Verse 17 of John 14 also reveals that the Spirit abides with and in the believers. Not only does He abide with the believers but also in them. As we have seen, when the Lord was in the flesh, He was able only to be among the disciples, to be with them. But after becoming in His resurrection the life-giving Spirit, the Spirit of reality, He is now able to abide not only with us but also in us. It is by being the Spirit that the Lord enters into us and abides in us.
In verse 20 the Lord said, “In that day you shall know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.” The day mentioned in this verse is the day of resurrection. On the day of resurrection the disciples were to know that the Lord was in the Father, that the disciples were in Him, and that He was in them. We need to see that verse 17 says that the Spirit will be in us and that verse 20 says that the Son will be in us. Since both the Spirit and the Son are in us, tell me, how many are in us—one or two? The answer is one. We do not have two in us. We do not have the Spirit plus the Son, nor the Son plus the Spirit. We have just one, the wonderful One who is both the Son and the Spirit. Therefore, as we have seen, Paul says, “Now the Lord is that Spirit” (KJV). As long as the Spirit is in us, the Son is in us, and as long as the Son is in us, the Spirit is in us. Now we can see that He has brought Himself into us. Before these verses, in the first part of this chapter, the Lord was still not in the disciples. But by the time of verse 20, He is in the disciples, and the disciples are in Him. As He is in the Father, so the disciples are in the Father. Now where He is, there the disciples are also. He died to prepare the way, the standing, that we might get into God and that God might get into us. Then by being in us and by bringing us into the Father, the Lord can build us together as one in the Triune God to be His eternal abode.
By these two sections of John 14 we can see that the Trinity of the Godhead is for dispensing the Triune God into us. The Father is embodied in the Son, the Son is realized as the Spirit, and the Spirit comes and enters into us to be our life and whatever we need. It is by this process that the Triune God is dispensed into us as our eternal portion.
In verse 17 of John 14 we find the first mention of the Spirit’s indwelling. This matter of the Spirit’s indwelling is fulfilled and developed in the Epistles (1 Cor. 6:19; Rom. 8:9, 11). The central and main concept of the Epistles is that Christ today as the life-giving Spirit indwells our spirit as our life and everything necessary for the building up of His Body.
The Lord’s promise of the Spirit here in John 14 is different from the Father’s promise of the Spirit in Luke 24:49. The Lord’s promise is of the Spirit of life, whereas the Father’s promise is of the Spirit of power. The Lord’s promise of the Spirit of life was fulfilled on the day of His resurrection when He breathed the Spirit of life into the disciples in John 20:22. This is not the Spirit of power as the promise of the Father which was fulfilled on the day of Pentecost when the Spirit came as a mighty wind blowing upon the disciples in Acts 2:1-4. On the day of Pentecost the Spirit was the Spirit of power, but here, in the book of John, the Spirit is the Spirit of life. In Acts the symbol of the Spirit of power was the blowing wind. Wind mainly signifies power. But the Spirit of life in the Gospel of John is symbolized by the breath, for breath is for life. Since the Gospel of John is a book on life, it covers the Spirit of life, not the Spirit of power. Since Acts is a book on the work of preaching and since this preaching needs power, in Acts we have the Spirit of power as the blowing wind. In John 14:16 we see the Lord’s promise, for He said, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Comforter.” In Luke 24:49 we see the Father’s promise, for there the Lord said, “Behold, I am sending forth the promise of My Father upon you; but you, stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” On the day of the Lord’s resurrection, the disciples received the Spirit of life promised by the Lord in John 14, but they had to wait for the Father’s promise until they received the Spirit of power on the day of Pentecost. The Lord’s promise of the Spirit of life in John 14 is not fulfilled in Acts 2 on the day of Pentecost, but in John 20 on the day of the Lord’s resurrection. Fifty days later, on the day of Pentecost, the Father’s promise of the Spirit of power in Luke 24 was fulfilled.
I hope that by now we all are clear concerning the revelation of this chapter. We should not consider that this chapter speaks about the Lord going to heaven to build a heavenly mansion and of His returning to take us up to that mansion. This is altogether an understanding according to the natural human concept. We must drop this concept. God does not have two buildings, a mansion in heaven and a church on earth. No, He has only one building—His building among and with His redeemed ones, that is, His living dwelling place. In the past, God’s building was with Israel, today it is with the church, and ultimately it will consummate in the New Jerusalem. This is God’s building. The way for God to accomplish this building is to dispense Himself into us all, and the way for God to dispense Himself into us is by His being the Father, Son, and Spirit. God the Father is the source, origin, substance, and element. God the Son is the expression, manifestation, and way for God to touch man and for man to touch God. Finally, God the Spirit is the reality of all that God the Father and God the Son are. Whatever God the Father and God the Son are, is fully realized in God the Spirit. The Father in the Son and the Son as the Spirit reach our spirit, first coming into our spirit as our life, second as our life supply, and finally as our everything. This Triune God first dispenses Himself into our spirit. Then He is continually spreading Himself from within our spirit to our whole being. He wants to spread from our spirit throughout our entire being. He wants to spread from our spirit to our soul and even into our body (Rom. 8:11), until our whole being is fully saturated and possessed by Him. This saturation is the actual building of His eternal habitation. The more we allow Him to saturate and possess us, the more He will accomplish His building in, through, and among us. Eventually, in this age He will have local churches in different localities as the expression of this building. Ultimately, when we all are in the new heaven and the new earth, God will have the New Jerusalem as His eternal dwelling place to express His glory forever.