According to His New Testament economy the Triune God, after passing through all the processes of incarnation, human living, crucifixion, and resurrection, was consummated to be the all-inclusive, compound Spirit. In His ascension this Spirit was poured out to accomplish the baptism of the Body of Christ. Hence, for the believers to be baptized in this Spirit is to be baptized into one Body that, as His Body, we may be joined to Him as the Head to receive His authority for the carrying out of the divine governmental administration.
The breath breathed into us makes us the members of Christ who are so living and full of life. But all the members of Christ need to be put together to form one Body. This needed another step; therefore, the pneumatic Christ also must be the ascended, exalted Christ. After being exalted, He became the authority of this universe and He poured Himself out upon all the members to authorize them and to put them together to form them into one Body. This Body is the universal government because this Body is united to the Head. Although Christ as the Head of all things is the authority and the government of this universe, He needs a Body to execute His orders. Therefore, the Head and the Body become the authority and government of the entire universe.
Every member of the Body has the authority of the Head. Every member of this Body is a part of the universal government. In this Body and joined to our ascended Head, we have the power, the authority, and the entire universe must respect us. All of the demons and the evil spirits have to fear us. As the resurrected, pneumatic Christ, the Lord dealt with all the negative items in the universe and released Himself into us as our life. He imparted Himself into us essentially as our life to make us His living members. Another step was needed for Him to be exalted to be the authority of the universe, to be the ascended, exalted Christ. Then He poured Himself out as the exalted Christ upon us as authority to make us His Body, the executing organ of the Head. This Body connected to the Head is the government, the administration of this universe. In the Body every member is a part of the universal authority. We are qualified and equipped to carry out the divine administration on this earth. With the pneumatic, ascended, exalted Christ as our heavenly uniform, we have the power and the authority to move and to work to accomplish God’s eternal plan.
The baptism in the Holy Spirit is the outpouring of the Triune God, consummated in the all-inclusive compound Spirit, by the heavenly Head upon His Body on this earth, not for life, but for administration, not as life essentially, but as power economically to carry out God’s economy. This baptism in the Spirit was prophesied by John the Baptist. John told his followers that he was sent to baptize people in water. To baptize people in water is to terminate people in their old realm of life, the world, and bury them. He also told his disciples that One was coming after him who would baptize people in the Spirit (Matt. 3:11). To baptize people in the Spirit is to bring people into a new realm of life, the kingdom of God. For the processed Triune God to be given into us as the Spirit of life is for our germination. Then for the processed Triune God to be poured upon us as the Spirit of power is to bring us into a new kingdom. These two things should be put together since they are both carried out by the same one Spirit (1 Cor. 12:13). The same one Spirit as the Spirit of life germinates us, and as the Spirit of power brings us into a new kingdom. Therefore, all the believers of Christ are Spirit germinated persons, and also persons brought into a new kingdom by the Spirit.
This kind of person is altogether a person of the Spirit, who is the ultimate consummation of the processed Triune God. Such persons are germinated by the Spirit as life, and also brought into a new kingdom by the Spirit as power. These persons are not only germinated, enlivened, and quickened in life, but they are equipped to carry out God’s administration in His kingdom for the fulfillment of His eternal plan. I hope that we all would receive a clear vision of this. The Spirit is the ultimate consummation of the processed Triune God, first, to be breathed into our being, to germinate us, to enliven us, to quicken us, that we may have the processed Triune God as our life essentially. We then become the God-men, living God’s life. Then the Spirit as the ultimate consummation of the processed Triune God brings us into a new kingdom by baptizing us with the power from on high to make us qualified persons in God’s kingdom to carry out His eternal plan.
From Acts 2 these one hundred twenty, including the twelve, all became persons who were enlivened, quickened, and regenerated by the Spirit of life breathed into them by the resurrected Christ in His resurrection to be God-men, living God, expressing God, and also brought into God’s kingdom by the Spirit of power poured upon them by the ascended Christ in His ascension to execute God’s administration. These are the kind of persons we have to be today. We have to be germinated by the Spirit of life essentially, and we have to be empowered by the Spirit of power economically. Then we live God, and we carry out God’s plan. The resurrected Christ’s breathing of the Spirit of life germinates us, making us the members of Christ, and the ascended Christ’s baptizing in the Spirit of power, putting us into the Triune God, makes all the members of Christ one Body. Germinating makes us the members of Christ, but there is another step— the step of baptizing. Baptizing makes us, all His members, one Body. First Corinthians 12:13 says that we all were baptized in one Spirit into one Body. As long as we have been first germinated and then baptized, we become members of Christ and are composed into the one Body of Christ. It is by the breathing Spirit that we are made members of Christ, and it is by the baptizing Spirit that all the members of Christ are made one Body of Christ. Now in this universe, there is the Head in the heavens, and there is the Body on this earth, cooperating together to carry out God’s administration for His eternal plan. Even though we are still in the old heaven and the old earth, we are already in the new heaven and the new earth through the germination of the Spirit of life and the baptism in the Spirit of power.