God’s intention is to mingle Himself with us and work Himself into us. The first picture in the Bible after the creation of man is that of God presenting Himself to man as the tree of life in the form of food for man to take and eat (Gen. 2:8-9). To eat is to enjoy, and whatever we enjoy by eating becomes mingled with us. God intends to offer Himself to us that we may enjoy Him all the time. In this way He can be life and everything to us and even become the very constituent of our being.
God as enjoyment to us is in Christ. Christ is the very embodiment of God; all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ bodily (Col. 2:9); that is, all that God is, is embodied in Christ. Christ comes as the embodiment of God for us to take, eat, drink, and enjoy. Christ Himself told us that He came as the heavenly bread of life for us to eat and the living water for us to drink (John 6:51; 7:37-38). To eat and drink of Christ is to take Him as our enjoyment. Christ is the very embodiment of God that we may partake of and enjoy Him.
Christ came as the embodiment of God to be enjoyed by us firstly as the Word and eventually as the Spirit. We can see this clearly in the Gospel of John. In the beginning there was Christ as the Word (1:1). The Word is the expression, definition, and revelation of God. In the Gospel of John, God is expressed and revealed through the life and walk of the Lord Jesus while He was on this earth. It is through Him that we know the fullness of God, what kind of God He is, and how He is our enjoyment. While Christ was with His disciples, the disciples heard Him, beheld Him, and handled Him (1 John 1:1). Every day they “read” the living Word. If someone were to remain with us morning to evening, day and night, we eventually would “read” him in a thorough way. For three and a half years Peter and the other disciples constantly read something of Christ, not in black and white letters but as a living Person. By the disciples’ reading of Christ for three and a half years they came to know who He was.
However, Christ was able only to be among them. At that time He was not in them. Therefore, they were able only to know Him, not to fully enjoy Him. In order to eat something, it must be slain, cut into pieces, and cooked. Then the thing we previously only beheld will become a delicious meal to take, taste, and enjoy. This is what the Lord Jesus told the disciples after He had stayed with them for three and a half years. He told them that He would be crucified. To be crucified is to be slain, to be “put on the fire and cooked.” To be cooked is to be transformed, to change into another form that can be eaten. By His crucifixion and resurrection Christ was transfigured from the flesh into the Spirit. After the four Gospels, this Word became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b; 2 Cor. 3:17).
In the Epistles we do not see Christ mainly as the Word. Only 1 John 1:1 mentions Him as the Word. However, the Acts and the Epistles tell us a number of times that Christ is the Spirit. In the four Gospels Christ is the Word as the expression and revelation of God, but in the Acts and the Epistles Christ is the Spirit as our enjoyment. It is when Christ became the Spirit that He could be our enjoyment. As the Word, Christ was the revelation, but as the Spirit, He is our enjoyment, realization, and experience. When Christ was with the early disciples in the four Gospels for those three and a half years, He was a revelation to them, but He was not a realization to them since they could not experience Him. After the day of resurrection and the day of Pentecost, however, Christ was no longer only a revelation. Christ became experience to the disciples because He had become the life-giving Spirit dwelling in their spirit (Rom. 8:16; 2 Tim. 4:22), not merely for them to understand, see, and know but for them to enjoy, partake of, and experience. In order to know Christ, we have to know Him as the Word, and in order to experience Christ, we have to experience Him as the life-giving Spirit. Christ being the Word is for our knowing Him; Christ being the Spirit is for our enjoying and experiencing Him.