LIVING AND WALKING BY THE SPIRIT
In order to live in the Divine Trinity, we need to live and walk by the Spirit. Galatians 5:25 says, "If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit." To live by the Spirit is somewhat general, whereas to walk by the Spirit is particular. To live by the Spirit is to have our life dependent upon and regulated by the Spirit. To walk by the Spirit in verse 25 means to walk orderly or to march in military rank. The Spirit by whom we live and walk is the pneumatic Christ. The pneumatic Christ is resurrection itself. When we live by the Spirit and walk by the Spirit, we live and walk by and in resurrection.
The Lord Jesus told us that He is the resurrection and the life (John 11:25). Life and resurrection are not things but a person. Resurrection is a living person, who is life which has gone through death. Resurrection is the expression of life which has passed through death and has been tested, checked out, by death. Before being checked out by death, life was purely life, not resurrection. But after being checked out by death and passing through death successfully, life has become resurrection. Both life and resurrection are the same wonderful, excellent person. This person is the pneumatic Christ as the life-giving Spirit. This Spirit is the resurrection, in which we Christians should live all the time.
To live in this resurrection is to forget about ourselves, to renounce ourselves, to deny ourselves. When we go out to preach the gospel or to do anything in service to the Lord, we should act, not in ourselves but in Christ, in resurrection, in the pneumatic Christ, in the living Spirit, who gives life to us all the time as our life supply. Every item of the God-ordained way should be carried out in resurrection. Preaching the gospel, baptizing people, having home meetings, having group meetings, and prophesying in the larger meetings of the church should be done by our renouncing, rejecting, and denying of ourselves. This means that everything should be done in resurrection.
LIVING CHRIST FOR HIS MAGNIFICATION
To live in the Divine Trinity is to live Christ for His magnification (Phil. 1:20-21a). No one in himself can live Christ for His magnification. We live Christ for His magnification only through the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ (v. 19). When we live by the Spirit and walk by the Spirit, spontaneously we live Christ to magnify Him. The factor, the element, and the sphere of our living should be the life-giving Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus Christ as the bountiful supply. The term "the Spirit of Jesus Christ" means that the Spirit is Jesus Christ. He is the rich Spirit as our life supply, and He is in our spirit. This is why we need to stress the matter of our spirit. We cannot overstress this matter. We have to stress this matter again and again. We need to turn to our spirit, exercise our spirit, and stir up our spirit because in our spirit is the very resurrection, who is the living One, the pneumatic Christ, the life-giving Spirit.
The secret of experiencing this One is to deny ourselves. As long as we deny ourselves, we are in resurrection, but it is different with the unbelieving Gentiles because they do not have this treasure of resurrection in their spirit. Their spirit is dead and has not been regenerated, but our spirit is different. Our spirit has been regenerated. Christ as the resurrected One is within our regenerated spirit as the very resurrection. Thus, we can live in the Divine Trinity because the very embodiment of this Divine Trinity is in our spirit as the resurrection. We can live in and by the resurrected Christ as the resurrection itself. Whenever we deny ourselves, renounce our soul, we enter into the full realization and experience of this resurrection.
This is altogether in faith, not in our feelings. We have to exercise our faith to believe this. Faith is the substantiating of the fact. In this universe and especially within us, there is a fact, a reality, which we cannot see. However, we can substantiate this fact. The verb substantiate comes from the noun substance. All of the spiritual things, especially Christ being resurrection within us, must be substantiated by our faith. Faith comes out of the hearing of the word (Rom. 10:17). As we hear the word, the good things concerning Christ, we see a vision, and this seeing produces an appreciation, a faith, within us. Our faith is our appreciation of the Lord Jesus Christ. When we hear Him and see Him, spontaneously there is an appreciation within us. This appreciation is the believing, the faith, and this faith is the faith of the Son of God (Gal. 2:20c). The faith of the Son of God is actually the faith as the Son of God. This faith is Jesus Christ Himself.
(Living In and With the Divine Trinity, Chapter 9, by Witness Lee)
