In John 14:20 the Lord Jesus said, “In that day you shall know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.” The day spoken of here is the day of Christ’s resurrection. In this verse the Lord was saying that on the day of His resurrection His disciples would know that He is in the Father, that they are in Him, and that He is in them. This is not an exchange of one life for another—it is a mingling of lives. The Lord is in us and we are in Him. This is the mingling that comes from the dispensing, the infusing, of the life of the Triune God into us.
The mingling spoken of in John 14:20 is like the mingling of the oil with the fine flour in the meal offering (Lev. 2). The fine flour is in the oil, and the oil is in the fine flour. This is mingling.
Mingling leads to mutual abiding. Therefore, in John 15:4, the Lord Jesus said, “Abide in Me and I in you.” This mutual abiding of us in the Lord and the Lord in us is what we mean by a mingled life. Moreover, this mingled life is a grafted life.
John 6:57 says, “As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me shall also live because of Me.” Here the Lord says that He lives because of the Father. This word indicates that two Persons live by one life and have just one living. The Son and the Father are two, but They do not live two lives, nor do They have two livings. They have one life with one living. The Son lives by the Father, and the Father lives through the Son. In this verse the Lord also says that he who eats Him will also live because of Him. This indicates that just as the Son and the Father are two Persons with one life and one living, so we and the Son should have one life with one living. Once again we see that this is a grafted life, not an exchanged life.
In Galatians 2:20 Paul speaks of his own Christian experience. In this verse Paul says that he has been crucified with Christ and that Christ now lives in him. Again we see two persons, Christ and Paul, with one life and one living.
We have pointed out that the better life swallows up the defects and shortages of the inferior life. This means that the divine life will swallow up the defects and shortages of our human life. This is possible because in Christ’s life there is the killing power of His crucifixion. Remember, Christ’s life has been processed through incarnation, human living, crucifixion, and resurrection. Now His life includes all these ingredients. We may use antibiotics as an illustration of this. Just as antibiotics kill disease germs, so the killing element in the life of Christ terminates the negative things in us.
We may prefer simply to yield up our human life and have it be replaced with Christ’s life. We may feel that our life is full of “germs” and would therefore like it replaced by the divine life. This may be our way, but it is not God’s way in His economy. His way is for Christ’s life to swallow up all the defects, shortages, and “germs” within us. The more we tell the Lord Jesus that we love Him and that we want to be one with Him, the more we shall experience the killing power in the spiritual antibiotics.
All the elements we need are available in Christ’s life. In His life there is the killing element as well as the nourishing element. You may be discouraged about your disposition. But Christ’s life will kill the negative element in your disposition and then, instead of casting your disposition away, He will uplift it and use it.
In their so-called prophesying, many of those in the Pentecostal denominations or in the charismatic movement are fond of imitating the Old Testament prophets who frequently said, “Thus saith the Lord.” Although this expression is used by the Old Testament prophets, it is not used by the New Testament writers. Paul wrote many Epistles, but he did not say at the end, “Thus saith the Lord.” Rather, he said, “Grace be with you,” “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit,” or simply, “The Lord Jesus Christ be with thy spirit.” The reason for this difference is very significant. In Old Testament times the incarnation of Christ had not yet taken place. The incarnation is a matter of God coming into man and being one with man. In the birth of Jesus, God accomplished the incarnation of Himself in man. Through Christ’s death and resurrection, we who believe in Christ may share in the principle of incarnation. This means that through regeneration, Christ is born into our being and becomes one with us. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:17, “He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.” This means that as long as we have been born again, we are one spirit with the Lord. Now we all have the ground to declare that we are one spirit with Christ. On the day we believed we were not only saved, but we were also married to Christ in spirit, and a union between us and Him took place. As we continue to contact Him, the superior elements of the divine life swallow up the inferior elements of our human life. Then what we say and do is spontaneously also the saying and doing of Christ. Therefore, there is no need for us to use the expression, “Thus saith the Lord.” Because we have been grafted into Christ and are living in oneness with Him, our speaking is spontaneously His speaking.
First Corinthians 7 illustrates this. Verse 25 says, “Now concerning virgins I have no commandment of the Lord: yet I give my opinion, as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful” (Gk.). Paul had no commandment of the Lord regarding this matter, but he spoke as one who loved the Lord and lived out the Lord in a practical way. Then he proceeded to give his opinion. After doing so, he said, “I think also that I have the Spirit of God” (v. 40). As we read 1 Corinthians 7 today, we receive the whole chapter as the oracle of God, as part of God’s holy Word. Thus, Paul’s speaking became God’s oracle because Paul was one with the Lord. According to the principle of incarnation, Christ had been incarnated into Paul, and Paul lived not an exchanged life, but a grafted life. This enabled him to speak in oneness with the Lord.
May we all be impressed with the fact that the Christian life is not a matter of exchange, but a matter of grafting. A lower life, our human life, is grafted into a higher life, the divine life. The higher life swallows the defects and infirmities of the lower life. As this takes place, the higher life spontaneously enriches, uplifts, and transforms the lower life. How marvelous! This is not our doctrine or opinion; it is the divine revelation in the Word of God. Furthermore, this revelation can be supported by our Christian experience. Therefore, according to God’s revelation and according to our experience, we see that as Christians today we have a wonderful grafted life.