Romans 8:11 says, “If the Spirit of the One who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who indwells you.” The One who raised Jesus from the dead was the Spirit of separation. This same Spirit of resurrection, who dwells in us, will also give life to our mortal bodies. This means that the reality of resurrection and the principle of resurrection dwell in us. The principle of resurrection is the separation produced by the eternal Spirit, the One who could never be terminated by death.
Seeing that the principle of resurrection is in the eternal Spirit of separation, we must ask where this Spirit is today. We must say, “Hallelujah, He is in me!” Therefore, the principle of resurrection also is in us. May the Lord open our eyes to see the principle of the cross and the principle of resurrection, that is, that everything was ended by death, and the eternal Spirit now dwells in us. If we see this, we will be transcendent. We will say Hallelujah! There is no need for us to beg, to ask, or to cry. We only need to say Hallelujah all the time.
John 11:25 tells us that Christ Himself is the resurrection. Martha, the sister of the dead Lazarus, complained that the Lord came too late (v. 21). It seemed to her that resurrection and life were a matter of time. If the Lord had come earlier, she reasoned, her brother would not have died. On the contrary, the Lord told her, in effect, that it was not a matter of time or space but a matter of Christ. He said, “I am the resurrection.” We need to forget about time and space; wherever Christ is and whenever Christ is, there is always resurrection.
On the day of His resurrection, when Christ came to His disciples, He breathed into them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (20:22). This very Spirit whom the disciples received included the principle and reality of Christ’s resurrection. Without this Spirit the disciples could have nothing to do with Christ’s resurrection. Christ’s resurrection is in this Spirit. If we have this Spirit, we have the reality of resurrection; if we do not have this Spirit, we have nothing to do with resurrection. Resurrection is simply Christ Himself, and the principle and reality of Christ’s resurrection is the eternal Spirit, who can never be ended. This eternal Spirit, who is without beginning and without ending, is the very principle and the very reality of resurrection. Anything else that is put to death will be ended; only the eternal Spirit cannot be held or terminated by death. So that they might be one with Him in His resurrection, after His resurrection Christ as resurrection came to His disciples and breathed into them, telling them to receive His breath as the eternal Spirit, the Spirit of separation. This very eternal Spirit, as the principle and reality of resurrection, came into the disciples, and this principle and this reality are now in us.
Two more verses will help us to understand this. In Philippians 1:19 Paul speaks of “the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ.” He seemed to be telling the Philippian believers, “I am in prison, but I am not afraid, for within me there is the principle and the reality of resurrection. What is this resurrection within me? It is the Spirit of Jesus Christ with His bountiful, all-inclusive, all-sufficient supply.” Then in Philippians 3:10 Paul says, “To know Him and the power of His resurrection.” What is the power of Christ’s resurrection? It is the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. The bountiful, all-inclusive, all-sufficient supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ is the power of Christ’s resurrection. This power and this supply are nothing less than the eternal Spirit, the Spirit of separation, and this Spirit is within us today. Is this Spirit not sufficient for us? What more could we want? We should say Hallelujah! We need to thank the Lord for His cross, and we need to praise Him also for His Spirit. His cross has ended everything negative, and now His eternal Spirit is indwelling us as the power of resurrection.
To summarize, we can never have a genuine experience of the cross unless we are in the eternal Spirit. No matter how much we know concerning the cross and how much we talk about it, if we are not in the eternal Spirit, we can never experience the power of the cross. The more we live and walk in the eternal Spirit of separation, the more we will realize the killing power of the cross (Gal. 5:16, 24). There is no further need for us to reckon ourselves dead; to do this is to commit spiritual suicide. Although many Christians try to commit spiritual suicide daily, they can never succeed. If we simply live and walk in the Spirit, who is the all-inclusive dose within us, we will experience the killing power of the cross. Since the principle and reality of both Christ’s resurrection and His death are in the eternal Spirit, we can say that resurrection also includes the effectiveness of Christ’s death. In the eternal Spirit of resurrection there is the killing factor, the killing power of the cross.
As long as we are in the all-inclusive Spirit, the experience of the cross is ours, and the reality of the resurrection is within us. There is no need for us to do anything but receive this reality by living faith. If we see this, we will say, “Hallelujah, praise the Lord!” We have the living faith, and we receive this reality and claim it by faith. Then the principles of the cross and of the resurrection will be real to us in the indwelling Spirit. We already have Him within us. There is no need for us to ask anymore; we only need to take Him and experience Him and enjoy Him. Then we will experience a real growth in life. I can assure you of this. This is a vision that we need to see and take by faith.