The vision and experience of christ in his resurrection and ascension
Scripture Reading: John 12:23-24; Luke 12:49-50; John 14:2, 10-11, 16-20, 23; 15:1-8, 16; 16:13-16
I. The release of the glory of Christ's divinity is His being glorified by the Father with the divine glory (John 12:23-24) in His resurrection through His death (Luke 24:26); the release of the glory of His divinity was to cast fire on the earth (12:49-50).
II. Christ in His human living prayed that the Father would glorify Him (John 17:1, 5), and the Father answered His prayer (Acts 3:13).
III. Such a glorification is a transfer, transferring Christ from the stage of His incarnation into the stage of His inclusion, in which He, as the last Adam, became the life-giving Spirit in resurrection (John 1:14; 1 Cor. 15:45b).
IV. Through His glorification in His resurrection Christ became the firstborn Son of God, possessing both divinity and humanity (Acts 13:33; Rom. 8:29), became the life-giving Spirit, the pneumatic Christ (1 Cor. 15:45b; John 20:22), and regenerated all His believers to be God's children, God's species (1 Pet. 1:3).
V. In the resurrection of Christ, all His believers have been brought into the union of life with the processed Triune God and mingled with the consummated God into an incorporation:
A. God in His Divine Trinity is an incorporation—John 14:10-11:
1. By coinhering mutually—"I am in the Father and the Father is in Me"—v. 10.
2. By working together as one—"the words that I say to you I do not speak from Myself, but the Father who abides in Me does His works…Believe because of the works themselves"—vv. 10-11.
B. The consummated Triune God and the regenerated believers are an incorporation—vv. 16-19:
1. The Spirit, the third of the Divine Trinity as another Comforter, being the reality of the Son, the second of the Divine Trinity as the first Comforter and the embodiment of the Triune God, not only abides with the regenerated believers but also dwells in them—vv. 16-17.
2. The Son as the first Comforter left His believers through His death and came back to be another Comforter to them through His resurrection to make them live with Him—vv.?18-19.
C. The consummated Triune God and the regenerated believers became an incorporation in the resurrection of Christ—v. 20:
1. "In that day"—in the day of the Son's resurrection.
2. "You will know that":
a. "I am in My Father"—the Son and the Father are incorporated into one.
b. "And you in Me"—the regenerated believers are incorporated into the Son and into the Father in the Son.
c. "And I in you"—the Son in the Father is incorporated into the regenerated believers.
3. The in of the Spirit of reality in verse 17 is the totality of the three ins in verse 20.
VI. The issue of Christ's glorification, His resurrection, is the incorporation of all of God's chosen, redeemed, and regenerated people with Himself in three aspects—the Father's house, the Son's vine, and the Spirit's child:
A. The first aspect of the incorporation of the consummated God with the regenerated believers in resurrection is the house of the Father—v. 2:
1. The Father's house is typified by the temple—2:16-21.
2. The Father's house is a divine and human incorporation of the processed and consummated God constituted with His redeemed, regenerated, and transformed elect; the more we eat Christ, the more we are incorporated into this universal incorporation—cf. Rev. 21:2-3; 2:17; John 14:16-20.
3. All the believers in Christ, redeemed through His blood, regenerated with His life by His Spirit, and transformed with the divine element by the life-giving Spirit, are the "abodes" in the Father's house—vv. 2, 23.
4. The Father's house is built up by the constant visitation to the redeemed elect of the Father and the Son with the Spirit who indwells the redeemed elect to be the mutual dwelling place of the consummated Triune God and His redeemed elect—v. 23.
B. The second aspect of the incorporation of the consummated God with the regenerated believers in resurrection is the true vine of the Son—15:1-8, 16:
1. The true vine as a sign of the all-inclusive Christ is the organism of the processed and consummated Triune God.
2. Its branches are the believers of Christ, who by nature were branches of the wild olive tree and have been grafted into the cultivated olive tree (Rom. 11:17, 24) through their believing into Christ (John 3:15); both the cultivated olive tree and the true vine signify Christ; hence, to be grafted into the cultivated olive tree is to be grafted into Christ.
3. Its grafted branches have been regenerated with the divine life, brought into the life union with the resurrected Christ, and incorporated with the processed and consummated Triune God.
4. This is for the unlimited Triune God's multiplication as the increase of the immeasurable Christ, the embodiment of the processed and consummated Triune God, for His universal spreading through the fruit-bearing of the believers of Christ as the branches by their faithful abiding in Christ for the glorification of the Father—vv. 29-30; 15:4-5, 8, 16.
C. The third aspect of the incorporation of the consummated God with the regenerated believers in resurrection is the new child of the Spirit—16:13-16, 19-22:
1. A new child, a new man, was born by the consummated Spirit in resurrection—vv. 21, 13-15.
2. This new child, the new man, was created by Christ on the cross by abolishing in His flesh the law of the commandments in ordinances—Eph. 2:15.
3. This new child, the new man, was regenerated by the Father with the resurrected Christ in His resurrection and born by the Spirit in the believers' spirit—1 Pet. 1:3; Rom. 1:4; John 3:6b.
4. The first group of Christ's believers, who suffered Christ's departure through His death, was the delivering woman, and the Christ who returned in resurrection was the newborn child to be the new man—16:20-22; Col. 3:10-11.
5. The new man is put on by the believers through the renewing in the spirit of the mind to consummate the Body of Christ—Eph. 4:23-24.