Now I want to use another new term. This Body-Christ is God incorporated. God has become incorporated with man. Divinity has become incorporated with humanity. This is God incorporated. However, God could not accomplish this overnight. It will take Him at least six thousand years. One thing we do know is that this incorporation has not yet been finished.
To carry out such a great project, He appointed His Son Christ to be the Anointed One. As the appointed and anointed One He has taken seven steps for this work. The first was incarnation, the second crucifixion, the third resurrection, the fourth ascension, the fifth baptism, and the seventh is His coming back. What then is the sixth step? It is His indwelling. In the past messages we have seen all the definitions of these steps. Incarnation is the real mingling of divinity with humanity. Crucifixion not only means redemption, but also termination. All negative things along with the old creation were terminated on the cross. Then resurrection is the germination of the new creation. Ascension is the inauguration of God’s Anointed One. Christ ascended to the heavens to be inaugurated into His post. Then God declared to the whole universe that He has set His Son as Lord of all, and Head over all to the church. After this He came down in the form of the Spirit. In His inauguration God the Father gave Him all the functions and abilities to build and finish God’s divine project, that is, to build God’s eternal habitation. To do this He needs the germinating life, the empowering Holy Spirit, and the gifted persons. On the day of ascension He received all of these. Then after His inauguration He came back in the form of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost to collect all God’s chosen people on the Hebrew side as His members. He put them into Himself by baptizing them into the Spirit. Following this, in the house of Cornelius, He collected all His Gentile believers and baptized them into Himself. Only these two occasions are called the baptism in the Holy Spirit by the Bible. Therefore, the baptism of the Holy Spirit was accomplished once and for all. This is why 1 Corinthians 12:13 says, “For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and were all made to drink of one Spirit.” We all were baptized into the one Spirit. We do not need to be baptized again. Incarnation was accomplished once and for all. Crucifixion was accomplished once and for all. Resurrection was accomplished once and for all. Ascension was accomplished once and for all. And the baptism in the Holy Spirit was also accomplished once and for all.
There is only one step among these seven that is not completed instantly, once and for all. That is the indwelling. Although the Lord does indwell us when we are born again, it takes a longer period of time for Him to fully indwell us. This is why we need the moment by moment drinking of Him. The baptism in the Holy Spirit is once and for all. The drinking of the Spirit is not. “For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and were all made to drink of one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:3, Gk.). Whenever we call “Lord Jesus,” that is to drink one body once and for all, but now we have been made to drink of one Spirit. Drinking is a continual, lifelong matter. The baptism in the Spirit was to position us to drink. Now we must all continually drink of the one Spirit. And the way to drink of the Spirit is to call on the Lord. There is a verse in the same chapter that makes this clear. “No man can say Lord Jesus, but in the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:1, Gk.). Whenever we call “Lord Jesus,” that is to drink of the Spirit. It is really meaningful that among the more than thirteen epistles written by the Apostle Paul, only 1 Corinthians opens with the matter of calling on the name of the Lord. “Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours” (1 Cor. 1:2). This is not simply to pray, but to call. The word “call” in the Greek means to cry out, to invoke a person by name. Jesus is so living! He is so near to us. He is so present and available! When we call on Him, He comes to us as the living water for us to drink.
There have been many people that have argued with me about calling on the name of the Lord. Some have said that it is merely psychological. But I have challenged them to try calling on any other name. Try to call, “O Confucius,” or, “O Plato!” You will feel and get nothing. But we all know that whosoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved (Rom. 10:13). The Lord of all is rich unto all that call upon Him (Rom. 10:12). It does not say that the Lord is rich unto all that study the Bible. Neither does it say that He is rich unto all that meditate. The Lord is rich unto all that call upon His name! The fact is the fact. We may tell ourselves that we do not need to breathe, because it is too repetitious. But it is not vain repetition. While we are arguing that we do not need to breathe, we are breathing.
Praise the Lord that we have all been positioned to drink! We have already been baptized in the Spirit, and now we have been positioned to drink of the Spirit. We have not been positioned to work for the Lord; we have been positioned to drink! We have all been made to drink of one Spirit. The Lord has been inaugurated into His post, and we have been inaugurated into ours. Our inauguration is to drink, not to work. And the way to drink is to call deeply on the name of the Lord. We have even been called to call. We are the calling ones as well as the called ones. All day long we must call on the name of the Lord.
To the Lord this is the indwelling, but to us it is the drinking. This drinking is for transformation. We have all been baptized in the Spirit, but we have not all been transformed. We have been put fully into Christ, but Christ has not been fully wrought into us. This takes a lifetime. The Lord Jesus was incarnated to be a man that He may be our Redeemer. Then He went to the cross and accomplished redemption. Three days later, in His resurrection, He was made the life-giving Spirit in order that He may come into us, indwell us, and impart Himself into us as life day by day. Even now He is waiting for a chance to gain more within us. He is just like the air, waiting for a crack to open that He may come in more. But so many times we will not open. We confine Him in a little box. May the Lord open our eyes to realize that He wants to take us over, possess us, fill us, and saturate us with Himself. He wants to fully indwell our mind, our emotion, our will, and our conscience that He may make His full home in our heart.
In the book of Ephesians Paul never prayed that the Ephesian Christians might be baptized in the Spirit and speak in tongues. But he did pray that the Lord would possess their inner man. “For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,...that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power by his Spirit in the inner man: that Christ may make his home in your hearts by faith” (Eph. 3:14, 16-17a, Gk.). Paul was concerned that Christ might spread from their regenerated spirit into their heart, in order that He might settle down and make His home there. This is what we also need to pray for. We have all been baptized once and for all, but our drinking is too occasional. I fear that some of us have gone for two weeks without drinking hardly at all. We need to drink daily, hourly, instantly, constantly, and unceasingly of the Lord Jesus. We need to drink of all the divine riches of the indwelling Christ. Then His spiritual ingredients will be assimilated into our being. This is how the Body-Christ is produced.