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WITNESS LEE QUOTES
Chapter Five
THE ESSENTIAL AND ECONOMICAL TRINITY
For material concerning the Triune God in His essence refer to Chapter 1. Part I and Chapter 2, Part IV.
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EPHESIANS 1:
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ,
4 According as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blemish before Him, in love,
5 Having predestinated us unto sonship through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will,
6 To the praise of the glory of His grace, with which He graced us in the Beloved;
For the dispensing of the divine Trinity the Father first selected us. We were selected not only before we were born, but even before the foundation of the world (v. 4). In eternity, before time began, God the Father selected us. Then He predestinated us, determining a destiny for us (v. 5). He determined this destiny beforehand; hence, it is a predestination. Following His selection, God predestinated us unto sonship (v. 5). This means He destined beforehand that we may be His sons.
Sonship is a matter of life-dispensing. If a father has many sons, this means he has dispensed much life. God created only one man, Adam, as the forefather of the human race. But Adam’s descendants number in the billions. This is the result of life-dispensing. As human beings, we are here by life-dispensing. Likewise, as members of Christ, we are here by God’s life-dispensing.
Some may say that the term “life-dispensing” is not found in the Bible. That is correct. The word Trinity also is not in the Bible. Nevertheless, in the Bible there is the fact of the Trinity. In order to speak of the fact, we need terminology. Therefore, the word Trinity was coined to denote the Triune Godhead of the unique God. Likewise, when we read the Bible and see that God has predestined us before the foundation of the world unto sonship, we need a proper definition of sonship. We have seen that sonship involves life-dispensing. We have a great Father who is rich in life. His capacity is universally great, and He has much life to dispense. No one can tell how many millions of sons God has begotten. In all this begetting He has dispensed His life into His sons. We have a great Father who has dispensed much life.
(Witness Lee, Divine Trinity, 149-150)
Now you can understand why I say that Ephesians 1 has the divine dispensing. It has the dispensing because it has the sonship. Sonship is a great matter. Our destiny is sonship. Praise the Lord that we have been predestined unto sonship! Our predestination unto sonship is through Jesus Christ and according to the good pleasure of His will (v. 5).
Sonship results in “the praise of the glory of His grace” (v. 6). God’s grace has a glory, and glory means expression. For example, when electricity is hidden, there is no light. When the electricity shines, it is expressed, and this shining is the glory of electricity. Likewise, God’s grace has a glory, and this glory is the sonship. Do you realize that the entire globe is full of the divine sonship, with the many sons of God?
Recently I bought two maps for my living room, and I put pins in every place where there is a church. What a glorious sight! What are the churches? They are the totality, the aggregate, of all the sons of God. This is the sonship, and the sonship is the glory. Therefore, the sonship is to the praise of the glory of God’s grace. This is the glory of the sonship.
At one time we all were sinners and were scattered. But now we have been gathered together through the life-dispensing. Our Father has begotten us, dispensing His life into all of us. Now we all have the divine life dispensed into us by our one Father. This dispensed divine life is the factor that unites us. We all are in the sonship, and this is a glory to His grace. This is the dispensing of the Father.
