MATTHEW 28:19
In Matthew 28:19 the Lord charged His disciples to baptize people into the name of the Divine Trinity—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. At this point in Matthew, the Triune God had been completed and consummated. For the Divine Trinity to be completed, to be consummated, He needed to go through a process to pick up humanity. If He merely had divinity, He would not be the consummated Triune God. To be the consummated Triune God, the completed Triune God, He needed humanity as well as divinity.
He also needed to pass through a beautiful, all-inclusive death. Death in Adam is ugly, terrible, and terrifying, but death in Christ is beautiful. We all have to be conformed to His dear death. The death of Christ is lovable and dear, and the Triune God needed it for His completion, for His consummation. The Divine Trinity is undoubtedly omnipotent, but if He were short of this beautiful death, He would not be able to solve our problems. In Him and with Him there is an all-inclusive death that can kill all the "germs" related to us. The Triune God is an all-inclusive dose within us with the killing element of the death of Christ. Within this all-inclusive dose there are many elements that can supply us in a positive way, and there is also the element of His death that can eliminate the negative things. The death of Christ on the cross took away all the "negative germs" in the universe. Such a death has been brought into the Divine Trinity. Praise the Lord for such an accomplished death!
After He had passed through the process of crucifixion, He entered into the realm of resurrection and became a life-giving Spirit. He then came back to His disciples in the atmosphere and reality of His resurrection to charge them to make the nations the kingdom people by baptizing them into the name, the person, the reality, of the Divine Trinity. Now that the Divine Trinity has been completed, consummated, people can be baptized into Him. The completed Triune God, the consummated Divine Trinity, is perfect, complete, and short of nothing. When we baptize people, we are placing them into the completed, consummated Triune God.
The name of the Triune God is a three-one name. This name is the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit is the name of the Divine Trinity into whom we baptize people. The Lord revealed this divine title in the context of His desire to put the people who have received our preaching into the Triune God. The Triune God in His divine trinity is the very place where we should put those who have received Him.
We go to disciple the nations, baptizing them. The word disciple is a strong word. A number of messages would be needed to explain this word thoroughly. The disciples were to disciple the unbelieving nations by baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. This means that discipling includes baptizing. We have to disciple people by baptizing them, putting them into a person, the Triune God. When they get into this person, they are discipled. We should not preach the gospel to people without baptizing them. That is not scriptural. We should baptize people immediately after they have believed in the Lord. To disciple them by baptizing them is to make them the very citizens of the kingdom of the heavens. If we do not put them into the Triune God, we cannot bring them into the kingdom of God. We must put them into God Himself. Then we place them into the kingdom of God.
(Living In and With the Divine Trinity, Chapter 5, by Witness Lee)
