In the New Testament whenever the redemption of Christ is preached, it is preached with the power of the Holy Spirit. It is never proclaimed apart from the Spirit. If we had the grating without the four rings, the grating would lose its strength and power. I repeat, the power of the grating relies on the four rings. This signifies that the power, strength, and effectiveness of Christ’s redemption relies on the Holy Spirit.
Although I was born into Christianity and raised in Christianity, I never heard a message telling me that Christ’s redemption is linked to the Holy Spirit. I heard many messages on Christ’s accomplishment of redemption, but not a word on the connection between redemption and the Holy Spirit. This preaching of the gospel is very different from that of Peter, John, and Paul. When Peter preached the gospel on the day of Pentecost, he did not say that those who were baptized would receive redemption. He said that the ones baptized would receive the promise of the Spirit. God in ancient times promised a great blessing to our forefather, Abraham. That great blessing is the Holy Spirit (Gal. 3:14). We need to be baptized because we need to receive this blessing. This was the reason Peter told the people to repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ in order to receive the promised Spirit (Acts 2:38-39). Paul preached the gospel in the same way. In Galatians 3 he says that Christ bore our curse on the cross so that through Him we may receive the promise of the Spirit.
When I was young, I never heard a message saying that Christ died for our sins so that we might receive the Spirit. I never heard such a gospel. I only heard that Christ died for our sins so that we might be forgiven and one day go to heaven. Those who preached this gospel knew about Christ dying for our sins and they knew about heaven, but they did not know the Spirit.
It is crucial for us to realize that apart from the Spirit the redemption of Christ is a lifeless redemption, a dead redemption. Even a human being is dead apart from the spirit. The reason we are alive is that we have the spirit. As soon as the spirit leaves a person’s body, the body becomes a corpse. The Bible regards sinners as dead ones because their spirit is dead. But we become alive when our spirit is enlivened and recovered. Just as a person is dead apart from the spirit, so the redemption of Christ is dead apart from the Holy Spirit. Many Christians today are preaching a dead redemption. They have a grating without the four rings. The Bible, however, declares a living redemption, a redemption typified by the grating with the four rings.
The redemption of Christ accomplished under the righteous judgment of God was signified by the bronze grating upheld by the four rings at its four ends. Christ’s redemption was accomplished not only through the Spirit but also unto the Spirit. This means that Christ’s redemption has an issue, a result. The result of the redemption of Christ is not merely the forgiveness of sins; it is not simply redemption itself, or salvation through redemption. The unique issue of the redemption of Christ is the Spirit.
In the Gospels Christ spoke of the coming of the Spirit. The Gospels even open with a word about Christ being the One who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. In the Gospel of John Christ spoke of the Spirit as another Comforter who was to come (14:16). Christ was the Forerunner who cut the way so that the Spirit, the other Comforter, could come. This was the reason that when He was about to die, He told the disciples that He would pray for the coming of the Spirit of reality.
The Gospel of John also tells us that the Spirit was not yet until Christ was glorified (7:39). After Christ’s resurrection, that is, after His glorification, He came to the disciples, breathed on them, and told them to receive the Holy Spirit (John 20:22). He told them to receive the second Comforter, the holy pneuma. Actually, this second One was the first. Christ Himself became the life-giving Spirit. Thus, the second is the reality of the first. Now this One has come into all the redeemed ones and is present with them, as revealed in Acts and the Epistles.
The Epistles speak of the Spirit in our spirit, the Holy Spirit in the human spirit. This is the main subject of the Epistles. Nevertheless, it has been neglected by most Christians and allowed to lie buried in the pages of the New Testament. When we bring forth such a “diamond” and minister concerning it, many oppose us and even call us heretical, insisting that it is contrary to the creeds and the councils to say that Christ is the life-giving Spirit. We have dug away many things to uncover this diamond. However, others value the very things dug away, the “dirt,” and depreciate the diamond. By this we can see the difference between the Lord’s recovery and today’s Christianity: they treasure the things that cover the diamonds, the “dirt,” but we sweep the dirt away in order to recover the diamonds. Hallelujah, my pockets are full of diamonds!
The book of Revelation speaks not only of the Spirit, but also of the seven Spirits, the sevenfold Spirit. This sevenfold Spirit can be compared to a seven-way lightbulb, a bulb with a sevenfold brightness. The Lord’s recovery is under a sevenfold light. The churches as the lampstands are under the sevenfold Spirit. How wonderful! Some Christians avoid the book of Revelation, thinking that this book is too mysterious and bothersome. But we are not bothered by this book—we are blessed and enlightened by it. Hallelujah, we have the Spirit, the life-giving Spirit, even the sevenfold Spirit!
According to Revelation 22:17, the Spirit and the bride speak as one. If I had been the writer of Revelation, this verse would have said, “Jesus Christ and His church say, Come.” But this verse clearly says, “The Spirit and the bride say, Come.”
My burden in this message concerns the relationship between the redemption of Christ and the Spirit. If we preach the redemption of Christ without the Spirit, we are pitiful preachers, and we are preaching a dead redemption. Where is the power of Christ’s redemption? The power of the redemption of Christ is in the Spirit.
We have pointed out again and again that the grating was connected to the four rings. These rings were also for the move of the altar. The altar was very heavy. If it were not for the poles in the rings, it would have been difficult to move it. This indicates that the Lord’s move depends on the Spirit. For this reason, the Lord Jesus told the disciples to wait at Jerusalem until they received power by the coming of the Holy Spirit upon them (Acts 1:8). Then they would be witnesses of Him in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and in the uttermost part of the world. This is the redemption of Christ, the cross of Christ, moving by the power of the Spirit upon the shoulders of human beings.
If we analyze the situation among Christians today, we shall see that there are the fundamentalists and the Pentecostalists. The fundamentalists have the objective redemption of Christ. This means that they only have the grating; they lack the four rings. The Pentecostalists, on the contrary, have some kind of rings, but the rings are not connected to the grating. The rings they have may be broken or may not be genuine. Thus, on the one side we have fundamentalists with the grating and no rings; on the other side, we have Pentecostalists with rings but no grating. But in the Lord’s recovery we have the grating, the four rings, and the two poles. Because we have the grating, the rings, and the poles, we can be bold and full of joy.
I would encourage you to read the New Testament again in the light of this picture of the altar with the grating, the rings, and the poles. In the Gospels we see Christ as the grating and the rings in the process of being formed. In the book of Acts the four rings appear. Then all the Epistles from Romans through Revelation reveal more concerning the rings, concluding with the sevenfold Spirit. This is the revelation in the New Testament. By this we see that the contents of the altar require the entire New Testament to be defined. The four Gospels portray the grating, and all the Epistles present a full picture of the four rings with the two poles. Praise the Lord for this clear picture showing how the redemption of Christ is living, powerful, and full of strength and efficacy before God and man!