(Witness Lee, Divine Trinity, 150)
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EPHESIANS 1:
7 In Whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of offenses, according to the riches of His grace,
8 Which He caused to abound to us in all wisdom and prudence,
9 Having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself
10 Unto a dispensation of the fullness of the times, to head up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things on the earth, in Him,
11 In Whom also we were made an inheritance, having been predestinated according to the purpose of the One Who operates all things according to the counsel of His will,
12 That we should be to the praise of His glory who have before hoped in Christ;
The Father’s selection and predestination are for God’s purpose. Now we come to the Son’s redemption, which is for the accomplishment of the Father’s purpose. According to traditional theology, the Father is the Father, the Son is the Son, and the Spirit is the Spirit, as three distinct and separate persons. If this were the case, when the Son came, the Father would have remained in heaven. But by reading the Gospel of John carefully, we can see that when the Son came, He came with the Father (John 8:29; 16:32). The Son came not in His own name, but in the Father’s name (John 5:43), and in Isaiah 9:6 is even called the everlasting Father. The Son did the Father’s work (John 5:17, 19), He did the Father’s will (John 5:30; 6:38), He spoke the Father’s word (John 3:34a; 14:24; 7:16-17; 12:49-50), He sought the Father’s glory (John 7:18), and He expressed the Father (John 14:7-9). From these verses we can see that nothing was of the Son; everything was of the Father. This means that when the Son came, the Father came. The Son and the Father are one (John 10:30; 17:22). The Son was in the Father, and the Father was in Him (John 14:10-11; 17:21). When the Son spoke, the Father worked. The Son accomplished redemption through His blood and according to the riches of God’s grace (Eph. 1:7-9a).
The Son’s redemption for the accomplishment of God’s eternal purpose is “unto a dispensation of the fullness of the times, to head up all things in Christ” (Eph. 1:9b-10). What does it mean for all things to be headed up in the Son? We may use the human body as an illustration. As long as we are alive, all of our members, including our feet, legs, and hands, are headed up. But if we die, the members will become detached. This indicates that the heading up depends on the uniting of life. The life in our body is the means by which all the members are headed up. When the life goes, there is no longer any heading up.
(Witness Lee, Divine Trinity, 151)
After God created Adam, He put him before the tree of life. But Adam partook of the other tree, the tree of death (Gen. 3:6). At that time death came into man. Because man was the representative of the whole creation, his death caused all of creation to lose the heading up and become scattered.
Through the Son’s redemption, the divine life has been dispensed into His believers. This life that has been dispensed into them unites all of them. Christ as the Head with this uniting life thus heads up all the believers. This heading up is the church life. However, because many believers still live in the old creation, they are detached. They have no oneness, no uniting, which means they have no heading up. We must learn how to live by the divine life. As long as we live by this divine life, we are united. This uniting life is used by Christ the Head to head us up into one church life. This heading up of the church will spread until the time of the new heaven and the new earth. At that time there will be the New Jerusalem, which will be the center of God’s ultimate heading up. Then there will be the dispensation of the fullness of time. Dispensation here means arrangement or management. In eternity all things in heaven and on earth will be headed up in Christ through the church.
Many Christians today are not headed up because they are short of the dispensing of the divine life. This is the reason it is our burden today in the Lord’s recovery not to teach mere doctrines, but to dispense the divine life. Through this life-dispensing, saints from many countries around the globe become one. What has brought about this oneness? It is the life-dispensing. Life-dispensing heads us up. This is the result of Christ’s redemption. Christ’s redemption takes away our sin so that death may be swallowed and that all the members may be headed up through the life-dispensing.
In Christ we also were made an inheritance (Eph. 1:11). Furthermore, the Son’s redemption for the accomplishment of God’s eternal purpose is unto the praise of God’s glory (v. 12). After the Father’s dispensing in verse 6, Paul says, “To the praise of the glory of His grace.” Then after the Son’s dispensing, Paul says, “To the praise of His glory.”
(Witness Lee, Divine Trinity, 151-152)
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EPHESIANS 1:
13 In Whom you also, hearing the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation, in Whom also believing, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of the promise,
14 Who is the pledge of our inheritance, unto the redemption of the acquired possession to the praise of His glory.
The Spirit’s dispensing is His sealing “unto the redemption of the acquired possession to the praise of His glory (vv. 13-14). The seal of the Holy Spirit is living, and it works within us to permeate and transform us with God’s element until we are matured in God’s life and eventually fully redeemed even in our body.
God seals us with the Spirit. We may illustrate this sealing with a rubber stamp and a piece of blank paper. By stamping the blank piece of paper, we dispense the ink onto the paper. If we stamp the paper again and again, eventually it will be saturated and soaked with the ink.
