I. THE PROCESSED AND CONSUMMATED TRIUNE GOD
The processed and consummated Triune God is revealed in John 14:6-20. These fifteen verses are the very center of this divine autobiography. They bring us to the center of this person whose autobiography is the Bible. We say that Christ is the center of the Divine Trinity, expressing the Father and being realized as the Spirit, based upon these fifteen verses. I learned from others that the Son expresses the Father. But I did not learn from others that the Son is realized as the Spirit. I discovered this in the divine revelation of the Scriptures.
Our Christian life is a person. His autobiography is our biography. The Bible is the Triune God’s autobiography, and before we experience it, it is our biography. But after experiencing it, it becomes our autobiography. In our Christian life, we Christians are all writing our autobiography. We are writing our autobiography by copying what is written in God’s autobiography. Eventually, the apostle Paul’s autobiography was just the Bible.
The Triune God as a wonderful person is the contents of our Christian life. He exists from eternity to eternity, having no beginning or ending. As such an eternal One, He created the universe and man. After His creation of man, He remained the same for four thousand years. One day in time, He entered into a long "tunnel" to get Himself processed. That long tunnel, or long process, lasted a little more than thirty-three and a half years.
After passing through such a process, He became different. Before those thirty-three and a half years, He was only divine, not human. But after those thirty-three and a half years, He became both divine and human. In other words, before that process He was only God, not man. But after that process, He became both God and man. Thus, some particular element was added into Him, and that particular element was humanity.
Before His incarnation, He had divinity, but He did not have humanity. It was in incarnation that He picked up humanity and put humanity upon Himself. In His resurrection He brought this humanity with Him, and He uplifted this humanity to make this humanity a divine humanity. Now in His ascension, He is both divine and human, having both divinity and humanity. These are the basic elements of His person, and these basic personal elements are the basic contents of the Christian life.
In His process He passed through incarnation, and He also passed through a living that lasted over thirty-three years. No one can fathom the mysterious human living of this God-man. He was the very Triune God, Elohim (Hebrew—Gen. 1:1), who created the universe, coming to pick up humanity and living in this humanity on earth for thirty-three and a half years. Who can imagine this? Most Christians have never spent time to muse on God’s human living. We have to consider such a great thing. God became a man and lived in His humanity on this earth continually for thirty-three and a half years. He never left during this period of time. Today we take vacations, but He never had a vacation in His human living. His human living is a great element of what He is today.
(The Christian Life, Chapter 2, by Witness Lee)
