The Spirit of life is the pneumatic Christ in resurrection as the Spirit of the divine life to His believers. The term the Spirit of life is used only once in the New Testament—in Romans 8:2. The Spirit is not only the life-giving Spirit but also the Spirit of life. The Spirit of life is the reality of life, for this Spirit contains the element of the divine life. Actually, the Spirit Himself is life. Therefore, with the Spirit of life, we have the riches of the divine life.
In John 14:6 the Lord Jesus said that He was the way, the reality, and the life. This shows us that life and reality are related. Reality is life and life is reality. The reality of our person, of our being, is our human life. Likewise, the reality of God is the divine life. The Spirit of life is the Spirit of reality.
The Spirit of reality is the Spirit of what God is, has, and does. In other words, the Spirit of reality is the Spirit of God’s being, of God’s possession, and of God’s doing. In John 14:16 and 17, the Lord said, “And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Comforter, that He may be with you forever; even the Spirit of reality, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not behold Him or know Him; but you know Him, because He abides with you and shall be in you.” When the Lord referred to “another Comforter,” He was saying that this Comforter was Himself in another form. He was a Comforter in the flesh, but in resurrection He became the Spirit, which would be another Comforter. This Spirit is the Spirit of reality, who is the reality of Christ. He is the real Christ, the real Jesus.
John 15:26 and 16:13 also refer to the Spirit of reality. In John 16:13, the Lord Jesus said that the Spirit of reality would guide us into all the reality. In 16:15 He said, “All that the Father has is Mine; therefore I said that He receives of Mine and shall disclose it to you.” All that the Father is and has is the Son’s, and all that the Son is and has is received by the Spirit. Then the Spirit discloses all of this to us to be our portion. The Spirit of reality makes everything of the Triune God ours.
In the sense of worship, God is three-in-one. But in the actual, daily life experience of the believer who is enjoying the Lord, the three-in-one God is one with the believers. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are three-in-one, and They are one with the believers, including you and me. This is because we are in Christ, the embodiment of the Triune God, and He is in us. In our worship, we worship the three-in-one God. We worship the Father, the Son, and the Spirit as one God. We worship our God, who is three-in-one. But in our Christian experience, the three-in-one God is one with us. This is because we are one with the Father, one with the Son, and one with the Spirit. We are all one in the Triune God in one essence. All of us are in the same divine essence because we all have received the divine nature. Second Peter 1:4 says that we have all been made partakers of the divine nature. Within the divine nature is the divine essence. As we have seen, essence is more intrinsic than nature.
We are one with the Triune God because the Spirit of reality makes God real to us. In whatever Christ is, in whatever He has, and in whatever He has done, He is one with us. Therefore, His experiences have become our history. We were crucified with Him (Gal. 2:20). His crucifixion is our history. We have also been resurrected with Him (Eph. 2:6). Whatever He is, is ours; whatever He has, is ours; and whatever He has done, is ours. We have passed through all the processes which our Triune God has passed through because we are in Him. Even humanly speaking, we may say that the experiences of our fore fathers are our history. When a person’s great-grandfather came to the United States, that person came with him and in him. Hebrews 7 tells us that when Abraham paid tithes to Melchisedec, Levi also paid them because he was in the loins of his father when Melchisedec met him (vv. 9-10). Levi, as a great-grandson of Abraham, offered something to Melchisedec before he was born because he was in Abraham. We can also say that before we were born, we were crucified, buried, and resurrected with Christ through the Spirit. Without the Spirit, there is no linking between us and the Triune God. The Spirit of reality is the linking between us and the Triune God, making us one with the Triune God in experience.