Not only is sonship a matter of life-dispensing, but the sealing of the Spirit also involves life-dispensing. Day after day, the Spirit is sealing us. When you were a sinner, you were like an unclean sheet of paper. But one day you repented to God and called on the Lord’s name. His blood washed you, cleansed you, and made you like a piece of clean blank paper. At that time the Spirit sealed you.
We need to know who the Spirit is who sealed us. When the Son came, He came with the Father, and when the Spirit came, He came with the Son and the Father. Therefore, the Spirit is the consummation of the Triune God. The Spirit is actually the application of the Son and the Father to us. The rubber stamp is the application of the ink to the paper. When you put the stamp on the paper, the ink is added to the paper. The Spirit is the consummation and the reaching of the Triune God to us. When He seals us, the entire Triune God reaches us. The Spirit not only reaches us; He is also attached to us (2 Cor. 1:21). The reaching is His attaching, and the attaching is also His dispensing. The Triune God has been dispensed into us. He has reached us, and He has been attached to us. The divine sealing, the life-dispensing of the Triune God, is taking place within us all the time.
(Witness Lee, Divine Trinity, 153)
The sealing of the Spirit is unto the redemption of the acquired possession (1:13b, 14b). Some versions say “until”, but “unto” is more meaningful because it means resulting in. We were acquired by God as His possession. From the day He acquired us, He began the sealing in order to saturate us with the Triune God. It is too objective simply to say that we have God’s seal upon us as a mark. We not only have a seal we also have a sealing to saturate our entire being with God’s element. Our body has not yet been redeemed; it still is a natural being. But we have a sealing, the saturating, of the Holy Spirit, within us, and this sealing will continue until the day our body is fully saturated. That will be the redemption of our body, the redemption of God’s acquired possession. Now, as God’s acquired possession, we are still under the sealing.
The Spirit is also a pledge, a foretaste, of our divine inheritance, guaranteeing the full taste of God as our eternal inheritance (v. 14a). This word “pledge” is very meaningful. It means earnest, security, guarantee, and also foretaste. According to an ancient practice, when someone bought a piece of land, the seller would give him a bag of soil as a sample for a pledge. That soil was a guarantee that the purchaser would get the land with the same soil. This is an illustration of the fact that the sealing Spirit, after sealing us, remains within us to be our foretaste of God as our inheritance.
(Witness Lee, Divine Trinity, 153-154)
When we believed in the Lord Jesus, two things happened. First, we became God’s inheritance God’s possession, with His seal upon us. God sealed us with the Spirit as a sign that we belong to Him as His possession. At the same time God became our possession. He became our portion and enjoyment. The sealing Spirit is a sign that we are His possession, and the sealing Spirit also becomes a pledge, a foretaste, of the very God who is our inheritance. This foretaste is a guarantee, security, that one day we shall enjoy the full taste.
Both the sealing and the pledging are life-dispensing. Every day the Spirit is sealing us and pledging Himself into our being as our foretaste. This foretaste of the pledging is a guarantee of the full taste. The Triune God is sealing us and pledging Himself into our being. This is the dispensing of the Spirit.
At the end of verse 14 we have once again the phrase, “To the praise of His glory.” This phrase is used three times: first, for the Father’s dispensing in verse 6; second, for the Son’s dispensing in verse 12; and third, for the Spirit’s dispensing in verse 14. This threefold mentioning of the praise of God’s glory signifies the threefold dispensing of the Triune God.
(Witness Lee, Divine Trinity, 154-155)
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JOHN 5:
30 I can do nothing from Myself; as I hear, I judge and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him Who sent Me.
JOHN 7:
29 I know Him, because I am from Him, and He sent Me.
JOHN 16:
27 For the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came out from God.
THE FATHER AS THE SOURCE, THE INITIATOR
The Father is the very source, the initiator, because the Son came out from Him (John 7:29; 16:27b). In John 16:27 the Lord Jesus said, “You have loved Me and have believed that I came out from God.” It does not only say that I came from Him, but that I came out from Him. The Son came out of a source, and that source was the Father. So the Father is the source, and He is the initiator. He is even the initiation, the origination. The entire universe was initiated in this initiation, who is a divine Person.
