THE TRIUNE GOD IN 2 CORINTHIANS 13:14
Second Corinthians 13:14 says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” Apparently, these are three items, but they are actually three aspects of one item. Love is in the heart and is altogether a matter of the heart. Grace comes out of a loving heart. When love in the heart is stirred and manifested, that is grace. For example, when we see a lovable person, our heart loves him, and we may give him a gift. This gift, which is the manifestation of love, is grace. When that person receives the gift, he comes into fellowship and contact with us. Eventually, love, grace, and fellowship are just three aspects of the same thing.
Likewise, God’s heart loves us; this is God’s love. Out of God’s love there is a manifestation, which is to give us His only begotten Son (John 3:16). John 1:14 says that this only begotten Son became flesh to tabernacle among us, full of grace. Verse 14 does not say full of love but full of grace. God’s giving us His Son is love, and the Son’s coming is full of grace. Thus, love becomes grace. Grace is not wages but a free gift through love. The love that is in the Father becomes grace in the Son. Therefore, when the Father’s love is expressed, it is the Son’s grace. However, the reaching of grace for us to receive and enjoy is accomplished by the Holy Spirit. Thus, John 20:22 and Acts 2:4 show us that the Triune God reaching us is the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit reaches us, He transmits the Father’s love and the Son’s grace for our enjoyment and experience. The result is that we have fellowship with the Triune God.
Hence, when love is manifested, it becomes grace, and when grace is received by us, it becomes fellowship. These are three aspects of one thing. Likewise, when God is expressed, He is Christ, who is God becoming flesh. When this Christ is received by us, He is the Spirit because what we receive is the Holy Spirit. Therefore, there is no way that we can experience Christ without experiencing the Father and the Spirit. The Christ whom we experience is the Triune God; the God whom we enjoy is the Triune God; and the Holy Spirit whom we have received is the Triune God. The Father is the Triune God, the Son is the Triune God, and the Spirit is the Triune God. The Three should not and cannot be divided. This is greatly different from the teaching concerning the Trinity in traditional theology.
VERSES IN THE SCRIPTURE REFERRING TO THE SPIRIT AND THE HUMAN SPIRIT
John 3:6
The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are the Triune God, and the Triune God reaches us as the Spirit. We thank the Lord that He reaches us as the Spirit, and we humans also have a spirit. The ultimate expression of the Triune God is the Spirit—the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit first came to us to sanctify us that we might be saved (1 Pet. 1:2). Then, when we are saved, He comes into us to be our life. The Holy Spirit comes into us by coming into our spirit. This can be proven by several verses in the Scriptures. First, John 3:6 says, “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” In this verse there are two spirits. The first is the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, and the second is that which is born of the Spirit, which is the human spirit. When we believe into the Lord by repenting and confessing our sins to Him, we are forgiven and saved. Once we are saved, God’s Spirit immediately comes into us to regenerate our spirit. Thus, we are regenerated when the Spirit of the Triune God enters into our spirit to be our life. To be saved is not to believe in a religion; rather, it is to receive another life into us in addition to our original human life. This other life is the divine life, which is God Himself. The Spirit comes into us to regenerate our spirit with the divine life. Therefore, that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
(Four Crucial Elements of the Bible, The—Christ, the Spirit, Life, and the Church, Chapter 7, by Witness Lee)
