The Gospel of John shows us that God in Christ as the Spirit becomes our enjoyment and everything to us. God is expressed and embodied in His Son, who is the Word. When a thought is expressed by a word, that thought is embodied. Our word expresses our concept and is the concrete embodiment of our abstract thought. The very God who intends to be our enjoyment as everything to us is expressed and embodied in His Son. The Son, as the Word become flesh, was God’s manifestation on earth for thirty-three and a half years. Then He was crucified and resurrected. By means of His death and resurrection, He was transformed from the flesh into the Spirit. He became a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b), and this Spirit who gives life is the breath of life breathed into us.
We can realize, enjoy, and experience all the riches of Christ by contacting the life-giving Spirit within us. The Word is the definition and revelation of Christ’s riches. By the Word we can know and understand them, but we still cannot realize them. We can realize the riches of Christ in the Word through the Spirit. The Word reveals these riches to us, and by the Word we can know them. In the Spirit we can realize and experience them. Thus, we first have to learn how to read and understand the Word. Then we have to learn how to realize the riches of Christ by contacting the Spirit. If we have merely the Word, we can have only the knowledge of the riches of Christ in our mind. We need to have the realization and experience of them in the Spirit.
Today Christ is not only the Word but also the Spirit. He is the Word for us to understand and the Spirit for us to realize, enjoy, and experience. Thus, whatever is in the Word must be realized in the Spirit. We have to learn how to read the Word and contact the Spirit. By the Word we can know all the riches of Christ. By the Spirit we can realize and experience all the riches of Christ which are revealed in the Word.
The Gospel of John shows us that God is expressed and embodied in Christ and that Christ becomes the reality as the Spirit for us to partake of and enjoy. Now we need to consider the way to enjoy Christ revealed in John. John 3:6 speaks of our regenerated spirit: “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” If we are going to partake of and enjoy this wonderful One, our spirit has to be regenerated. This is the initiation. John not only shows us how God in Christ as the Spirit becomes our enjoyment but also tells us the organ we need to enjoy this One. This organ is our regenerated spirit.
John 4:23-24 says clearly that God is Spirit and that we must worship Him in our spirit. Whatever He is, is in the Spirit because He is Spirit. Although God is many items, He is one substance. God is light, but the substance of this light is Spirit. God is life, but the substance of this life is Spirit. If we are going to contact Him, worship Him, enjoy Him, and experience Him, we must do this in our spirit. First, our spirit must be regenerated; then we must have our spirit exercised that we may contact God.
John 4:14 goes on to tell us that when we drink of Christ as the living water, He becomes within us a spring of water gushing up into eternal life. In us, that is, in our spirit, there is Christ as the spring of living water. John 7:38 says that out from the innermost being of the one who drinks of Christ will flow rivers of living water. Our innermost being is our spirit. Thus, in the Gospel of John, the human spirit is revealed as the very organ by which we can enjoy this rich Christ.
Home | First | Prev | Next