Christ the Son not only coexists, but also coinheres with the Father. In the Gospel of John we are told that in eternity past the Son and the Father coexisted, because the Word was with God (John 1:1). When the Son came, He said that He was not alone, that the Father was with Him (John 8:16, 29). So while He was on earth, He and the Father were existing together. But on the other hand, the Lord said that He was in the Father, and the Father was in Him (John 14:10a, 11a; 17:21). Some have said that the Son and the Father are separate, and that the Son just represents the Father. But the Lord said if you have seen Me, you have seen the Father (John 14:9). This is not a matter of representation; this is a matter of embodiment. The Father is totally embodied in the Son (Col. 2:9). When you see the Son, you see the Father, because the Son is the embodiment of the Father. You cannot separate them because the First is embodied in the Second, and the Second is the very embodiment of the First. So the Second is in the First, and the First is in the Second. The two are one.
This is not for doctrine, but for experience on our side and for dispensing on His side. When we called on the Lord and were saved, right away we had the realization that Someone had come into our being. Who was that? Was it the Father, or the Son, or the Spirit? It is hard to say. First, it seems the Son is in us; later it seems the Father is also in us; eventually it seems the Spirit is in us as well. As long as we have the Spirit, we also have the Son and the Father. When we have one, we have three, because the Three are one. This is the dispensing of the Triune God, and this is for our experience.
The Triune God has been dispensed into us. This very Triune God now has to be our very living. We need to forget about so many other things. Our life and our living should not be religion or ethics, but the Triune God. We must live the Triune God. Today this Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—is within us as our life.
Christians today may talk about the Trinity, but after talking, they forget about it and live in their own name. They don’t live in the name they talk about. We must live in the name of the Father, in the name of the Son, and in the name of the Spirit. We should not live in our own name. As long as we live in the name of the Triune God, our living will be marvelous! It will be holy and righteous and even divine. This is much more than being religious or ethical. This is living the Triune God. “For to me to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21), not religion, not ethics, and not even the so-called Pentecostal power. Some Christians claim to have the Pentecostal power, but Paul claimed to have the One who empowered him (Phil. 4:13).
Our Christian life should not be religion or ethics or power, but the Triune God. It should be no more I, but Christ lives in me (Gal. 2:20). Some of the brothers in this country have listened to me since 1963. They can testify that I have never changed my tune, because this is the unique thing that the Lord is going to recover today. And this is the unique thing that we need as Christians who love the Lord. We need to see such a vision that in God’s economy He doesn’t want something else; He only wants to work Himself into our being. Christ the Son coexists and coinheres with the Father so that He with the Father might be dispensed into our being.
As the Son and the Father are coinhering, they are one (John 10:30; 17:22). The Son is one with the Father. This is a mystery which I cannot explain. They are just one. Because they are one, when you see the First, you see the Second.
In John 6:57, Christ the Son said that He lived because of the Father. The King James Version reads that He lived through the Father. These are two different translations of the Greek preposition dia. But according to the grammatical structure, it should read because of, not through. This is more meaningful. The Son lived on earth not just by the Father or through the Father, but because of the Father. His living had a cause. That cause was the Father. The Father was the cause of the Son’s living on earth; the Father was not just an instrument through or by which the Son lived.
Today this very Son should be the cause of our daily living. We should live not only by Him and through Him, but because of Him. He should be the cause of our living on earth. Otherwise, our living would be meaningless. Without the Father as His cause, the Son’s living on earth for thirty-three and a half years would have been altogether vain. But it was not in vain, because the Son’s living had a cause, and this cause was the Father.