IN THE SON AND IN THE FATHER
Now we come to John 17:1 which says, "These things Jesus spoke, and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son that the Son may glorify You." In verse 21 He prayed, "That they all may be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, that the world may believe that You have sent Me." This is not a prayer for healing or for good fortune. He prayed that all the disciples would be one even as He and the Father are one. This prayer has not been answered yet in full.
So many of the real Christians today, who have been spirit-regenerated and blood-washed, do not know that the Lord’s prayer was for them to be in the Son as well as in the Father. This is too deep and too mysterious! Just as the Father is in the Son, and the Son is in the Father, so all the believers in the Son may be in both the Son and the Father. This is deep and profound, yet it should be a fact. And this fact is just the expression of God. When we live a life that is in the Son and the Father and a life letting the Son and the Father live in us, this life is the expression of God. This is the thing that the Lord prayed for and is recovering today.
A SPIRITUAL UNION WITH HIM
In John 20:22 the Lord Jesus breathed into the disciples and told them to receive the Holy Spirit. After forty days He told the disciples that all authority in the heavens and the earth had been given to Him and that they should go in His name to disciple the nations. Then they should baptize those into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:18-19). M. R. Vincent, in his Word Studies in the New Testament, tells us clearly that the preposition "into" implies a spiritual and mystical union. We were outside of the Triune God, but through baptism, we were baptized into the Triune God, into a spiritual and mystical union with Him.
BAPTIZED INTO A PERSON
The name mentioned here is not a vain name. Mr. Vincent goes on to say that the name is equivalent to His Person. If there is no Person the name would be empty. To baptize the believer into the name means to put them into the Person. This is confirmed by Galatians 3:27 which says, "For as many as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ." This proves that to be baptized into the name of the Triune God means to be baptized into the Person of the Triune God. We all have been baptized into Christ, and now we all wear Christ upon our being. This means that we and Christ are one. Here in this oneness there is only Christ. There is no Jew or Greek or slave or free man. There is no man of culture or man of race. All are one in Christ Jesus.
(Concerning the Lord's Recovery, Chapter 4, by Witness Lee)
