The first way to receive, experience, and enjoy the all-inclusive Christ as the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit in the Gospel of John is by receiving Christ as the Son of God through believing into Him, to be born of God (1:12-13).
In 1964 I was invited to speak to an independent Bible church in the city of Las Vegas. While I was there, I spoke on man's heart and spirit. I said that God created man with a heart to love Him and a spirit to receive Him. I said that man can receive God by means of his spirit and that he can love God with his heart. During my visit, I stayed in the home of one of the leaders of the congregation. I found out that the wife of that brother was very bothered about my speaking concerning the difference between the heart and the spirit. To her realization the two were the same. She felt that I had gone too far in differentiating between the heart and the spirit. The next morning she served us breakfast. As she was coming with the eggs, I said, "Sister, give me an egg." As she gave me an egg, I said again, "Sister, give me an egg." At this, she said, "Brother Lee, here it is." I said, "I surely would love to have an egg." As I said this, I kept my hands off the egg. At first, she did not understand what I was demonstrating. Then I said, "Sister, I would like to show you the difference between receiving and loving. You cannot receive the egg with your heart, and you cannot love the egg with your hands. To love the egg, you must use your heart, but to receive the egg, you must use your hands. God created us with a heart so that we can love Him. But just as I cannot receive the egg without hands, I cannot receive God without a receiving organ. This is why God created a spirit within man as well as a heart." After this brief explanation, the sister received a complete understanding and was very happy.
The word receive is used in a strong way in the Gospel of John. John 1:14 and 16 say, "And the Word became flesh...full of grace and reality....For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace." Many Christians know that the word believe is used many times in the Gospel of John, but few know that the word receive is also used very strongly in this Gospel. John 1:12-13 says, "But as many as received Him, to them He gave the authority to become children of God, to those who believe into His name, who were begotten not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." Verse 12 speaks first of receiving the Son of God; then it speaks of believing into the Son of God. Thus, to receive Christ is to believe into Christ. When we believe into Christ, we receive Christ and thus gain Him.
The purpose of believing into Christ is to be born of God. Before regeneration we were created by God but were not born of Him. We were His creatures, but we were not His children. John 1:12-13 says that those who receive the Son of God through their believing into Him are born of God to be children of God. How wonderful that we fallen, sinful human beings can be born of God to be His children! When the Lord Jesus spoke to Nicodemus about his need to be born anew (John 3:3), Nicodemus misunderstood the Lord's word to mean that he needed to go back to his mother's womb and be born again physically. However, his need was to receive Christ as the Son of God through believing into Him so that he could be born of God to be a child of God.