In Matthew 18:17 the Lord Jesus says, “If he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church.” Whereas the church revealed in 16:18 is the universal church, the unique Body of Christ, the church revealed here is the local church, the expression of the unique Body of Christ in a certain locality. Chapter sixteen relates to the universal building of the church, but chapter eighteen relates to the local practice of the church. The universal church in 16:18 requires the practicality of the local church in 18:17. Without the local church the universal church cannot be practiced. The local church is the practicality of the universal church. The universal church as the Body of Christ is expressed through the local churches. The universal church, therefore, is realized in the local churches.
In John 14:1-16:25a we have the Lord’s teaching concerning the dispensing of the Triune God into His believers, making them parts of the organism of the Triune God. John 14:1-31 reveals the dispensing of the Triune God for the producing of His abode. Verses 1 through 6 speak of Jesus going through death and Christ coming in resurrection to bring the believers into the Father. In verse 2 the Lord says, “In My Father’s house are many abodes; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.” The Father’s house, according to the book’s own interpretation in 2:16 and 21, is the temple, the body of Christ, as God’s dwelling place. At first the body of Christ was His individual body. Through His death and resurrection the body of Christ has increased to be His corporate Body, including all His believers, regenerated through His resurrection (1 Pet. 1:3), who are the church. In His resurrection, the church is the Body of Christ, which is the house of God (1 Tim. 3:15; 1 Pet. 2:5; Heb. 3:6), God’s habitation (Eph. 2:21-22), God’s temple. The many abodes in John 14:2 are the many members of the Body of Christ (Rom. 12:5), which is God’s temple. This is proved by John 14:23, which says that the Lord and the Father will make an abode with the one who loves Him.
In 14:3 the Lord Jesus goes on to say, “If I go and prepare a place for you, I am coming again and will receive you to Myself, that where I am you also may be.” This word indicates that Christ’s going (through His death and resurrection) is His coming (to the disciples-vv. 18, 28). He came in the flesh (1:14) and was among His disciples, but He could not get into them in the flesh. It was necessary for Him to take the further step of passing through death and resurrection so that He might be transfigured from the flesh into the Spirit in order to come into them and dwell in them, as revealed in 14:17-20.
Christ’s intention is to bring man into God for the building of His dwelling place. But between man and God there are many obstacles, such as sin, sins, death, the world, the flesh, the self, the old man, and Satan. For the Lord Jesus to bring man into God He had to solve all these problems. Therefore, He had to go to the cross to accomplish redemption so that He might open the way and make a standing for man to get into God. The standing in God, being enlarged, becomes the standing in the Body of Christ. Anyone who does not have the standing, a place, in God, does not have a place in the Body of Christ, which is God’s dwelling place. Hence, Christ’s going to accomplish redemption was to prepare a place in His Body for the disciples.
The Lord Jesus is in the Father. He wanted His disciples also to be in the Father, as revealed in 17:21. Through His death and resurrection He brought His disciples into Himself. Because He is in the Father, so they also are in the Father by being in Him.
John 14:7-20 reveals the Triune God dispensing Himself into the believers. In verses 7 through 14 we have the Father embodied in the Son seen among the believers, and in verses 15 through 20, the Son realized as the Spirit abiding in the believers. This chapter unveils the Triune God for the dispensing of Himself into the believers. He is the only one God, yet He is three-the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The Son is the embodiment and expression of the Father, and the Spirit is the reality and realization of the Son. In the Son (the Son is even called the Father-Isa. 9:6) the Father is expressed and seen, and as the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17) 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 men, and God the Spirit enters into man to be his life, life supply, and everything. Hence, the Father in the Son and the Son as the Spirit is man’s portion so that man may enjoy the Triune God.
Regarding the Son realized as the Spirit, verses 16 and 17 say, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Comforter, that He may be with you forever; even the Spirit of reality, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not behold Him or know Him; but you know Him, because He abides with you and shall be in you.” The Spirit promised here has been referred to in 7:39. This is the Spirit of life (Rom. 8:2), and this promise of the Lord was fulfilled on the day of His resurrection, when the Spirit was breathed into the disciples as the breath of life (John 20:22).