(Witness Lee, Divine Trinity, 107-108)
JOHN 1:
18 No one has ever seen God; the only begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.
COLOSSIANS 1:
15 Who is the image of the invisible God,
HEBREWS 1:
3 Who being the 1effulgence of His glory and the express image of His substance, and upholding all things by the word of His power, having made purification of sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;
31 The effulgence of God’s glory is like the shining or the brightness of the light of the sun. The Son is the shining, the brightness, of the Father’s glory. This refers to God’s glory. The express image of God’s substance is like the impress of a seal. The Son is the expression of what God the Father is. This refers to God’s substance.
(Witness Lee, Footnotes, 1100)
THE SON AS THE EXPRESSION, THE ACCOMPLISHER
The Father is the source, and the Son is the expression, the accomplisher (John 1:18; Heb. 1:3). The source and the expression are not two things, but one thing with two aspects. It has the aspect of the source and the aspect of the expression. The Father as the source is the initiator. He initiated all things, including the planning. The Son, as the expression, is the accomplisher. Whatever the Father planned, the Son accomplished. So the Son is the accomplisher.
(Witness Lee, Divine Trinity, 116-117)
JOHN 14:
17 Even the Spirit of reality, Whom the world cannot receive, because it does not behold Him or know Him; but you know Him, because He abides with you and shall be in you.
JOHN 20:
22 And when He had said this, He breathed into them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit.
THE SPIRIT AS THE ENTERING IN, THE APPLIER
The Father is the source, the initiator, the Son is the expression, the accomplisher, and the Spirit is the entering in, the applier (John 14:17). The Father sent the Son (John 8:29), and the Son came with the Father (John 16:32). The Son sent the Spirit (John 16:7), and the Spirit came from with the Father (John 15:26) in the name of the Son (John 14:26). By this you can see that the Father by Himself cannot reach us, nor can the Son by Himself enter into us. The Father is unapproachable (1 Tim. 6:16), but the Son came to tabernacle among us (John 1:14). But still He was not able to enter into us because He was blood and flesh. As a man with a physical body He was able to be among His disciples, but not within them. So He told His disciples that He had to die and to be raised up. By His death and resurrection His form was changed from a physical form into a spiritual form. He became the pneumatic Christ who was able to enter into His disciples (John 20:22). This is the reaching of the Triune God.
(Witness Lee, Divine Trinity, 128)
When the Triune God reaches His redeemed people, He is the Spirit. For example, with electricity there is both the power plant and the installation in your house. Just to have the power plant is not practical. It is only when the power is installed into your house that the electricity becomes practical in your daily life. You are a building and God is the source, the power plant, in the heavens. The Spirit, the reaching of the Triune God, has been installed into your being. When the Spirit enters into your being, He does not leave the Father and the Son far away in the heavens. That is a wrong concept. When the Spirit comes into you, He comes with both the Son and the Father. If you have the Spirit, you have the Son. If you have the Son, you also have the Father. You have all Three. In the Father you taste love, in the Son you enjoy grace, and in the Spirit you participate in the communion, the fellowship, the flow, of the divine life. Love is the source, grace is the enjoyment, and the Spirit is the communion (2 Cor. 13:14). This is the dispensing of the Triune God.
