A MYSTERIOUS AND WONDERFUL FORM
After His resurrection He came back to the disciples in another form. He was touchable. He had a body, yet in another form, a mysterious and wonderful form which we cannot explain. After the Lord Jesus was crucified and buried, all the disciples were fully disappointed. While they were meeting together in the night with the doors closed for fear of the Jews, the Lord Jesus appeared to them. He did not knock at the door, and they did not open the door. While they were under the threatening of the Jews and while they were so sorrowful, suddenly He appeared among them. Right away He said, "Peace be to you" (John 20:19). What a wonderful word! They had had no peace at all. They were sorrowful because of His death, they were also threatened by the Jews to the uttermost, and now they were probably even threatened by His sudden appearance. So He said to them, "Peace be to you." He showed them His hands and His side, and the disciples realized He was not a phantom, but that He was their beloved Lord. What kind of body did the Lord Jesus have? Was this a physical and material body? Surely it was because it was touchable. But if it was physical and material how could He come into the room without any opening? You cannot systematize such a wonderful, mysterious fact in your theology. He was material and physical, yet spiritual. He was spiritual, yet material. He was material because He was touchable, and He was spiritual because He came in without the door being opened.
COINHERENCE WITH GOD FOR HIS EXPRESSION
In John 1 the invisible God became a visible flesh. This was good because formerly God was invisible, and now He is visible. On the other hand, it was not so good because He was limited by being in the flesh. He could not enter into His disciples. He could not be one with them in a kind of coinherence. He could not live in them that they might live in Him. That was impossible as long as He was in the flesh.
How could He enter into you and take you as His abode, and how could you enter into Him and take Him as your abode? As long as He is in the flesh it is impossible. What the Lord wants is a kind of coinherence between Him and you. He wants to live in you so that you may live in Him, and you will live within one another. This is a kind of coinherence. Coinherence means this one lives in that one, and that one lives in this one. Eventually they are two and yet one. This is marvelous! This is what God wants. God wants to get into you that you may be in Him. While He abides in you, you abide in Him. He and you become one, and yet are still two. This kind of coinherence is just the expression of God.
The invisible God became the visible flesh. Yet this flesh can never enter into us, so He had to change in form to become in the form of the Spirit. This spiritual form is very mysterious. No one can figure out how it could be spiritual and yet material, material and yet spiritual. Yet our very God did become such a Spirit. When He came in, the disciples did not realize at first that it was He. But then He said, "Peace be to you." After speaking this He breathed into them and told them to receive the Holy Pneuma, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Air (John 20:22). After breathing into them He did not say goodbye, and He did not go out of the door. He simply disappeared. Isn’t this wonderful? Actually He had not come to them; He had just appeared. To say that He came is not so right. He simply appeared. To say that He left is not right either. He did not leave, He simply disappeared. He was still there, but within them.
(Concerning the Lord's Recovery, Chapter 5, by Witness Lee)
