Now we want to see a further aspect of the Spirit in the New Testament. The Spirit is the compound anointing Spirit typified by the compound ointment in Exodus 30:22-30. Oil is purely one element, but an ointment is a compound. Paint is a good example of a compound of oil with a number of elements. Today in the New Testament the Spirit is the compounded Spirit to be the anointing ointment.
Brother Watchman Nee taught us that in order to experience Christ's death in Romans 6, we must enter into the experience of the Spirit in Romans 8. We can experience Christ's death only in the Spirit. But in his earlier ministry, he told us that to experience Christ's death, we have to reckon ourselves dead. That was based upon Romans 6:11. Later, he found out that reckoning does not work. Reckoning was stressed by A. B. Simpson, the founder of Christian and Missionary Alliance. Without the Spirit, however, reckoning does not work. The more you reckon yourself to be dead, the more you are alive. The death of Christ is in the Spirit. Brother Nee also taught us that the reality of resurrection is the Spirit.
Later, I read Andrew Murray's book The Spirit of Christ. I heard Brother Nee say twice that if anyone would translate that book into Chinese, he would pay for the printing costs. Around 1951 some of my helpers translated it, and I polished it. So today we have the Chinese translation of The Spirit of Christ. One of the most striking chapters in this book is chapter five, entitled "The Spirit of the Glorified Jesus." I would like us to take note of the following parts of this chapter so that we can be impressed with the divine revelation of the Spirit in the New Testament. We have underlined certain parts of the text for emphasis.
We know how the Son, who had from eternity been with the Father, entered upon a new stage of existence when He became flesh. When He returned to Heaven, He was still the same only-begotten Son of God, and yet not altogether the same. For He was now also, as Son of Man, the first-begotten from the dead, clothed with that glorified humanity which He had perfected and sanctified for Himself. And just so the Spirit of God as poured out at Pentecost was indeed something new....When poured out at Pentecost, He came as the Spirit of the glorified Jesus, the Spirit of the Incarnate, crucified, and exalted Christ, the bearer and communicator to us, not of the life of God as such, but of that life as it had been interwoven into human nature in the person of Christ Jesus. It is in this capacity specially that He bears the name of Holy Spirit, for it is as the Indwelling One that God is Holy....Christ came...to bring human nature itself again into the fellowship of the Divine life to make us partakers of the Divine nature....In His own person, having become flesh, He had to sanctify the flesh, and make it a meet and willing receptacle for the indwelling of the Spirit of God....From His nature, as it was glorified in the resurrection and ascension, His Spirit came forth as the Spirit of His human life, glorified into the union with the Divine, to make us partakers of all that He had personally wrought out and acquired, of Himself and His glorified life. In virtue of His atonement, man now had a right and title to the fulness of the Divine Spirit, and to His indwelling, as never before. And in virtue of His having perfected in Himself a new holy human nature on our behalf, He could now communicate what previously had no existence —a life at once human and Divine....In our place, and on our behalf, as man and the Head of man, He was admitted into the full glory of the Divine, and His human nature constituted the receptacle and the dispenser of the Divine Spirit. And the Holy Spirit could come down as the Spirit of the God-man—most really the Spirit of God, and yet as truly the spirit of man....Just as in Jesus the perfect union of God and man had been effected and finally completed when He sat down upon the throne, and He so entered on a new stage of existence, a glory hitherto unknown, so too, now, a new era has commenced in the life and the work of the Spirit. He can now come down to witness of the perfect union of the Divine and the human, and in becoming our life, to make us partakers of it. There is now the Spirit of the glorified Jesus: He hath poured Him forth; we have received Him to stream into us, to stream through us, and to stream forth from us in rivers of blessing.
Andrew Murray's writing on the Spirit of Christ is marvelous. He pointed out that the Spirit of the glorified Jesus has His human nature. No doubt, the Spirit always had the divine nature, but in Christ's resurrection, the glorified human nature along with the elements of human living, crucifixion, and resurrection were added to the Spirit, who is now the consummation of the processed Triune God. When I studied what Andrew Murray said concerning the Spirit of Christ, I was strengthened, confirmed, and assured to speak on the all-inclusive Spirit of Christ. I have been speaking on this wonderful truth for almost forty years.