Romans 8:9-11 presents Christ as the Spirit of Christ. The Spirit of Christ is Christ Himself whom we can experience and enjoy. If Christ did not become the Spirit after His death and resurrection, He could not be experienced by us. If Christ were not the Spirit, He could never enter into us. It is impossible for Christ in the flesh to enter into us; it is only as the Spirit that He can enter into us.
This is fully revealed in John 14. In verse 17 the Lord Jesus spoke to the disciples regarding the Spirit of reality: “He abides with you and shall be in you.” In verse 18 the Lord went on to tell them, “I will not leave you as orphans; I am coming to you.” The very “He” who is the Spirit of reality in verse 17 becomes the “I” who is the Lord Himself in verse 18. This means that the Christ who was in the flesh went through death and resurrection to become the life-giving Spirit, the pneumatic Christ (1 Cor. 15:45). John 14:17 also reveals that the Spirit abides with and in the believers; it is by being the Spirit that the Lord enters into us and abides in us. In this verse we find the first mention of the Spirit’s indwelling. It is fulfilled and fully developed in the Epistles (1 Cor. 6:19; Rom. 8:9-11).
Moreover, in John 14:28 the Lord Jesus said to the disciples, “I am going away and I am coming to you.” This means that He would go to the cross as a man in the flesh, that is, as the last Adam, but He would come back to the disciples as one who is transfigured, transformed, from the flesh into the Spirit, the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). John 20:22 indicates that when Christ in His resurrection came back to the disciples, He came to them as the pneumatic Christ, the Christ who is the Spirit, and breathed Himself as the Spirit into them. Apart from His being the life-giving Spirit, that is, the Spirit of Christ, it is impossible for Christ to enter into us in order to become our experience for our enjoyment.
We must minister the truth that Christ is the life-giving Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, regardless of whether Christianity accepts or opposes us on account of this truth. If Martin Luther had cared for whether the Catholic Church would accept or oppose his preaching of justification by faith, he would not have been used by God to recover that particular truth. The Lord has commissioned us with the truth that Christ is the life-giving Spirit. We can testify from our experience that apart from Christ being the Spirit we cannot enjoy Him. Conversely, when we turn to our spirit and declare that Christ is now the life-giving Spirit, we are beside ourselves with our enjoyment of Christ. The following chorus of one of our hymns speaks of our enjoyment of Christ’s being the Spirit.
O Lord, Thou art the Spirit!
How dear and near to me!
How I admire Thy marvelous
Availability!
Hymns, #539
Today there is need of the recovery of the truth that Christ is the life-giving Spirit, the Spirit of Christ.