The third aspect of the base of the believers' growth in life is the regeneration of the Spirit as the dove (John 3:5; 1:32) to produce the children of God with the right of the divine life (1:12), who are born of God, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man (v. 13).
Christ is revealed in the first three chapters of John as a lamb, a serpent, and a dove. The Lamb is to deal with our sins, the serpent is to deal with our serpentine nature, and the dove is to impart life into us, to enliven us, to regenerate us. Through the Lamb our sin is gone, through the brass serpent our serpentine poison is terminated, and through the dove we have been regenerated. Before we were regenerated we were serpents, but today we are doves who can soar. Today we have Christ as the Spirit to be the dove within us. Something within us is always trying to soar. Without Christ as the soaring Spirit, we could not bear one another. We all need Christ as the soaring One.
In this life of anxiety, who does not have any trouble? Before a brother was married, he had trouble without a wife. But now that he is married he still has trouble. We cannot escape from the troubles of human life. Where shall we go then? We should simply come to Jesus to enjoy Him as the soaring One. We have been redeemed by Christ as the Lamb slain for us, we have been delivered from the serpentine poison by Christ being the brass serpent to deliver us, and we have been regenerated by Christ as the dove, the soaring Spirit, to enliven us. This is the unchangeable base of our growth in life.
The base of our growth in life is also the eternal life of God (John 3:15; 1 John 1:2), which we have received in our regeneration. This is the divine life, uncreated and indestructible (Heb. 7:16), which is the strongest and most solid base for our growth in life.
God, the processed and consummated Triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit (Matt. 28:19), who dwells in us (1 John 3:24; 4:13), living, moving, acting, and realized as the indwelling and consummated Spirit (John 14:17; 7:39), is the most rich and living base for our growth in life.
Another base for us to grow in the divine life is that the divine seed of God abides in us, enabling us not to practice sin, not to live in sin (1 John 3:9).