The Two Great Mysteries in God's Economy, by Witness Lee

GOD IN THE NEW TESTAMENT DISPENSATION

Incarnation

When we come to the New Testament, the Gospel of John says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (1:1). This Word which was God “became” flesh (1:14). The King James Version renders it “was made,” but He was not “made” flesh, He became flesh (Gk.). He actively took the initiative to become something. He was the Word and took the initiative to become flesh. In other words, this very God who was the Word became a man. He became a man to be the Lamb of God. How wonderful that this very God who was the Word took the initiative to become a man that He might be the Lamb to take away our sins! This was not merely for redemption. Praise the Lord that this was also for dispensing through the divine redemption!

Because we all are sinful, we are not suitable persons for God to enter into us. For God to get into such sinful people, He has to be a redeeming Lamb to take away our sins. We must see that this taking away of people’s sins is one step of God’s dispensing. In order to dispense Himself into sinners, He must become a man to be the redeeming Lamb to take away our sins. Then this very God could dispense Himself into His redeemed ones.

Resurrection

After accomplishing redemption, the last Adam who was the very flesh and the very man became a life-giving Spirit! (1 Cor. 15:45b). In order for this wonderful God to carry out His dispensing, He took two steps. By incarnation He became a man, the last Adam, to be the redeeming Lamb. After this, He took another step, resurrection. In resurrection He became something further. He became a life-giving Spirit! At the end of the Gospel of John, He came back in resurrection to His disciples, but not as the Lamb. In the beginning of John’s Gospel, He was introduced to people by John the Baptist as the Lamb of God (1:29). At the end of this Gospel, after His resurrection, He came back to His disciples in a very mysterious way. Even though the room where the disciples were was closed and no door was open, all of a sudden He was in their midst. All the doors were shut, yet He came in with a physical body that could be touched. Eventually He breathed into all of them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (20:22). We can never receive the Lamb into us, but we can receive the Spirit, the pneuma. Pneuma in Greek means the breath, the Spirit. After His resurrection He appeared to His disciples, not in the sense of the Lamb, but in the actuality of the breath, the Spirit. Now, whenever we would call on Him, He as the heavenly pneuma, the very breath, will come into us. This is the dispensing of the very God into our being in His Trinity—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The Father is there in eternity, and after incarnation and before resurrection the Son is right here in front of us, but the Son is not in us yet. He had to take another step to become the life-giving Spirit, the very breath that we breathe in.

If we read the New Testament carefully we can see that when we receive the Son we get the Father, and when we call on the name of the Lord, we receive the life-giving Spirit. When we receive the Son, we have the Father. When we call on the name of the Son, we have the Spirit. No one has ever seen the Father, but the Son declares the Father to all of us (John 1:18). The Father is still hidden, but the Son is given for all of us to receive. The Son has been crucified, buried, and resurrected, and now He is the life-giving Spirit! Hence, whosoever calls upon the name of the Son, gets the Spirit into him. We must all see that the very God is not just the Father hidden in eternity, not just the Son appearing to human society, but also the Spirit who has come into us. This is why the Lord Jesus was on the earth. One day He was going to be crucified, die, be buried, and be raised up to become the life-giving Spirit.

The Spirit of Reality

In John 14 while the Lord was talking to His disciples, one of the disciples, Philip, asked, “Lord, show us the Father and it suffices us.” The Lord Jesus said, “Am I so long a time with you, and you have not known me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (vv. 8-9). The Lord was saying, “Do you still ask Me to show you the Father? Do you not know that when you see Me you see the Father because I am one with the Father?” At that moment the disciples received the revelation. They realized that this very Jesus, who is the Son given to us, is one with the Father. He is not only the Son; He is also the Father. After this clear vision, the Lord Jesus went on to say, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Comforter” (v. 16). He was the first Comforter coming to be among them, but they needed another Comforter to get into them. John 14:17 reveals that this other Comforter is the Spirit of reality who came first to be among the disciples and then to abide in them. The Lord then said, “I will not leave you orphans.” Here we can see in verse 17 the pronoun “He” and in verse 18 the pronoun “I.” The “I” is the very “He,” and the “He” is the very “I.” So, this Spirit of reality is just “I, Myself.” Then, Jesus said, “In that day [the day of resurrection] you shall know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you” (v. 20). Through this second step the Lord comes into us. These two revelations are found in John—one concerning the Son being the Father and the other concerning the Son being the Spirit.

(The Two Great Mysteries in God's Economy, Chapter 2, by Witness Lee)