24.2 Living IN the Spirit
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
It just dawned on me the other day that I am in heaven. Certainly, I’ve said that many times – and the idea of it has been in my brain. But it’s one thing to know and another thing to KNOW.
I am as much IN heaven as Paul or John or my mom and dad. And I am not just IN heaven, but I am constructed of heaven, I exist in a heaven form equal to their heaven form in all ways. The only difference between them and me is that I cannot see. The only part of me that is on the earth is the soles of my feet. Even my physical body is mostly IN heaven, with my heavenly spirit giving it life every moment.
We Know Heaven
Because you and I exist IN heaven entirely, and have always done so, we know heaven far more than we think we do. Heaven, of course, is shattered in outward appearance by the same good and evil by which Adam shattered the appearance of all things. If we Christians weren’t blind to heaven all around us, we would be so busy playing religious games with angels that we would never have time to know Jesus IN our own hearts. Oh, that has been the problem all along, hasn’t it?
But you and I live IN the Spirit in a way that no other created entities know. You and I are IN the Spirit full, perfect, and complete.
We ARE in the Spirit
You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you (Romans 8:9a). Living IN the Spirit is far more than living in heaven. Heaven is a particular dimension of this one place heaven/earth. And as a place, heaven is impersonal. But the Holy Spirit is 100% Personal and 100% Personal in us.
In this lesson, Living IN the Spirit, I want to expand on what the Spirit defining us might mean. Then, in the next lesson, I want to explore how the Holy Spirit effects God’s purposes first in and then through us.
Measuring the Temple
Rise and measure the temple of God, the altar, and those who worship there. But leave out the court which is outside the temple, and do not measure it (Revelation 11:1b-2a).
Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is conceived again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” – Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is conceived of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:3&5). Seeing the kingdom and entering the kingdom are two very different things. Many are called, but few are chosen. And the distinction is based entirely on DESIRE.
Those who want all of God receive; those who don’t, don’t.
The Full Measure of Christ
Let me state what I am driving towards clearly. John 3:3, being conceived of God, is entering into the outer court, the first work of God in a person’s heart. But John 3:5, being conceived, first of water, and then of the Spirit, refers directly to passing through the laver of washing and into the Holy Place, the second work of God in our lives.
Our brethren who choose to remain in the outer court are certainly inside of Jesus, loved by God, and kept for their time. But they cannot know the measure of Christ by which we are being formed and they cannot know the meaning of Jesus’ assertion: The words that I speak to you are Spirit and they are life.
We Must Be Immersed
We MUST BE utterly immersed into the Holy Spirit. That means we release our souls to be flooded with the Spirit.
Those who remain in the outer court have spirits that are one with the Holy Spirit, certainly. But it ain’t what IS that is important; it’s KNOWING what is. Life eonian is not what is; it’s knowing what is. Every man, woman, and child on this planet is spoken only good by all the good speaking of Jesus; they just don’t KNOW.
And the difference between the Spirit of God in union with our spirits and the Spirit of God flooding all the knowledge of our souls is based entirely on DESIRE.
What Do You Want?
What do you want?
I cannot and have never been able to comprehend a believer in Jesus who sees words on the pages of the New Testament that indicate an experience with God, a knowing of God, that they do not know – and their being completely NOT interested! Such a condition of heart makes ZERO sense to me. If God says it in the Covenant we signed together, then I MUST know all that it could possibly mean. Why else would God place it there?
The Spirit of truth… will guide you into all truth (John 16:13).
ALL Truth
I was nineteen years old, forty years ago, when those words in John 16:13 leaped off the page and into my heart. Those words “will lead you into all truth,” became mine, became the longing definition of my heart. Yet I was just a boy; how could this word possibly be fulfilled in me? Yet I have never thought otherwise than that it MUST BE fulfilled in me in this age, on this earth.
Why do I think that? Because I have always had the silly idea that God is telling me the truth.
You MUST BE baptized in the Holy Spirit, a second work of grace, in order to be measured, formed, by Spirit as Christ.
Turned Around
You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. We are never not IN the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is never not filling us full, spirit, soul, and body.
The unbelief of our brethren, “Come (please, pretty please) Holy Spirit (because we know you are absent from us),” has become so distressing to me. We have utterly turned around, and therefore we KNOW that our existence always IN a Personal Holy Spirit and that same Spirit always in us, one with our own spirit, flooding our soul, giving life to our body, is the constant definition of who and what we are.