When I was young I taught people that to be a Christian is, first of all, to fear God. You must have a holy fear toward God. Second, you must love the Lord Jesus. Third, you must endeavor to improve yourself to be good a good husband, a good wife, a good child, a good father, a good mother, a good neighbor, a good student, etc. But now I want to tell you that a Christian is one who lives a life of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. He is not one who lives a life of good behavior. A Christian is one who lives a life of the Triune God. Today the very reaching of this Triune God into you is the all-inclusive, life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). He is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17). When the Spirit comes, He comes in the Son’s name, and He comes with the Son and with the Father. So when you have this reaching Spirit, you have the Son. And when the Son comes to you, He comes in the name of the Father, and He comes with the Father. When you have the Son, you have the Father. Now you have all Three living in you as one to be your life, your life supply, your everything. As a Christian you don't need to take care of good behavior. Forget about that! You have to thoroughly and absolutely take care of the Triune God within you. He is so real.
(Witness Lee, Divine Trinity, 128-129)
When you call “Lord Jesus,” don't you have a deep sensation of comfort, of light, of happiness, of peace, of consolation, of so many pleasant feelings? If you were to call on Abraham Lincoln or George Washington, nothing happens. But when you call “Lord Jesus! I love You!” you have the deep sensation that He loves you also and that He is living in you. This is not a superstition; this is a fact. The Spirit is the reality of the Triune God. When this reaching Spirit is in you, the entire God is in you.
A bonafide Christian is simply one who lives a life of this reality, a life of the Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. To live a life of the Triune God simply means to be one with the Triune God. As He moves, you move. As He speaks, you speak. As He stays, you stay. It is not a matter of ethics or of trying to overcome sin and the world. You just need to take care of Him. You just live a life of the Triune God. If you live such a life, the world will be judged, the Devil will flee, and all sinful things will be overcome. The Triune God becomes your life, your living, your victory, your holiness, your righteousness, your love, your life, and your light. This is a bonafide Christian with the divine ethics, much higher than the human. You need to live a life of the Triune God. The Spirit is the entering in and the applier of the Triune God. Our God is not only the source and not only the expression, but also the entering in. He has entered into our being.
(Witness Lee, Divine Trinity, 129-130)
In eternity without a beginning God the Father has planned according to His desire; in time God the Son accomplishes it. He first accomplished creation. After creation, when man fell, He became a man to redeem fallen men. On the negative side, He died to redeem men; on the positive side, He rose from the dead and released the life to produce many sons for God the Father, thus, accomplishing the plan of God the Father. After His death and resurrection He became God the Spirit and as such comes into our spirit, bringing wholly into us the Triune God, not only to unite with us, but to mingle with us as one. It is at this point that this God is so mysterious, so complete and full. Today, when we preach the gospel, we are telling people that man needs such a God, man needs Him as his Savior, life, and all. When men believe, we baptize them into this Triune God. So there is the matter of the Father, Son, and Spirit.
(Witness Lee, Triune God, 14-15)
THE STEPS OF GOD’S ECONOMY
We have seen God’s purpose and what is dispensed by God; now we must realize how God is dispensed through His economy. In other words, Spirit is what God dispenses into man, but now we need to see the means by which He does this. It is by the Trinity. The Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—is the very economy of the Godhead. Christianity during the past centuries has had many teachings about the Trinity, but the Trinity can never be adequately understood unless it is related to the divine economy. Why are all three Persons of the Godhead required for the development of His economy? We know that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are not three different Gods, but one God, who is expressed in three Persons. Yet, what is the purpose of there being three Persons of the Godhead? Why is there God the Father, God the Son, and also God the Holy Spirit? It is because only through the Trinity can the essential means be provided whereby His Spirit is dispensed into us.
Second Corinthians 13:14 shows the steps of God’s economy by the Trinity. “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” Here we have the grace of the Son, the love of the Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit. What are these? Are these three different Gods? Are love, grace, and communion three different items? No. Love, grace, and communion are one element in three stages: love is the source, grace is the expression of love, and communion is the transmission of this love in grace. Likewise, God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit are one God expressed in three Persons: God is the source, Christ is the expression of God, and the Holy Spirit is the transmission bringing God in Christ into man. Thus, the three Persons of the Trinity become the three successive steps in the process of God’s economy. Without these three stages, God’s essence could never be dispensed into man. The economy of God is developed from the Father, in the Son, and through the Spirit.
