The Son was working in the Father’s name (John 10:25) and with the Father (John 5:17, 19). This means when the Son was working, He was working with the Father as one. He and the Father were not working separately. In John 14:10b He said, “The words which I speak to you, I do not speak from Myself; but the Father Who abides in Me, He does His works.” While the Son was speaking, the Father was working. This is not two working on the same thing at the same time separately, but two working as one. When the Son spoke the word, the Father was doing the work. The Son’s speaking was the Father’s working.
The Lord told us in John 6:38 that He came down from heaven not to do His own will, but the will of the Father who sent Him. In John 5:30 He said that He did not seek His own will but the will of the Father who sent Him. These words indicate that the Lord as the Son did not carry out His own will but the Father’s.
In John 3:34a; 14:24; 7:16-17; 12:49-50, the Lord made clear to us that when He, as the Son, came He did not speak His own word, but the word of the Father.
The Son was also seeking the Father’s glory (John 7:18). The Son came in the Father’s name, He did the Father’s will, He spoke the Father’s word, and He sought the Father’s glory. It seems that the Son had nothing for Himself, but everything for the Father. Then who is He? He is the wonderful Son who is the embodiment of the Father. The fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him bodily (Col. 2:9). He is the embodiment of the Godhead. This is for the dispensing of Himself into us.
The Son who came in the Father’s name, who did the Father’s will, who spoke the Father’s word, and who sought the Father’s glory also expressed the Father (John 14:7-9). He did not express Himself. He only expressed the Father. He was the Son, yet He expressed the Father.
As the expression of the Father, the Son sent the Spirit from with the Father (John 15:26 and note; 16:7). Why did the Son send the Spirit from with the Father? This is the Trinity! The Son is the embodiment of the Father, and He sent the Spirit from with the Father.
John 3:34 tells us that the Son gives the Spirit to us. After sending the Spirit, the Son gives the Spirit to us without measure.
Eventually, through death and resurrection, the Son became the Spirit (John 20:19-23). First, the Son sent the Spirit; then He gave the Spirit; and eventually He became the Spirit. As the last Adam, He became a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). Hence, the Lord is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17). This is for the dispensing of Himself into us.
Finally, the Son is abiding in us as the Spirit with the Father. In John 14:23 the Lord Jesus said that the Father and He would come to the lover of Him and make their abode with him. This means that the Father and the Son come together to abide in the believers. By the foregoing verses, verses 16-20, we can see that the Son would ask the Father to give them another Comforter, the Spirit of reality. When this Spirit of reality would come, He would not only be with the believers, but also in the believers. Eventually the Lord indicated in verse 18 that the coming One, the Spirit of reality, is actually just Himself. Finally, He said in verse 20, in that day, the day of resurrection, they would know that He was in the Father, and they were in Him, and He was in them. Not only would the Spirit of reality be in them, but even He would be in them. This indicates that He and the Spirit are actually one. Then in chapter seventeen in His prayer to the Father, the Lord Jesus said twice, “I in them” (vv. 23, 26). What is all this? All this is God the Father dispensing Himself into us through God the Son and in God the Son and by God the Spirit. So the entire Godhead—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—is now abiding in us to be one with us. Now in the divine life and in the divine nature He is making us His expression. As genuine Christians we should live a life that lives the Triune God. This is not a life that has anything to do with religion or that expresses ethics. It is a life that purely lives the Triune God and expresses Him. This is the dispensing of the Triune God into us to produce many children of God and many brothers of Christ, so that the Father may have a house, that Christ may have a Body, and that the Spirit may have an organism to express the Triune God. It has nothing to do with religion, with human ethics, or with man’s natural concept and philosophy. It is altogether the dispensing of the Triune God into us for His expression.