Eventually, Paul gives us such a deep verse in 2 Corinthians 2:10. “To whom ye forgive anything, I forgive also: for if I forgave anything, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes forgave I it in the person of Christ.” Suppose you go to the department store. Could you say that you are going there in the person of Christ? When you buy something there, could you say that you are buying it in the person of Christ? If we were able to say this, I am quite sure that we would not buy many items. Almost all Christians know Galatians 2:20, but very few know 2 Corinthians 2:10. Here is a verse which tells us that we must do things in the person of Christ.
In the Greek text, the word for “person” in 2 Corinthians 2:10 is a difficult word to translate. It is not easy to find an equivalent for this Greek word. This word in Greek denotes the part of the face just around the eyes. It is sometimes called the index of the face. This part around our eyes is the index of our inward being. When we look at this part, we know whether a person is agreeable or not agreeable, happy or angry. Many times a wife’s “yes” is changed into “no” by looking at the index of her husband’s face. This means that at that time she was taking her husband as her person. This would make a very good marriage. Whatever the wife does, she does it in the person of her husband. This is what Paul meant when he said that he forgave in the person of Christ. He did not do anything in his own person; he did everything in the person of Christ because he was taking Him as his person. So in this verse we see the practical application of what Paul said in Galatians 2:20. It is really marvelous!
Now we must look at some verses in another category. Romans 8:4 says, “That the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to flesh, but according to spirit.” There is not the definite article here before the word “spirit,” which makes it difficult to decide whether it is our human spirit or the Holy Spirit. Therefore it must be the mingled spirit, the Holy Spirit and our spirit mingled as one. So now we must walk according to this mingled spirit, which simply means to walk according to the living Christ as the Spirit who indwells our spirit. Here there is the real fulfillment of the law. Whatever the law requires we will spontaneously fulfill, not by ourselves, but through Christ, the Spirit moving in our spirit.
This shows us how to take Christ as our person, which is to walk and live according to the mingled spirit. Day by day we should not have our being according to teaching, feelings, concepts, or circumstances, but according to the mingled spirit. Praise the Lord that we do have a spirit and that Christ as the life-giving Spirit is indwelling our spirit to make these two spirits one. Now we must walk according to this mingled spirit, and to walk according to this spirit is to take Christ as our person. The wording is different, but the fact is the same. To practically take Christ as our person is to have our being wholly according to the spirit.
In the entire Bible, especially in the New Testament, there is not one verse which tells us that we must walk according to Bible teaching. This does not mean that I am against the Bible. I am absolutely for the Bible, but our walk should not be something according to the outward teachings of the Bible; it must be according to a living person. If we walk only according to the teaching of the Bible, we will get into trouble. This is because there are many things that the Bible does not mention. It never tells us how long or short to cut our hair; nor does it say whether we should smoke or not. If you read the Bible two-hundred times, you will not find one verse about smoking. If the Lord meant for us to walk according to the Bible, the Bible would need to have thousands of pages! It would be difficult for us to carry such a book! But praise the Lord, it is so simple. We simply must learn to walk according to the mingled spirit.
It is by walking according to the mingled spirit and taking Christ as our person that we will be transformed. “But we all, with unveiled face beholding and reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18, Gk.). We behold Christ as a mirror, and we reflect Christ with an unveiled face. While we are beholding and reflecting Christ in this way, we are being transformed. It is not correction, improvement, or adjustment, but transformation.
A very good illustration of transformation is the petrification of wood. This is caused by different logs being caught in a place where water is constantly flowing over them. By the flowing of the water, the minerals in the water discharge the old, wooden nature. Then the logs become petrified. Wood is transformed into stone. Praise the Lord, we are just like those logs! The water of life flows into us and brings all the divine elements into our being to replace our natural essence. All of our natural elements are discharged, and we are transformed. Teaching can never do this because teaching does not have the flow of the living water with the divine element. But Christ as the life flow has all the divine minerals to flow through us to replace our natural disposition and discharge all the natural things. Then we are transformed into the image of Christ from one degree of glory to another degree of glory. And this is by the Lord Spirit whom we have learned to take as our person.
Eventually, when we come to the end of the Bible, we do not have anything built with wood. The whole New Jerusalem is built with transformed precious stones. Precious stones are not natural elements, but transformed ones. In the New Jerusalem there will be nothing natural, for whatever is built into God’s building must be transformed. All the natural dispositions must be discharged and replaced by what Christ is. Today in the church, wherever there are some brothers that have some amount of transformation, that church will be living, rich, strong, and established. But wherever there is a church without such a measure of transformation, that church will be weak, poor, and shaky. We do look to the Lord that we may have a church built not by teaching, but by taking Christ as our person. And this person is the living flow of the water of life. Then we will become the precious stones which are good for the building up of God’s building which is the Body of Christ. The building of the church is by the Christians who have been transformed by the Lord Spirit through taking Christ as their person in walking according to the mingled spirit.