SATURATED BY THE LORD SPIRIT
Thus far we have seen that our Redeemer, the Second of the Trinity, has become a life-giving Spirit. So here is a verse, 2 Corinthians 3:17, which says, "And the Lord is the Spirit." Who is the Lord? From the context of 2 Corinthians chapters two, three, and four you can realize that the Lord here is Jesus Christ (4:5). After His resurrection the Lord Jesus Christ is the Spirit. Verse 17 of chapter three goes on to say that where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom. This means there is freedom from law, from religion, from culture, from the concept of ethics, from traditions.
After being freed you come to verse 18: "And we all with unveiled face, beholding and reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit." In the last chapter we saw that we have four layers of veils: culture, religion, ethics, and tradition. But after all the veils are gone we can see the Lord Jesus with an unveiled face. We behold Him as a mirror, and at the same time we reflect Him. By this we are being transformed into His image for His expression. We are being transformed into His image from one degree of glory to another degree of glory. How could this be? It is by the Lord Spirit. First, in verse 17 it says that the Lord is the Spirit. It goes on to use the phrase, "the Spirit of the Lord," and then verse 18 uses the term, "the Lord Spirit." These are one. The Lord is the Spirit, and the Spirit of the Lord is the Lord Spirit. This means that after the Lord becomes the life-giving Spirit He enters into us to free us from all kinds of veils. Then day after day as we behold Him and reflect Him, we are being transformed into His image from one degree of glory to another degree of glory by Him, the Lord Spirit, for God’s expression. We just need to let Him saturate us and permeate us. The more we behold Him and the more we reflect Him, the more He saturates and permeates us to transform us into His own image, that we might express God. This is not only the Lord mingling with us, this is also the Lord saturating us and even soaking us.
A good example of the soaking and saturating is the making of tea. To make tea you take a cup of boiling water and put a tea bag into it. The tea saturates the water until all the water is soaked with the tea. Eventually the water becomes tea-water. Even we don’t call it water; we call it tea. It is actually more water than it is tea, but the water has been saturated by and with the tea. The saturating tea causes the water to become tea. The saturating tea is like Christ. When the tea is put into the water, the water is teaified. When Christ comes into us and saturates us, we are "Christified." Christ as the life-giving Spirit saturates us until we are Christified. By being Christified, we become Christ. This is why we are Christians. Christ has come into us and has Christified us so that we are now Christians. Christians are simply Christ. This is the corporate Christ as the expression of God.
This is the Lord’s recovery. The Lord has no intention to recover the wearing of long skirts or long sleeves. The Lord has no intention to recover a plain face without any makeup. The Lord has no intention to merely recover immersion or speaking in tongues. These are the minor things. The Lord’s intention is to recover Christification! You need to be Christified. Wonderful! What is the church life? The church life is the glorious Christification. What is the Lord’s recovery? It is to Christify every believer until he has a total Christification. This Christification is just the expression of God.
(Concerning the Lord's Recovery, Chapter 5, by Witness Lee)
