In this message we want to see that the Christian life is the living of the processed Triune God as the consummated Spirit in the believers. If we know God only in an objective way, we will not know that God is the processed Triune God as the consummated Spirit. But if we have the subjective experience of God as the Spirit, we know that today God is the processed God.
We may have the assurance that God is our Father and that the Spirit indwells us. But how can the Triune God be our Father and how can the Spirit indwell us? Today we Christians have God as our Father and the indwelling Spirit because of the processes through which the Triune God passed in order to be dispensed into us.
The Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—passed through the processes of incarnation and human living. In order for God to be our Father and for the Spirit to be the indwelling Spirit, the Triune God needed to be incarnated and live on this earth for thirty-three and a half years. Then He had to pass through death on the cross. If He had not died for our sins on the cross, how could God be our Father and how could the Spirit come to dwell in us? There would be no possibility of this.
The Lord went further to pass through the fourth process, the process of resurrection. On the morning of His resurrection, He told one of His lovers, "Go to My brothers and say to them, I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God" (John 20:17). After Christ's resurrection His Father became the Father of us, the believers. On the evening of the day of His resurrection, He breathed into the believers and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit" (John 20:22). He dispensed Himself as the Spirit into them after being processed through incarnation, human living, death, and resurrection. Through Christ's resurrection God is now our Father, and the Spirit is indwelling us.
Our Father is the processed Triune God, and the indwelling Spirit is the consummated Spirit. John 7:39 says that the Spirit was not yet because Jesus had not yet been glorified. Before Jesus' glorification in His resurrection (Luke 24:26), the Spirit was not yet, that is, He was not yet consummated, not yet completed. For the Spirit of the Triune God to come into us, there was the need of a consummation. He needed to be consummated to become the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b), that is, the pneumatic Christ. Then this pneumatic Christ, this life-giving Spirit, could become the indwelling Spirit within us.
The Christian life is to live the processed God as the consummated Spirit. This is according to our experience. What is the difference between us and the unbelievers? The difference is that we, the believers, have Someone within us. Who is this One within us? He is the processed Triune God as the consummated Spirit. The Triune God has been processed to be the consummated Spirit to live in us, the believers in Christ.