The compound Spirit, as the Spirit of life, carries out the dynamic salvation of God organically in regeneration, sanctification, renewing, transformation, and conformation, as we have seen in the past messages. Regeneration, sanctification, renewing, transformation, and conformation are the five major steps of God’s dynamic salvation. In all these aspects the all-inclusive Spirit, as the life-giving Spirit, gives, imparts, dispenses, and distributes the divine life into the believers. This becomes the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ for the believers to live Christ and magnify Christ (Phil. 1:19-21) and to practice the church life as unveiled in the last five chapters of Romans concerning the Body of Christ and the local churches. This is evidenced by Romans 14:17, which says that the righteousness, peace, and joy of such an all-inclusive Spirit are the reality of the kingdom of God in the church life.
Such an all-inclusive Spirit, as the Spirit of life, becomes the seven Spirits of God in the dark age of the church in its degradation (Rev. 1:4; 4:5; 5:6). The compound Spirit was consummated to produce the Body of Christ, the church. But when the church becomes degraded in this dark age, this compound Spirit becomes seven Spirits. The seven Spirits of God are the one Spirit in His sevenfold intensification. This is like the Triune God. He is not three Gods, but one God who is threefold. In the same way, the one Spirit is now sevenfold. The sevenfold Spirit is to make the faithful followers of Jesus Christ the overcomers.
We may have the boldness to admit that we are the faithful followers of Jesus, but whether or not we can be counted as overcomers in God’s eyes, we dare not say. The One who can make us the overcomers is the sevenfold intensified Spirit. Both the sevenfold Spirit and the overcomers are unveiled by the Lord in Revelation. The sevenfold intensified Spirit is for the overcomers. We can never be overcomers by our own strength or effort.
The faithful followers of Jesus have to declare that they overcome their accuser, Satan, not by their own overcoming but by the blood of the Lamb (Rev. 12:11). Every morning I have the strong intention to overcome. But every day before going to bed I have to confess, “Lord, forgive me. I cannot stand before You by my overcoming. Neither can I overcome my adversary, my accuser, by my own merit. Lord, I can stand before You only by the blood of the Lamb. And I can stand against Your enemy and my accuser only by the blood of the Lamb.” When we try to overcome, we still make mistakes. Quite often we are not overcomers, but defeated ones. Then we may ask, “How can we be overcomers?” The Lord says we overcome because of the blood of the Lamb. Do not believe that by doing your best you can succeed in overcoming. Paul said that although he could not find anything wrong with himself, he could not justify himself until the Lord comes (1 Cor. 4:4-5). We have to realize that we always need the blood of Christ and that it is by the sevenfold intensified Spirit that we become overcomers.
The book of Revelation shows that we are to overcome the legality of Judaism, the apostasy of Catholicism, the deadness of Protestantism, and the lukewarmness of the Brethren that we may close the present age of the church. This is clearly unveiled in Revelation 2—3.
This processed Spirit, who has been processed through the incarnation, human living, death, and resurrection of Christ, eventually becomes the realization of Christ, the application of the pneumatized Christ, the pneumatic Christ in the believers’ experience of Him, and the ultimate consummation of the processed and consummated Triune God as the reality of the divine resurrection of Christ in God’s new creation.
The processed all-inclusive Spirit, as the processed and consummated Triune God, marries the redeemed, regenerated, transformed, and glorified tripartite man, and they send a proclamation, as the proclamation of the consummated Triune God with His bride, the church, to the ones who are thirsty for the water of life (Rev. 22:17). The two become a universal couple to be the union of God and man, a mutual habitation of God and man, and the expression of the mingling of God and man in its expansion as the New Jerusalem in the new heaven and new earth for eternity.