We need to pass through the physical realm of Christ’s earthly ministry and enter into something higher—the mystical realm of Christ’s heavenly ministry.
Christ’s being the life-giving Spirit is a most important qualification for Christ to carry out His heavenly ministry. When He was in the flesh, He was not able to enter into us as life. As a young Christian I was bothered when I heard that, according to the Bible, Christ is in us. I wondered how it was possible for Christ to be in me. At that time, I did not realize that, in and through resurrection, the Christ who was in the flesh became the life-giving Spirit. Later I came to see that the New Testament unveils the fact that the One who died on the cross as our Savior was resurrected, and in resurrection He became the life-giving Spirit. Now He is qualified to carry out His heavenly ministry in the mystical realm.
In the mystical realm of His heavenly ministry, Christ is the life-giving Spirit from His resurrection, in which He became the life-giving Spirit, through eternity.
As the life-giving Spirit (Rom. 8:9-10; 2 Cor. 3:17-18), Christ is carrying out His heavenly ministry by accomplishing God’s organic salvation subjectively in eight steps. Here we can see a sharp contrast: earthly versus heavenly, physical versus mystical, judicial versus organic, and objective versus subjective. All eight aspects of God’s organic salvation are subjective.
Regeneration is to generate the redeemed believers with the divine life that they may be born of God to be His children of His species (John 1:12-13; 3:6b). As God’s children we are of His kind, His species. Therefore, we are gods, having God’s life and nature but not His Godhead.
Feeding is to feed the newborn babes by regeneration in Christ’s shepherding His flock by nourishing and cherishing (Eph. 5:29) that His sheep may grow in the divine life unto maturity (John 10:10-11, 14-16; 21:15-17; Heb. 13:20; 1 Pet. 5:4; 2:25). Feeding surely is organic.
Dispositional sanctification is to sanctify the believers who are growing in the divine life in their disposition with the holy nature of God (Rom. 15:16; 6:19, 22; 1 Thes. 5:23). Our natural disposition is crooked, perverted, and distorted, yet it can be sanctified and corrected, not with teaching but with the holy nature of God.
(The Divine and Mystical Realm, Chapter 2, by Witness Lee)