The believers were born as a newborn child through Christ’s going and coming, that is, through His death and resurrection. According to the Gospel of John, the Lord’s going was His all-inclusive death to put away sin, to terminate the old creation, to judge the world, to destroy Satan, to abolish the law of the commandments in ordinances, to release the divine life, and to prepare a place for the believers to enter into God.
Many readers of the Gospel of John consider that the Lord’s word about His coming again after going away in John 14 is about His second coming; rather, the Lord was speaking of His resurrection, an event that would take place in a few days. The Lord’s coming was His resurrection for our germination so that He might have a new creation to produce the church, which will consummate in the New Jerusalem. Therefore, in John 14 the coming of the Son signifies His coming as the Spirit in His resurrection. His going was His death, and His coming was His resurrection; death was the preparatory step to resurrection. The Lord Jesus died that He might enter into resurrection. His going was His coming; He comes by going.
Therefore, the Lord Jesus said to His disciples, “I am coming to you” (v. 18). Then He continued, “In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you” (v. 20). That day was the day of resurrection (20:19-22). On the day of resurrection the Lord returned to the disciples and breathed Himself as the Spirit of the divine reality into them. Hence, through Christ’s going and coming, that is, through His death and resurrection, a newborn child was born.
The newborn child is the aggregate of all God’s children, or sons (1:12), who were born with Him in His resurrection to be His many brothers (Acts 13:33; 1 Pet. 1:3; Rom. 8:29). This newborn child is constituted with Christ as the firstborn Son of God and all His brothers. Therefore, all the believers are parts and members of this newborn child.
According to 1 Peter 1:3, God regenerated us through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. When Christ was resurrected, we also were regenerated to be God’s children. The newborn child is the aggregate of all God’s children who have been regenerated through Christ’s resurrection. Hence, the Lord’s resurrection is a universal birth—not the birth of a single child but the birth of a corporate child comprised of Christ as the Head and the many brothers as the Body. This is the birth of the corporate new child that includes Christ and the believers.
The newborn child born with Christ in His resurrection is the new man—the Body of Christ (Eph. 2:15; Col. 3:10-11). The birth of the newborn child is the birth of the new man in reality. The old man was created by God in Genesis 1 and 2, but the new man was born through Christ’s resurrection. We were born in the old man, but we were regenerated in the new man; this new man includes Christ as the Head and all the believers as the Body. The Head is God’s Firstborn; the Body is constituted with the many sons of God, the many brothers of the Lord. This new man, this child, was born through Christ’s death and resurrection.
The believers, through abiding in the Son (the vine as the organism of the Divine Trinity) with the Father to be the expression of the Father (John 15:1-8; 14:9-10), live in the organism of the Divine Trinity and participate in the dispensing of the Divine Trinity. The Lord Jesus said, “I am the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman” (15:1). He also told the disciples, “I am the vine; you are the branches” (v. 5). Christ, the true vine, is the universal organism of the Divine Trinity. The Son is the vine, the Father is the husbandman, and the Spirit is the One who testifies. Hence, this vine is the organism of the Divine Trinity.
Christ and the believers, the vine with its branches, constitute the organism of the Divine Trinity in the divine dispensing. Therefore, the vine in John 15 is a universal vine that includes Christ and the believers as the branches. In this vine, this organism, the Triune God lives, expresses Himself, and dispenses Himself into the believers as the branches.
Christ as the vine is God’s economy, the center of God’s universal enterprise. The Bible depicts the universe as a vineyard with a vine, which is Christ, as the center of the universe. All that God the Father is and all that He has are for this center, the vine tree, and He is expressed and manifested bodily through this center. God as life needs an organism through which He may grow and be expressed. God longs to grow in this organism and to express Himself through this organism. This organism is the vine with its branches, that is, Christ with the believers, to be the organism of the Divine Trinity. This vine tree is corporate and universal.
The Lord said, “Abide in Me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine; you are the branches. He who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing” (vv. 4-5). The branches of the vine need to abide in the vine; only when the branches abide in the vine can the vine be everything to the branches. Our life and enjoyment depend upon our abiding in the vine; our destiny as branches is to remain in the vine. Apart from the Lord Jesus, the true vine, we the branches can do nothing. Therefore, we must abide in Him and let Him abide in us. In this way Christ can be everything to us for our experience and enjoyment.
When we abide in Christ the Son, who is the Father’s expression, we abide in the Son with the Father. This is a mystery. We are Christ’s members not only abiding in Him but also abiding in Him with the Father. When we abide in the Son, we abide in the Son with the Father. This means that when we abide in the Son, we abide in the Father also.