In this message I would like to give a further word concerning the processed and consummated Triune God as the all-inclusive, life-giving Spirit.
Our God today is no longer the "raw" God but the processed God. After God created man, He continued to be the "raw" God, the unprocessed God, observing, testing, and proving humanity but not yet moving or taking any action. Then one day He began to go through a process. Each step of this process has become an ingredient of the Spirit as the consummation of the processed and consummated Triune God.
These ingredients include incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and descension. In eternity God had the ingredient of divinity but not the ingredients of humanity and human living. Through incarnation the ingredient of humanity was added to Him. This was followed by Christ's human living and the crucial ingredient of His all-inclusive death on the cross. Next came the ingredient of resurrection, which is a matter of passing through death without being held by death. Through resurrection Christ was begotten to be the firstborn Son of God (Rom. 8:29), and through resurrection He also became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). Furthermore, in the resurrection of Christ all God's chosen ones were regenerated to be the sons of God (1 Pet. 1:3). In His ascension, another ingredient, Christ is transcendent. He is the One who is above all, and everything is now under His feet (Eph. 1:19-23). Finally, we have the ingredient of Christ's descension as the all-inclusive Spirit to produce the church, His Body.
As we consider all these ingredients, we can see that the processed and consummated Triune God is much richer than the "raw" God. Of course, the unprocessed God had the divine attributes, which may be regarded as ingredients, but now He also has the ingredients of incarnation, human living, the all-inclusive death, the life-imparting and life-producing resurrection, ascension, and descension, which issue in the Body. How rich our God is today! He is abundantly rich, aboundingly rich. He is everything to us as the Spirit, who is the consummation of the Triune God.
I have sometimes been asked why we pray to the Father or to the Lord Jesus but not to the Spirit. Actually, when we pray to the Father, we pray to the Spirit. When we pray to the Son, we pray also to the Spirit. Who is God? God is the Spirit. Who is the Father? The Father is the Spirit. Who is Christ? Christ is the Spirit. The totality, the aggregate, the consummation, of the Triune God with all His ingredients is the Spirit. Therefore, in the Spirit we have the three of the Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—with all the steps of God's process as the ingredients.