In order to empower and encourage His lover to rise up and get away from her down situation in her introspection of the self, Christ empowers her by showing her the power of His resurrection by the gazelle’s leaping upon the mountains and the young hart’s skipping upon the hills (2:8-9). It is by this power of Christ’s resurrection that we, the lovers of Christ, determine to take the cross by denying our self (Matt. 16:24). Have we ever had such a determination? Often we forget what we determined to do before God. We need to be reminded. It is also by this power of Christ’s resurrection that we, the lovers of Christ, are enabled to be conformed to His death (Phil. 3:10), to be one with His cross as staying in the clefts of the rock, in the covert of the precipice (S.S. 2:14).
Christ encourages His seeker by the flourishing riches of His resurrection (2:11-13). The dormant days (winter) are past and the trials (rain) are over and gone. The life in all appearances is blossoming. The time of praising—singing—has come. The fruit tree has ripened in its fruits, and the vines are in blossom, giving forth their fragrance. This is a portrait of the riches of Christ’s resurrection.
Christ, the embodiment of the Triune God, is resurrection (John 11:25) before His death. When He came to the tomb of Lazarus, Christ said to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life.” That “I” is the embodiment of the Triune God, indicating that the entirety of the Triune God is resurrection in the universe. Resurrection is God Himself. We have seen that Christ as the God-man in His humanity was made the firstborn Son of God in resurrection (Acts 13:33; Rom. 1:3-4; 8:29). Christ as the last Adam became the life-giving Spirit in resurrection (1 Cor. 15:45). Also, God regenerated many sons through the resurrection of Christ (1 Pet. 1:3), making them His new creation (2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15).
The resurrected Christ became the life-giving Spirit as the reality of His resurrection (John 11:25). The resurrection of Christ is linked with the Spirit who gives life. This life-giving Spirit indwells our spirit (Rom. 8:11; Eph. 2:22). Hence, our regenerated spirit indwelt by the life-giving Spirit becomes the Holiest of all as God’s dwelling place linked with the Holiest of all in the third heaven (Heb. 4:16).
This Christ as the life-giving Spirit becomes the heavenly ladder that brings heaven to earth and joins the earth to heaven at Bethel—God’s dwelling place in the spirit of the believers on earth (Gen. 28:11-22; John 1:51). While Jacob was escaping from his brother Esau, in the night he had a dream in which he saw a vision of a ladder set up on the earth with its top reaching to heaven. He called the name of that place Bethel, the house of God. The ladder brings heaven to earth and joins earth to heaven. At the end of John 1, Jesus said that the angels of God would ascend and descend upon the Son of Man, indicating that He was that ladder (v. 51).
Jacob’s dream and the Lord’s prophecy are both fulfilled in us. We are a part of God’s house, Bethel, which brings heaven to earth and joins earth to heaven. We need to realize that as the duplication of Christ, we are a heavenly ladder bringing heaven to earth and joining earth to heaven. When we minister Christ to sinners, they will appreciate Christ and receive Christ. This is to bring heaven to the earth. Then when we help them to grow, we are joining them to heaven. Every day we should be persons bringing heaven to earth and joining earth to heaven. This is Bethel, which is our regenerated spirit and the chamber where God dwells.
In order to experience the life-giving Spirit as the reality of resurrection in our spirit, we have to discern our spirit from our soul. In our soul we are the old man (Eph. 4:22), the soulish man, the natural man (1 Cor. 2:14). In our spirit we are the new man (Eph. 4:24), the spiritual man (1 Cor. 2:14-15), that lives and walks in our spirit as God’s Holiest of all, indwelt by and mingled with the life-giving Spirit, the pneumatic Christ. It is in such a mingled spirit that we participate in and experience the resurrection of Christ, the reality of which is the all-inclusive, life-giving, compound Spirit, the consummation of the processed and consummated Triune God.
By this we can see that resurrection has a base, and this base is the death of Christ. This resurrection today is realized in the Spirit. The Spirit is the reality of the resurrection. Thus, these three things—the death of Christ, the resurrection of Christ, and the Spirit of Christ—are the means for us to enjoy Christ, experience Christ, and gain Christ in our spirit. The death, resurrection, and Spirit of Christ are one in our spirit as a living Person, and this living Person is the compound Spirit, the all-inclusive Spirit, as the consummation of the processed and consummated Triune God. We can enjoy, experience, and gain this wonderful One day by day as the resurrection to empower and encourage us to take the way of the cross.