GENERAL SUBJECT

EXPERIENCING, ENJOYING, AND EXPRESSING CHRIST (2)

Message Six
The Grace of God and the All-inclusive Spirit

|Scripture Reading: 1 Cor. 15:10; 2 Cor. 1:12, 15, 21-22; 3:3, 6, 8, 17-18; 12:9; 13:14

I.　In 2 Corinthians Christ as the grace of God is the good land for us to enter into, experience, enjoy, partake of, and possess—John 1:17; 1 Cor. 15:10; cf. Gal. 2:20; 1 Cor. 5:7; 10:3-4; 2.Cor. 13:14:

A.　In 2 Corinthians 13:14 the grace of the Lord is mentioned first because this book is on the grace of Christ—1:12; 4:15; 6:1; 8:1, 9; 9:8, 14; 12:9:

1.　The Holy Spirit as the circulation, the transmission, of the grace of Christ with the love of the Father is the supply in our Christian life and church life:

a.　The entire church life depends upon 2 Corinthians 13:14.

b.　The current of the Divine Trinity within us as revealed in 2 Corinthians 13:14 is our spiritual pulse.

2.　The blessing in 2 Corinthians 13:14 is the same as that in Numbers 6:22-27; this is the eternal blessing of the Triune God, which is the Triune God dispensing Himself in His Divine Trinity into us for our enjoyment:

a.　"Jehovah bless you and keep you" is the love of God the Father as the fountain of life and light—v. 24; Psa. 36:9.

b.　"Jehovah make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you" is the grace of Christ as the fatness of God's house— Num. 6:25; Psa. 36:8.

c.　"Jehovah lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace" is the fellowship of the Holy Spirit as the river of God's pleasures—Num. 6:26; Psa. 36:8.

B.　The grace of God in His economy is rich, multiplying, and abounding—Eph. 2:7; 1 Pet. 1:2b; 2 Pet. 1:2; Eph. 1:7b-8:

1.　God has graced us in the Beloved—v. 6.

2.　We have obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand—Rom. 5:2a.

3.　When Christ in us is daily received, experienced, and enjoyed by us, that is grace being added to us, grace upon grace—John 1:16.

C.　The new covenant ministers' living is the living of grace, the experience of grace—Heb. 12:28; 1 Cor. 15:10; 2 Cor. 1:12, 15:

1.　The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Spirit of grace, is with our spirit, which has been regenerated to be the dwelling place and vessel of the Triune God—Heb. 10:29b; Gal. 6:18; Phil. 4:23; Philem. 25; 2 Tim. 4:22; cf. 1:6-7.

2.　Whenever we turn to our spirit, we enter through the gate of heaven and touch the throne of grace in heaven through Christ as the heavenly ladder—Heb. 4:16; Gen. 28:12-17; John 1:51; Eph. 2:22.

3.　Grace is with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ in incorruptibility—6:24.

4.　Humility saves us from all kinds of destruction and invites God's grace—1 Pet. 5:5-6; James 4:6.

5.　We need to enjoy the word of His grace—Acts 20:32; Jer. 15:16.

6.　We need to experience the Spirit of grace and of supplications to bring us into the enjoyment of the Triune God—Zech. 12:10a.

7.　The new covenant ministers enjoy Christ as their all-sufficient grace through sufferings:

a.　The ministry of the new covenant is produced by revelation plus suffering—2 Cor. 12:7; 1:3-4, 8-10.

b.　Christ as grace becomes power tabernacling over the new covenant ministers, overshadowing them in their weakness to become their dwelling place to sustain, support, maintain, protect, and keep them—12:9b.

8.　We need the grace of God in Christ applied to us as the strength and power for our move and our protection—Ezek. 1:6b, 9a; Exo. 19:4; Isa. 40:31; 2 Cor. 4:7; 1:12; 12:9; 1 Cor. 15:10; Psa. 17:8; 57:1; 63:7; 91:4.

9.　We reign in life by receiving the abundance of grace—Rom. 5:17.

10.　We need to be good stewards of the varied grace of God—1 Pet. 4:10; Eph. 3:2.

11.　Our word should convey grace to the hearers—Luke 4:22; Eph. 4:29; Isa. 50:4.

12.　We need to enjoy the grace of life in the church life to keep ourselves in the genuine oneness—Psa. 133.

13.　In the church life, when we have grace upon us, the church will be built up, and the grace that we receive will be visible—Acts 4:33; 11:23.

14.　The product of the grace in God's economy is the Body of Christ as the poem of God, expressing God's infinite wisdom and divine design—Eph. 2:10, 7; 2 Cor. 5:17.