Air and Water
The Holy Spirit is as air, for we are always in air, and we are always breathing that air into us, and we are always being energized by that air. The Holy Spirit is as water, for water is thicker than air, and the reality of being IN God is quite thick.
Yet blood is thicker than water. Yet living blood is continuously and freely flowing – Life. Living blood is not sticky (though dead blood does become sticky quite fast). The Spirit is not thick like syrup, always sticking to you, hard to swim in. No, the thickness of the Spirit is just right, waters in which to swim.
The Fruit of the Spirit
If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit (Galatians 5:25). – The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Galatians 5:22-23a).
Now, when we see anything in ourselves that we would judge to be “the works of the flesh,” we do not then do as too many of our brethren do, turning from the Spirit to weep over and to attack the flesh, trying to “get back to” the Spirit by human effort. Rather, we place all that we are entirely into Jesus and continue on in the confidence that the Spirit is, in fact, defining us in all things.
The Holy Spirit Defining Us
We do not measure the Holy Spirit working in us by our human feelings or by our outward appearance or by our lack of human ability, but by the Word of Christ. If we are the ones whom the Holy Spirit is defining, then we describe ourselves only by that definition of the Holy Spirit, which is always Christ. Christ is the Holy Spirit’s continuous defining of us.
You see, part of what God is doing is to ever increase the certainty of our knowing. The faith of symmorphy, the faith to be the appearance of God, though God Himself can never be seen, is the fullness of faith.
Christ Is a Many-Membered Body
Now, much of this course has been an attempt to see Christ as He is, that we might be just like Him. But Christ is much more than you and me as individuals. Christ is a many-membered body.
Few really are contending with God regarding the revelation of Jesus Christ as a many-membered body.
Christ is not a bunch of unrelated individuals. Christ is an entity made of up of four things: individual members, the relationships among individual members, individual members in relationship, and the whole body as one.
Among You
Where two or three of you are gathered together in My name, there I am AMONG you (Matthew 18:20). Jesus appears in and as the relationships among believers. Christ lives as me, yes, but more than that, Christ lives as my interactions with you and your interactions with me. This, also, is the function of living IN the Holy Spirit.
For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body… and have all been made to drink into one Spirit. For in fact the body is not one member but many (1 Corinthians 12:12-14).
Gifts and Ministries
Just as there is a communication of electrical frequency among the cells and organs of the body, both in the bath of frequency, as well as specifically through the nerve pathways and across the nerve synapses, so there is among us IN the Spirit. A part of that connection we call the gifts and ministries of the Spirit.
The gifts and ministries are not for us as individuals, but for the body – yet never is the individual left out. Paul made the balance so clear – Now you are the body of Christ, AND members individually (verse 27). But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all (1 Corinthians 12:7).
Spirit and Body Together
To live in the Spirit is to live in the body. There is not one without also the other.
I have called 1 Corinthians 12:12-14 the eleventh and twelfth most important verses in the Bible and continue to do so. We cannot regard it as one verse, for there are two distinct subject lines. Yet those two subject lines are always intertwined, Spirit and body; they cannot be disconnected. You cannot have Spirit without body; there is no body if Spirit is absent. All together, we drink of one Spirit; that same Spirit immerses us into one body.
The Manifestation of the Spirit
The manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all. The gifts and ministries of the Spirit, Holy Spirit realities flowing from one to another, are a normal, everyday part of being a Christian. There is nothing unusual about manifestations of the Spirit among members of the body; without them there is no church.
We are not speaking of zapping one another, nor are we speaking of set-above ministries putting on a show. How normal is the life and movement of your physical body? Yet, all of it takes place because of the presence of your spirit intertwined through every particle of your physical substance.
The Revelation of Jesus Christ
There is no revelation of Jesus Christ without a Body made alive by the normality of Holy Spirit connections. The fulfillment of the Feast of Tabernacles upon this earth is that connection among us in fullness.
The gifts and ministries of the Spirit are in-part – the first Day of Tabernacles is the Body of Christ as God intends – yet in our present dying bodies. And it is this vision to which I devoted my life when I was 21 years old.
We will soon be immersed in Symmorphy III: Kingdom. There you will find Christ as us becoming Christ as a corporate Body in the role of Christ upon this earth at the end of this age. But Symmorphy V: Life, the family of God forever, is where my heart and soul is truly found.