(Witness Lee, Economy of God, 9-10)
(1) From the Father
God the Father is the universal source of all things. He is invisible and unapproachable. How can God the Father, who dwells in unapproachable light (1 Tim. 6:16), be within us? How can we see the invisible Father? If God is only a Father, He would be inaccessible and could not be dispensed into man. But through the divine arrangement of His economy, He put Himself into His Son, the second Person of the Trinity, in order to make Himself available to man. All the fullness of the Father dwells in the Son (Col. 1:19; 2:9) and is expressed through the Son (John 1:18). The Father, as the inexhaustible source of everything, is embodied in the Son. The incomprehensible God is now expressed in Christ, the Word of God (John 1:1); the invisible God is revealed in Christ, the Image of God (Col. 1:15). So, the Son and the Father are one (John 10:30), and the Son is even called the Father (Isa. 9:6).
Formerly it was impossible for man to contact the Father. He was exclusively God and His nature was exclusively divine. There was nothing in the Father to bridge the gap between God and man. But now He has not only embodied Himself within the Son, He has also become incarnate in human nature. The Father was pleased to combine His own divinity with humanity in the Son. Through the incarnation of the Son, the unapproachable Father is now approachable to man. By this, man can see the Father, touch the Father, and commune with the Father through the Son.
We can demonstrate this relationship by dipping a white handkerchief into blue dye. The Father’s divinity could originally be likened to the white handkerchief. This handkerchief, dipped into blue dye, represents the Father in the Son becoming incarnate in humanity. The white article has now become blue. Just as blue was added to the handkerchief, so the human nature was added to the divine nature, and the once separated natures have become one. The first stage of God dispensing Himself into man, therefore, is through the embodiment and incarnation of Himself in the Son as a man—thus, reproducing Himself in man.
(Witness Lee, Economy of God, 10-11)
(2) In the Son
The second step of bringing God into man is through the second Person of the Trinity, the Son of God. In order to understand the second stage of the economy of God, we need to know what Christ is. What are the elements that make up Christ? What are the ingredients combined together that constitute Christ?
There are seven basic elements that entered into this wonderful Person, which were added through His history. First, Christ is the divine embodiment of God. This first element in Christ is God’s divine essence and nature.
The second element, His incarnation, is the mingling of His divine nature with the human nature. Through His incarnation He brought God into man and mingled the divine essence of God with humanity. In Christ there is not only God, but also man.
The third element which was added to His divine and human natures was His human living. This glorious God-man lived on earth for thirty-three and a half years and experienced all the common and ordinary things that make up the daily human life. The Gospel of John, which emphasizes that He is the Son of God, also tells us that He was tired, hungry, thirsty, and that He wept. His human sufferings were also part of His daily life, which included many earthly troubles, problems, trials and persecutions.
His experience of death is the fourth element. He went down into death. But He not only stepped into death, He passed through death. This produced a very effective death. The death of Adam is terrible and chaotic, but the death of Christ is wonderful and effective. The death of Adam enslaved us to death, whereas the death of Christ released us from death. Although the fall of Adam brought many evil elements into us, the effective death of Christ is the killing power within us to slay all the elements of Adam’s nature.
Therefore, in Christ there is the divine nature, the human nature, the daily human life with its sufferings and also the effectiveness of His death. But there are three additional elements in Christ. The fifth element is His resurrection. After His resurrection, Christ did not put off His manhood to become solely God again. Christ is still a man! And as man He has the additional element of resurrection life mingled with His humanity.
(Witness Lee, Economy of God, 11-12)
The sixth element in Christ is His ascension. By His ascension to the heavens, He transcended over all enemies, principalities, powers, dominions and authorities. All are under His feet. Mingled with Him, therefore, is the transcendent power of His ascension.
Finally, the seventh element in Christ is His enthronement. Christ, the man with the divine nature, is enthroned in the third heaven as the exalted Head of the whole universe. He is in the heavenlies as the Lord of lords and the King of kings.
