John chapter one is a crucial chapter. It tells us that “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us” (John 1:1, 14). This means that the flesh is the tabernacle. Now you can see that four things are one: God, the Word, the flesh, and the tabernacle. These are not four separate things. They are not even four things in four steps or four stages. They are one thing in four different aspects. God is the Word. The Word became flesh. And the flesh is the tabernacle.
Verse 14 goes on to tell us that when God as the Word became flesh to be the tabernacle, grace and truth came. Two new aspects were added. Now you may say that grace and truth are the tabernacle. When the tabernacle is here, you enjoy grace, and you touch truth. Some Christians who know these spiritual, biblical terms, grace and truth, would define grace as unmerited favor, and they would mainly consider truth to be doctrine.
Have you ever heard that grace is the tabernacle? Have you ever heard that the truth is the tabernacle? If you have never entered into the tabernacle, you don’t know what truth is, and you don’t know what grace is. When you enter into the tabernacle, you not only know the grace, you enjoy the grace. Grace is more than unmerited favor. Grace is free enjoyment. Grace to us today is the free enjoyment of God. Today we enjoy as grace the processed Triune God as the all-inclusive, life-giving, and indwelling Spirit! This is our portion. We have the enjoyment of such a God who is processed, who is triune, who is all-inclusive, who is indwelling, who is the Spirit. The enjoyment of such a God is grace. Our God is processed, and now He is such a Spirit. He is also indwelling us in our spirit. He has been located. If you are seeking God you don’t need to go anywhere. He is in your spirit. Isn’t this wonderful!
He is in your spirit, but how shall you enjoy Him? This is a mystery. I have used our physical body many times in the past as an illustration. Our physical being does have a bios, a biological life. Not even doctors who have been working on this body for years can tell us the mystery of the bios in our body. It is here, but no one can fully understand it. It is too mysterious! We also have a spirit. This is mysterious, but it is not superstitious. Don’t forget that even electricity is a mystery. Although it is mysterious it is still believable.
We must know how to enjoy the processed and even located God. If we don’t know how to enjoy God, we could never have the proper meeting. Our meetings would become services. We would need either some bishops or pastors or ministers or preachers or elders or leading ones to take care of the meetings. They would need to take care of the meetings because you come with nothing. You come empty-handed. Whenever you come with nothing and someone else has to function, that is a service. We all have to hate that kind of thing. To have the proper meeting needs the proper enjoyment of the very God whom we have.
This is why we come to the Gospel of John. This Gospel tells us the way to enjoy the very God. In the beginning was God, and this God was the Word. This Word became the flesh, and this flesh is the tabernacle. The tabernacle is just the grace we enjoy and the truth we realize. After this comes a seventh aspect, the Lamb of God (1:29). Chapter after chapter there are so many items in the Gospel of John for us to enjoy.
This book also shows us the way to enjoy this wonderful portion, our processed, located, and indwelling God. This Gospel has the only verse in the entire Bible which says that the Lord Jesus is the way. Many Christians have applied this verse to their situation, saying that the Lord is the way for them to get a job and the Lord is the way for them to get a wife and the Lord is the way for them to discipline and educate and teach their children. Of course this is not bad, but it is not adequate.
You have to learn to apply Christ as the way to enjoy God. Have you ever prayed this way? “O Father, I don’t know how to enjoy You, but the Son, Jesus Christ, whom You have given me is the way.” If you read John 14:6 in its context you can see that Christ is the way for you to contact God and to enjoy God, not just for you to get a job or to get a wife. If you don’t know how to take Christ as your way to enjoy God, you don’t really know that He is the way. The Gospel of John shows us that Christ is the way to enter into God and to enjoy Him.
According to the types in the Old Testament, we can see clearly that no one is qualified in himself to enter into the tabernacle. Every one who wants to enter into the tabernacle needs to pass by the altar where two offerings are needed— the sin offering and the trespass offering. Without these two offerings you are not qualified, and you have no way to enter into the tabernacle. If you enter into the tabernacle without these two offerings, you will die. God as the tabernacle is here and ready for us to enter so that we may enjoy grace and truth. But the problem is that you are a person with sin in your nature and with trespasses in all your behavior. How could such a person enter into this tabernacle? You need the Lamb of God!
Actually the Gospel of John tells us even more. He was not only the Lamb to take away our sin. He was also the brass serpent in chapter three. He was such a brass serpent lifted up on the tree, that is, on the cross to nail the old serpent, Satan, to the cross. In chapter one as the Lamb of God, He took away our sin. In chapter three as the brass serpent, He nailed Satan, the old serpent, the source of all the problems, on the cross.
It is through Christ as our sin offering and our trespass offering that we enter into the tabernacle. Without the offerings we do not have the qualification to enter into the tabernacle. We come to the altar, to the cross, not just to come to the altar, but to enter into the tabernacle. We come to the cross with the intention of entering into the processed, tabernacled God. Our intention is not to enter into God in the third heavens. If He is only in the third heavens we cannot enter into Him. But He is the tabernacled God in our spirit! You must realize that His tabernacling is His dwelling and even His indwelling.
According to the concept in the New Testament, tabernacling and indwelling are synonyms. When God is indwelling you, that means that He is tabernacling in you. We come to the cross taking Him as our sin offering and our trespass offering with the intention of entering into the tabernacled God. And this God into whom we enter is not so simple. Even the tabernacle as a type was not so simple. It had an outer court and an inner court. It had so many items of furniture, including the showbread table, the lampstand, the ark, and the incense altar. God is not so simple. We need to experience Him and to enjoy Him and to participate in Him.