In this lesson we will continue to see some finer points concerning the believers' experience and enjoyment of God as the Father in the love of the Triune God.
Second Corinthians 13:4b says that "we will live together with Him [Christ] by the power of God." To accomplish God's redemption, Christ our Savior was willing to be weak in His body that He might be crucified. However, after being resurrected, He lives now by the power of God (v. 4a). We follow the pattern of Christ and are willing also to be weak in the organic union with Him that we may live with Him a crucified life. Thus we can live together with Christ by the power of God.
It is not by ourselves but by the power of God that we can live together with Christ. The Father's desire from the beginning to the end is to glorify the Son and to magnify the Son. Hence, He comes with the Son to us, the believers, makes an abode with us, and abides in us. Furthermore, He dispenses to us the great power that He operated in Christ, and He also operates in us that we may live together with Christ by His power.
While we were living in our sins, God forgave us of our sins and reconciled us to Himself through Christ's death. This is the reconciliation spoken of in 2 Corinthians 5:19: "God..was reconciling the world to Himself, not accounting their offenses to them." This is the first step of our being reconciled to God. Now God desires that we, the believers who have already been reconciled to Him from sin, be reconciled further to Him; that is, that we, the believers who are still living in the natural life, be reconciled to God from the flesh. This is the reconciliation spoken of in verse 20: "We beseech you on behalf of Christ, Be reconciled to God." For this purpose Christ died for us—the persons—that we might live to Him in the resurrection life (vv. 14-15).
These two steps of reconciliation are clearly portrayed by the two veils of the tabernacle. The first veil is called the screen (Exo. 26:37, lit.). A sinner who was brought to God through the reconciliation of the propitiating blood entered into the Holy Place by passing this screen. This typifies the first step of reconciliation. However, the second veil still separated him from God, who was in the Holy of Holies. This veil needed to be rent that the sinner might be brought to God in the Holy of Holies. This is the second step of reconciliation. We believers were reconciled to God, having passed through the first veil and having entered into the Holy Place. Yet we still live in the flesh, walking and having our being by the natural way. We need to pass the second veil, which has been rent already and is a type of our flesh (Matt. 27:51; Heb. 10:20), to enter into the Holy of Holies to live with God in our spirit. This is a part of the fine work that God the Father is doing in us. He exposes our natural life and unveils our true condition, so that we condemn what we naturally are and apply the cross subjectively to terminate our natural being and become persons in the spirit living before God.