We need to remember, then, the seven wonderful elements that are in Him: the divine nature, the human nature, the daily human life with its earthly sufferings, the effectiveness of His death, the resurrection power, the transcendent power of His ascension, and the enthronement. All these elements are mingled in this one marvelous Christ.
(Witness Lee, Economy of God, 13)
(3) Through the Spirit
God, however, cannot come into us through the Son. According to the first stages of His economy, the Father placed Himself in the Son, and the Son has the seven elements mingled within Himself. But we still need another stage, a third and final step, for God to dispense Himself into man. The first step was that the Father embodied Himself in the Son; the second step was that the Son became incarnate in humanity to have all the seven wonderful elements mingled within Him; the third step is that both the Father and the Son are now in the Spirit. All that is in the Father is in the Son, and both the Father and the Son, containing all the elements in Christ, are brought into the Spirit.
The Holy Spirit, after the Lord’s ascension, is no longer the same as the Spirit of God in the Old Testament times. The Spirit of God in the Old Testament had only one element—the divine nature of God. As the divine Spirit, He did not have the elements of the human nature, the daily human life, the effectiveness of death, the resurrection, the ascension and the enthronement. Today, however, under the New Testament economy all the seven elements of Christ have been placed in the Spirit, and as such this all-inclusive Spirit has come into us and upon us. In other words, He is in us and we are in Him. This is the real mingling of God with man, which we may experience at any time. We are mingled inwardly and outwardly with the Holy Spirit.
(Witness Lee, Economy of God, 13-14)
What is the Holy Spirit? He is the Spirit of Truth (John 15:26). But what is truth? The meaning of the Greek word “truth” is reality. Therefore, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Reality, the full reality of Christ. Just as God is embodied in Christ, so Christ is realized in the wonderful Person of the Holy Spirit. Christ is not separate from God, and the Spirit is not separate from Christ. Christ is God expressed, and the Spirit is Christ realized in reality.
“Now the Lord is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:17). This verse proves that the Holy Spirit is not separate from Christ. The Lord is Christ Himself and is referred to as the Spirit. “The last Adam became a life-giving spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45). Again, the Scriptures point out that Christ, the last Adam, is the Spirit. We must admit that this life-giving Spirit is the Holy Spirit.
Furthermore, God the Father is also the Spirit (John 4:24). Hence, all three Persons of the Godhead are the Spirit. If God the Father is not the Spirit, how could He be in us, and how could we contact Him? Moreover, if God the Son is not the Spirit, how could He be in us, and how could we experience Him? Because the Father and the Son are both the Spirit, we may easily contact God and experience Christ.
Notice the following verses: “One God and Father…who is in all” (Eph. 4:6). “Jesus Christ is in you” (I1 Cor. 13:5). “…His Spirit that dwelleth in you” (Rom. 8:11). These three verses reveal that God the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are in us. How many Persons, then, are in us? Three, or one? We should not say that three separate Persons are in us, neither should we say that only one Person is in us, but that the Three-in-one is in us. The three Persons of the Godhead are not three Spirits, but one Spirit. The Father is in the Son, and the Son with all His seven wonderful elements is in the Spirit. When this wonderful Holy Spirit comes into us, the Godhead is then dispensed into us. Because the three Persons are in one Spirit, we have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit within us. Later, we will see that the Triune God is in our human spirit to be our spiritual, inner life. This is the very mark of God’s economy, and this is the method whereby the Godhead is dispensed into us. The goal of the divine economy is to dispense the Triune God in one Spirit into our human spirit. Hence, we must now focus our whole attention upon living by the Triune God, who dwells within our human spirit. If we are distracted from this, however good and scriptural other things are, we will surely miss the mark of God’s economy. The Lord today is recovering His children by causing them to center on this mark of His divine economy.
(Witness Lee, Economy of God, 14-15)
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