Life is the divine element of the person of Christ. If we have Christ, we possess the divine element, which is His divine constitution of all the attributes of what God is. In regeneration we have received this life, and in the growth of the divine life through sanctification, renewing, transformation, etc., we participate in the reality of Christ, which is the way for us to enter into the Body of Christ, which is the Father's house that consummates the New Jerusalem.
The Comforter refers first to Christ coming in the flesh to be the first Comforter (Paraclete) to take care of our cases and affairs. In His first stage He was the first Comforter; in His second stage He is the second Comforter. The first stage is Christ in the flesh, from His incarnation to His death, and the second stage is Christ as the life-giving Spirit, the pneumatic Christ. In the second stage Christ as the Spirit is our second Comforter both in us and in heaven before God the Father (John 14:16-17; 1 John 2:1).
In John 14 the Lord said that He would ask the Father to give us another Comforter, that is, the Spirit of reality. The Lord said that when the Spirit of reality came, He would be not only with us but also in us. Verse 20 says, "In that day [the day of resurrection] you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you." Christ is in the Father, and we are in Christ. This means that we are in the Father also by being in Christ. We and He are in the Father at the same time. Also, Christ is in us. Since Christ is in the Father, the Father is also in us with Christ. This is not merely union or mingling but an incorporation. The Triune God has been incorporated into us, and we have been incorporated into the Triune God. John 14:20 reveals three parties with three ins. This is a divine and mystical incorporation.
Christ is now the all-inclusive consummated Spirit (John 20:22). In the Gospel of John, a book of the divine, mystical life in the divine, mystical realm, Christ is first the very God (1:1), and He eventually is consummated as the all-inclusive Spirit.
In the evening on the day of resurrection, Christ came to the disciples, who were in a room with the doors shut (John 20:19). Then He breathed into them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit" (v. 22). The Spirit as breath was breathed into the disciples for their life. By breathing the Spirit into the disciples, the Lord imparted Himself into them as life and everything.
The consummated Spirit is the Holy Spirit of God processed through Christ's death and resurrection to become the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b), who is the consummation of the earthly ministry of Christ and the ending of Christ's speaking from His incarnation, God becoming the flesh, to His transfiguration of the flesh, the last Adam becoming the life-giving Spirit. In the next message we will fellowship about the consummated Spirit in more detail.