and resurrection (Rom. 6:5; Col. 2:12). Just as we cannot separate Christ's ascension from His resurrection, we cannot separate Christ's resurrection from His death. If we have Christ's resurrection, we will surely enjoy His death. However, we do not experience Christ's resurrection first; rather, we experience His death first.
In the same year that I was saved, I began to read books by Brother Watchman Nee. In those books he taught mainly that we need to realize and reckon that our old man has been crucified with Christ (Rom. 6:6). I began to consider how I could be crucified with Christ. Christ was crucified two thousand years earlier on Mount Calvary outside Jerusalem. With respect to time, He was crucified two thousand years earlier, and with regard to space, He was quite far from where I lived. He was He and I was I. How could I have been crucified with Him?
A.B. Simpson, the founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, published a number of books and wrote quite a few excellent hymns on the experience of Christ's death and resurrection (see Hymns, #481, 482, 484, and 692). One of his hymns (#692) says, "There's a little word that the Lord has giv'n/For our help in the hour of need:/Let us reckon ourselves to be dead to sin,/To be dead and dead indeed." The chorus goes on to say, "Let us reckon, reckon, reckon,/Let us reckon, rather than feel; / Let us be true to the reck'ning,/And He will make it real." I tried to "reckon, reckon, reckon" and found out that this surely does not work. When I reckoned myself dead, I became more living. Brother Nee spoke of reckoning in his earlier ministry. For example, the messages given by Brother Nee that were published as The Normal Christian Life were given before 1938. Later, he began to see the Body of Christ, and his ministry became more mature. He then said that the real experience of Christ's death is in the Spirit, as covered in Romans 8. He said that Romans 6 could be experienced only in Romans 8. Romans 6 contains the doctrine, the fact, of our identification with Christ in His death and resurrection, but the experience of this fact is in Romans 8 by the Spirit. If we live, walk, and do everything according to the Spirit, we will have the experience of Christ's death and of His resurrection. It is in this way that we are identified with Christ and experience His death and resurrection.