The very “He” who is the Spirit of reality in John 14:17, becomes the very “I” who is the Lord Himself in verse 18. This indicates that after His resurrection the Lord became the Spirit of reality, as confirmed in 1 Corinthians 15:45b.
In 14:20 the Lord Jesus goes on to say, “In that day you shall know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.” The day here refers to the day of Christ’s resurrection. Since His resurrection the Lord lives in His disciples and they live by Him, as mentioned in Galatians 2:20.
In 14:21-24 the Lord speaks regarding the Triune God making His abode with the believers. In verse 23 He says, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make an abode with him.” The abode here is one of the many abodes spoken of in verse 2. Eventually, this will be a mutual abode for the Triune God to abide in the believers and for the believers to abide in Him.
John 14:25-31 reveals the Comforter’s reminding and Christ’s peace. Verse 26 says, “The Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and remind you of all things which I said to you.” The Comforter, the Holy Spirit, will be sent by the Father in the Son’s name. Hence, the Holy Spirit comes in the Son’s name to be the reality of the name. The name is the Son Himself, and the Spirit is the person, the being, of the Son. Therefore, when we call on the name of the Son, we receive the Spirit (1 Cor. 12:3).
John 15:1-16:4 reveals the organism of the Triune God in the divine dispensing. In 15:1 the Lord says, “I am the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman.” This true vine, which is the Son, with its branches, which are the believers in the Son, is the organism of the Triune God in God’s economy to grow with His riches and to express His divine life.
Literally, the Greek word for “husbandman” here means cultivator of the soil, land-worker, farmer (2 Tim. 2:6; James 5:7; Matt. 21:33). Thus, the Father, as the husbandman, is the source, the author, the planner, the planter, the life, the substance, the soil, the water, the air, the sunshine, and everything to the vine. The Son as the vine is the center of God’s economy and the embodiment of all the riches of the Father. The Father, by cultivating the Son, works Himself with all His riches into this vine, and eventually the vine expresses the Father through its branches in a corporate way. This is the Father’s economy in the universe.
In 15:26 the Lord says, “When the Comforter comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of reality who proceeds from the Father, He will testify concerning Me.” The sense of the Greek word rendered “from” is “from with.” The Spirit of reality is sent by the Son, not only from the Father but also with the Father. The Comforter comes from the Father and with the Father. The Father is the source. When the Spirit comes from the source, He does not leave the source but the source comes with Him. This Spirit, sent by the Son and coming with the Father, will testify concerning the Son. Therefore, His testimony concerning the Son is a matter of the Triune God.
The Lord’s word in 16:5-33 reveals the work of the Spirit unto the mingling of divinity with humanity. In verses 5 through 7 we see the Son’s going for the Spirit’s coming. Verses 8 through 15 reveal the work of the Spirit to convict the world (vv. 8-11) and to glorify the Son by revealing Him with the fullness of the Father to the believers (vv. 12-15). The work of the Spirit is first to convict the world, and then, as the Spirit of reality, to guide the believers into all the reality (v. 13). This is to make all that the Son is and has real to the believers. All that the Father is and has is embodied in the Son (Col. 2:9), and all that the Son is and has is revealed as reality to the believers through the Spirit (John 16:14-15). This is to glorify the Son with the Father. Hence, it is a matter of the Triune God wrought into and mingled with the believers. Finally, the Spirit will disclose the things to come, which are mainly revealed in Revelation (Rev. 1:1, 19). These three aspects of the Spirit’s work correspond to the three sections of John’s writing: the Gospel, the Epistles, and the Revelation.
John 16:16-24 reveals the Son born in resurrection as a newborn child. In verses 21 and 22 the Lord Jesus says, “When a woman gives birth she has sorrow, because her hour has come; but when she brings forth the child, she no longer remembers the affliction because of the joy that a man has been born into the world. And you therefore now indeed have sorrow; but I shall see you again and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you.” Here the Lord indicates that the disciples would be like a woman travailing in birth and that He would be the child to be brought forth in His resurrection (Acts 13:33; Heb. 1:5; Rom. 1:4). After being born in resurrection, He came to see the disciples in the evening of the day of His resurrection, and the disciples rejoiced at His presence (John 20:20).
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