This bountiful Spirit of Jesus Christ is for the believers to live Christ and magnify Him (Phil. 1:20-21a). Nothing is as hard as living Christ. A person may get a Ph.D., but no one can graduate from living Christ. In order to live Christ, you are not adequate, you are not able, and you are not capable. To live Christ you need the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Every morning of every day you must learn to give yourself to this bountiful supply. You must trust in this bountiful supply and you must rely on this bountiful supply. The bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ sustains you to live Christ.
In marriage life, if either the husband or the wife gives the other a long face, the other party forgets about Christ. The wife may have been enjoying Christ and living Christ all day until the husband gets home at 5:30 p.m. When the husband walks in the door he may not say anything; he only gives his wife a long face. Immediately the wife is bothered and Christ is gone. In this case, the wife did not live Christ, but she lived herself by reacting to her husband’s long face. She reacted to her husband by giving him a longer face. Do not think that this is a small thing. It takes the strongest power, the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, to deal with this small thing. To overcome the long face of your spouse is not easy, so we need the bountiful supply. The bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ is for us to live Christ and to manifest Him in death or in life, in prison or in freedom. To make Christ great in His expression we need the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ.
Philippians 2:12-16 shows us the bountiful Spirit of Jesus Christ as God operating in the believers both the willing and working, for them as luminaries to shine forth the word of life in the world, that they may work out their own salvation. It is God who operates in you the willing and the working. This is the Triune God, the processed God, not merely the God in creation. For God to create the universe was somewhat easy. When He said, “Let there be light,” there was light. In creating the universe God did not operate, He only spoke things into being. In our Christian life, however, God needs to operate, to energize. A young Christian may have the thought of going to a movie. The Triune God, who is this aggregate Spirit, operates and struggles within him to keep him from going and to operate in him both the willing and working to carry out his salvation, to bring it to its ultimate conclusion.
Every day the processed Triune God suffers this struggling within us. To create the universe God spoke it into being. But if God says, “Let there be no movie,” many believers still desire to go to the movie, so God has to operate within them. The only thing we need to do is to obey the inner operating God. He has to exercise His divine, everlasting patience. Some have said that the patience of the Chinese is endless. However, everlasting patience does not belong to the Chinese but to God. God surely exercises His everlasting patience with His chosen and redeemed people. This operating God operates in us both the inner willing and the outer working for His good pleasure. This God is the Spirit, as the Son, with the Father, the consummation of the Triune God, for the believers as luminaries to shine forth the word of life in this world that they may work out their own salvation.
We must realize that God’s salvation is full of many sections. The initial section was our salvation from hell, from eternal perdition. Today, however, we need a practical, present salvation to save us from our temper, our “long face,” our gossiping, and our going to the movies. We need to be saved from many things. We have to work out such a present, daily, and practical salvation for ourselves but not by our own strength. For a husband to overcome his wife’s long face he needs the bountiful supply of the processed Triune God. This processed Triune God is operating in us for the inner willing and the outer working that we may be luminaries shining forth the word of God to work out our own daily, present, and practical salvation.
The bountiful Spirit of Jesus Christ is for the believers to gain Christ and be found in Him, having Him as the righteousness of God for the expression of God (Phil. 3:8-9). This is not to gain Christ positionally. Positionally, we have gained Christ already. Christ is ours, but now we have to gain Christ dispositionally, experientially. To gain Christ means to experience and enjoy Christ. We have to experience and enjoy Christ and be found, be seen, and be discovered by others that we are living in Christ. We should be those not having our own righteousness but having Christ as God’s righteousness expressed from within us.
Finally, the bountiful Spirit of Jesus Christ is to empower the believers to do all things in Christ (Phil 4:13). In this Triune, processed God as the life-giving Spirit, we are empowered to do all things for expressing Christ. The wonderful Person revealed in Ephesians and in Philippians is not merely Christ but the pneumatic Christ. He is not merely the Spirit of God but also the bountiful Spirit of Jesus Christ. He is the Spirit, as the Son, with the Father, being the consummation of the Triune God today in the church. Hallelujah for such a Person!