In this lesson we continue Volume Three of Level Two to cover the progressing stage of God’s full salvation, the stage of transformation. In this stage we experience and enjoy God as the Father in the love of the Triune God, we experience and enjoy Christ as the Son in the grace of the Triune God, and we experience and enjoy the Spirit as the consummation of the Divine Trinity in the fellowship of the Triune God. When we experience and enjoy Christ as the Son, we enjoy Him as our portion, as covered in Lessons Thirty through Thirty-six of Volume Three, and we also experience His living in us.
That Christ lives in us does not mean that He lives instead of us but that He lives with us. In Galatians 2:20 Paul said, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” “No longer I” does not indicate an exchanged life, a life in which Christ comes in and we go out, for later in this verse Paul said, “I live.” As regenerated people, we have both the old “I,” which has been crucified (Rom. 6:6), and a new “I,” which has been regenerated. Concerning the old “I,” Paul said, “No longer I”; concerning the new “I,” he said, “I live.” The old, crucified “I” was without divinity; the new, regenerated “I” has God as life added to it. The new “I” came into being when the old “I” was resurrected and God was added to it. On the one hand, Paul had been terminated, but on the other hand, a resurrected Paul, one who was regenerated with God as his life, still lived. Furthermore, although Paul said, “No longer I,” he also said, “It is Christ who lives in me,” for it was Christ who lived, but it was in Paul that He lived. It is the same with all the believers in Christ today. Christ and we, and we and Christ, have one life and one living.
John 14 may help us to know how Christ lives in us. Before His death and resurrection, the Lord Jesus said to His disciples, “Because I live, you also shall live” (v. 19). This shows us that the resurrected Christ does not live alone; He lives in us and with us. He lives in us by enabling us to live with Him. In a very real sense, if we do not live with Him, He cannot live in us. We have not been altogether ruled out, and our life has not been exchanged for the divine life. We continue to live, and we live with Christ.
The illustration of grafting may also help us to know this matter. After a branch is grafted into a tree, the branch still lives, yet not by itself, but by the tree into which it has been grafted. Furthermore, the tree also lives in the grafted branch. Hence, the life that is lived out by the branch is a grafted life. This is not to exchange a life that is not good with a life that is better; rather, it is to join two lives as one so that they may enjoy a mingled life and living. The branch and the tree have one life and one living. Likewise, Christ living in us enables us to have one life and one living with Him.
In John 6:57 the Lord said, “As the living Father has sent Me and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me.” That the Son lived because of the Father does not mean that the Son was set aside and ceased to exist. The Son, of course, continued to exist, but He did not live His own life. He lived the life of the Father. The Son and the Father had one life and one living. It is the same in our relationship with Christ today. We have one life and one living with Christ. We live by Him, and He lives in us. If we do not live, He does not live; and if He does not live, we cannot live. On the one hand, we are terminated; on the other hand, we continue to live, but we do not live by ourselves. We live by having Him living in us.
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