15.　The grace of the Lord Jesus dispensed to His believers through-out the new testament age consummates in the New Jerusalem, in which the processed and consummated Triune God will be the grace enjoyed by all the believers for eternity— Rev. 22:21; cf. 21:23; 22:1-2.

II.　In order to be constituted as the ministers of the new covenant for the building up of the Body of Christ, we need to experience all the aspects of Christ as the all-inclusive Spirit in 2 Corinthians:

A.　The anointing Spirit is the indwelling, compound Spirit moving and working within us to impart all of God's divine ingredients and constituents into us—1:21; Phil. 1:19; Exo. 30:23-25; Rom. 10:12-13:

1.　The reaching of the anointing accomplishes the central purpose of God's salvation to anoint the compounded God into us so that we may be united, mingled, and incorporated with Him—1 Cor. 15:45b; 1 John 2:20, 27.

2.　The teaching of the anointing is the inward feeling generated by the moving of the Spirit within us, enabling us to know God's mind and to live in Him, teaching us the things concerning the Triune God and His activities—v. 27; Acts 16:6-7.

B.　The sealing Spirit forms the divine elements into an impression to express God's image—2 Cor. 1:22; Eph. 1:13:

1.　The sealing Spirit saturates the believers continuously unto the redemption of their body—4:30.

2.　The sealing Spirit transforms the believers into a treasure to God as His inheritance—1:11.

3.　The more we are sealed, the more we bear the image of God to be constituted into the masterpiece of God—2 Cor. 3:18b; Eph. 2:10.

C.　The pledging Spirit gives us a foretaste as a sample and guarantee of the full taste of God—2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5:

1.　The Spirit's pledging guarantees that God is our inheritance— Eph. 1:14.

2.　Christ as the pledging Spirit is in us for our taste, for our enjoyment of Him as our divine inheritance, our allotted portion, through the exercise of our spirit—Psa. 34:8; 1 Pet. 2:3; Col. 1:12.

D.　The inscribing Spirit writes Christ into us to make us the living letters of Christ—2 Cor. 3:3; cf. Psa. 45:1:

1.　Christ is being inscribed into us with the spiritual ink, the Spirit of the living God; if we are under the Spirit's inscribing, we have the deep sensation of being living within.

2.　The Spirit is the ink, and the content of the ink is Christ with His person, work, and attainments; the compound Spirit as the compound ink adds the substance of Christ into us and saturates us with the essence of Christ.

E.　The life-giving Spirit, the vivifying Spirit, imparts the divine life into our being to make us men of life with the ministry of life— 2.Cor. 3:6, 17; John 7:38:

1.　When we study and read the Bible prayerfully with the exercise of our spirit, we are vivified—2 Cor. 3:6; John 6:63.

2.　To be one who can give life to others, we must abide in the divine life and must walk, live, and have our being in the divine life—1 John 5:16a.

F.　The ministering Spirit imparts all that Christ is into us and makes all that Christ is and has real to us—2 Cor. 3:8; John 16:13-15:

1.　We can receive the supply of the ministering Spirit by exercising our spirit to pray and call on the Lord—Gal. 3:5a; Col. 4:2; Rom. 10:12-13.

2.　The ministering Spirit ministers Christ into us and ministers Christ to others through us—2 Cor. 3:6; cf. Phil. 1:25.

G.　The freeing Spirit frees us from the bondage of the letter of the law; the Spirit of the Lord is the Lord Himself, with whom is freedom—2 Cor. 3:17; 4:5; Gal. 2:4; 5:1:

1.　This freeing includes full satisfaction, with a rich, supporting supply and the full enjoyment of Christ—John 4:14b.

2.　This freeing includes the enjoyment of true rest, without being under the heavy burden to keep the law—Matt. 11:28-30.

H.　The transforming Spirit dispenses the divine life, nature, essence, element—even the Divine Being—into us so that we may be metabolically changed in our inner being—2 Cor. 3:18:

1.　When we turn our heart to the Lord to behold and reflect the glory of the Lord with an unveiled face, He infuses us with the elements of what He is and what He has done.

2.　Thus, we are being transformed metabolically from one degree of glory to another degree of glory to have His life shape by His life power with His life essence.

I.　The transmitting Spirit transmits all that Christ is with all the riches of God into us for our participation—13:14:

1.　God is love, and this love is being transmitted as grace into us by the Spirit, who is the Transmitter.

2.　The Spirit is the fellowship, the communication, the circulation, the transmission of the grace of Christ with the love of the Father, transmitting the divine riches into our being for our enjoyment.