In this message we shall consider further what Christ is in His person to the believers.
For the believers’ experience and enjoyment Christ is the life-giving Spirit. First Corinthians 15:45b says, “The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit.” The last Adam was Jesus Christ in the flesh. As a man in the flesh, He was the Lamb of God who took away our sins. Furthermore, when He was crucified, He dealt with our natural life and our self. This made it possible for us to receive the divine life. After dying on the cross, the last Adam, our Redeemer, became in His resurrection the life-giving Spirit to impart Himself into us as life.
When we believed in the Lord Jesus and received Him as our Redeemer, it was the life-giving Spirit who came into us. We may not realize that we have received the Lord Jesus not only as the Redeemer and the Savior but also as the life-giving Spirit. When we believed in Christ, we knew that we were sinful. Therefore, we prayed, repented, confessed, and received Him as our Redeemer. Although we received Him as our Redeemer, He came into us not only as the Redeemer, but also as the life-giving Spirit for the purpose of dispensing life into us. As the life-giving Spirit He is the life-dispensing Spirit.
The life-giving Spirit is the reality and the life pulse of Christ’s resurrection. If Christ had merely been resurrected with a body and had not become the life-giving Spirit, His resurrection would not mean nearly as much to us. It would simply be an objective fact unrelated to life and would then be comparable to the resurrection of Lazarus. The resurrection of Lazarus was merely an act of resurrection; it did not produce anything related to life. But Christ’s resurrection is absolutely a matter related to life, for in resurrection He became the life-giving Spirit to dispense life into the believers. Therefore, resurrection was not merely an objective act accomplished by Christ, but is very much related to us subjectively. Resurrection was not only an act in itself; it was also a process to bring forth the life-giving Spirit. Through the process of resurrection Christ, who ended the old creation, became the life-giving Spirit, the germinating element of the new creation. When Christ entered into resurrection, He became the Spirit who gives life. Actually, this life-giving Spirit is the processed Triune God. The Triune God has passed through the process of incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection, and now in resurrection He is the life-giving Spirit with the life essence to germinate the new creation. We have become the new creation germinated by the processed Triune God as the life-giving Spirit.
Furthermore, the life-giving Spirit is the totality of all Christ is as the all-inclusive One. First Corinthians unveils that the Christ who is the portion of all believers and into whose fellowship we have been called (1:2, 9) is all-inclusive. He is God’s power and God’s wisdom as righteousness, sanctification, and redemption to us (1:24, 30); our glory for our glorification (2:7), hence, the Lord of glory (2:8); the depths of God (2:10); the unique foundation of God’s building (3:11); our Passover (5:7), the unleavened bread (5:8), the spiritual food, and the spiritual rock flowing out the spiritual drink (10:3-4); the Head (11:3) and the Body (12:12); the firstfruit (15:20, 23), the second Man (15:47), and the last Adam. As such an all-inclusive One, He is now the life-giving Spirit, the totality of all He is for our experience and enjoyment.
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