We have emphasized the fact that the Triune God is a divine and mystical realm. As revealed in the first part of John 14, the Son is in the Father, and the Father is in the Son. In verses 16 through 18 we have a word not only concerning the Father and the Son but also concerning the Spirit: “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Comforter, that He may be with you forever, even the Spirit of reality, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not behold Him or know Him; but you know Him, because He abides with you and shall be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I am coming to you.” The first Comforter was Christ in the flesh, and the other Comforter is the Spirit of reality. The “He” who is the Spirit of reality in verse 17 becomes the “I” who is the Lord Himself in verse 18. This means that the Christ who was in the flesh went through death and resurrection to become the life-giving Spirit, the pneumatic Christ. This is not merely spiritual-it is mystical. We cannot say that the Spirit of reality is spiritual and the Christ who was in the flesh was not spiritual, for when He was in the flesh Christ the Son was surely spiritual. What we need to see here is not something that is spiritual only but something mystical.
Verse 19 continues, “Yet a little while and the world beholds Me no longer, but you behold Me; because I live, you also shall live.” This refers to Christ’s resurrection. Because He lives in resurrection, we also live, for we were regenerated in His resurrection, as revealed in 1 Peter 1:3.
In John 14:20 the Lord Jesus spoke of “that day.” “That day” was the day of His resurrection (20:19), the day on which He became the pneumatized Christ, the pneumatic Christ. Hence, in that day actually means “in the resurrection day.”
Let us now read all of verse 20: “In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.” This refers to the divine and mystical realm where not only the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are but also where the believers are. Praise the Lord that, as believers in Christ, we are now in the divine, mystical realm of the consummated Spirit and the pneumatic Christ!
We all need to enter into the divine and mystical realm, not of the Triune God, but of the consummated Spirit and the pneumatic Christ (Phil. 1:19; Rom. 8:9; 2 Cor. 3:17-18).
John 14:16-18 speaks of another Comforter, the Spirit of reality, to be the reality of the Son realized as the Son’s presence in the believers. The Spirit is the reality of the Son, and the Son’s presence in us is the Spirit.
In the day of the Son’s resurrection, in which the Son became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b), He came to the disciples in the night of that day to breathe into them and asked them to receive the Holy Spirit (John 20:22). If He were not the Spirit, how could He ask the disciples upon whom He was breathing to receive the Spirit? By all this we can know that the Son is in the Father, that the believers are in the Son, and that the Son is in the believers (John 14:19-20).
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