Meditation 11*

The Living God Among You

This is how you will know
that the living God is among you....
Joshua 3:10

That immaculate, imperishable and mysterious Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Church, is a miraculous element on this earth. Nothing unclean gets into it and not a single one of God’s chosen is outside of it. It has the anointing of the Holy Spirit and knows all things. All the powers of eternal life and all the glories of the Kingdom find protection in it. No child of God has ever tasted a single consolation on earth; nor has any pilgrim to the new Jerusalem ever been blessed by any durable spiritual revival that did not flow through the veins of that sacred Body of the Lord to him.

That Body of Christ is real; it is not a figment of our imagination. It is not a symbolic expression for an idealistic conception. To the contrary, this Body of our Lord exists in the full sense of the word. When at the end of days everything shall perish and even the elements melt down, it is only that Body, but in its wholly pure and unblemished form, that will remain in its integral state.

An even stranger miracle is that this Body of our Lord always appears on earth both in its being and doing in the mist of our sins and lack of spirituality, but without itself ever mixed up with this sinfulness or scathed by this imperfection. Take note of how sinful and imperfect the Church of the Lord has been throughout the ages. In spite of that, with all the corruption and bane that clings to her, she is and never was anything other than the imperfect, veiled revelation of the Body of Christ. No matter how thick and close the fog obscured the glory of that Body, even in its most degenerate periods, that sacred, mystical Body of Christ has hardly ever surrendered even a minimum of its complete perfection. Whether you praise the Augustines and Calvins of the flourishing periods of her history or mourn the Husses, Teelincks or Comries of her ignominious days, the drops of the water of life sparkled in the eyes of their souls with equal crystal clarity and that those who jubilate and those who mourn both are comforted by the same deep mercy of the one living God.

If the above talks about the Body’s being, we must aver the same of the doing or works that emanate from this Body through God’s children, that is, the “good works” of which the Bible speaks (Ephesians 2:10). They are the work of God done by His children through His works. God adopted these puny creatures as His children and then empowered them with the will to do the good, that is, that which brings glory to His Name. All these good works originally were hidden potentials in the Body of Christ, but eventually sprouted up out of that Body through us.

That is the reason those beautiful flower buds cannot sprout fully here on earth. As no pure white snowflake falls on the earth without the earth tarnishing it with her dirt and dust, so it has never happened in even one single child of men that a good work descend in him from the Father of lights without the person polluting it. There is thus nothing pure on earth. Rather than avoiding this fact by lightly gliding over it, we should ask whether it is not terribly sinful for us to constantly stain the most glorious and finest artworks of God’s Holy Spirit with our polluted fingers.

But no matter how readily we acknowledge this all, it does not hurt the Body of Christ in the least. Whether we stain our good works with al our sinful addictions or spoil them with our unholy intentions, it will not spoil these works in the eyes of God. If these works have come to us out of the Body of Christ, then they have been established through faith. It is that faith that ensures that the work of God in us is untouchable. It may appear to be blemished, but on closer look it turns out to be merely skin deep, a surface superficiality.

It is there that the mystery resides and the reason that God’s children on earth, preceded by the holy Apostles, lament every morning and evening, “We all stumble in almost everything and there is nothing whole in us.” At the same time, you hear those same pilgrims, again preceded by those same Apostles, call out triumphantly, “Whoever is born of God, does not sin; in fact, he cannot sin, for His seed remains in him.”

Pay attention: His seed remains in him! That resident seed contains those hidden powers of that mystical Body. That is that hidden life that for the present remains in the shadow as the kernel in a grain of seed tarries, but in the meantime pushes and thrives.

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What, it must be asked, is the secret key to this holy and worshipping witness on which the justification of the godless and the peace of God’s children depend? The one and only key is that the Holy Spirit lives in that Body of Christ.

Christ is no longer on earth. He sits on the throne of glory in Heaven. As the psalmist exults, the crown of glory blossoms eternally on the head of the great Son of David. He who ascended to Heaven is there above for our benefit. He does not just rest there in blessed idleness, but, like His Father, the Son is always working. That labour, that divine work of the Lord Jesus in Heaven, is always on behalf of His people. He intercedes for His people. He validates that rich reconciliation through His blood for His people. As High Priest He serves as our only sacrifice in the Most Holy Place (Exodus 26:33-34). In addition, He is preparing our place and is awaiting us, calling us and luring us with irresistible grace. In other words, He isn’t just working in Heaven, but He constantly works out of Heaven also on earth.

The Lord Jesus is only in one place. He lives in human flesh like ours and thus cannot possibly be in two places at the same time. Even though in the glory of Heaven much of our earthly limitations fall away, Heaven is not a place of magic. It is a real world where it is natural for every place to be separated from all other places; they do not overlap.

Even though Jesus Christ is restricted to one place at any given moment, that restriction does not limit the effect of His working. His working continues to go out in an omnipotent way and reaches therefore everywhere; it simultaneously possesses the glorious power of the divine. The divine here is that “simultaneous!” Simultaneous, that means the same God is at the same moment in Asia, in Africa, in America and in your own city or village and continues His almighty working in all these places simultaneously. He is equally near everyone, but also so near each individual as if He heard only the cry of his soul and only her special prayer.

That divine “simultaneity” is also an attribute of the Lord Jesus Christ. As much as He is restricted to one place, His majesty, grace and Spirit go out to all regions and places in the world simultaneously. As our mind controls each member of our body at the same time, so it is between this glorified Head and His mystical Body. However far that Body extends itself, Jesus notices it every time when any member of this Body suffers, just like when someone pricks your skin with a pin, your consciousness will notice it immediately.

Similarly, there is not a member of the Body who is so slight that he is beyond the reach of the Lord Jesus or that the Lord would not be his soul keeper and comforter. It can be said that this Body does not have a life of its own, but it has its existence and lives its life in the Lord Jesus. The Head controls the Body, leads it and gives sparkle to it. It is Immanuel who blossoms in His members.

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With all this we still have not touched upon the greatest depth of this mystery. Even with all the above being true, that we are members of that Body and that this miraculous Body is animated from out of Jesus, this still does not explain the real mystery, namely how our “I”, how our soul, how our inner hidden person stands in this most intimate soul relation with the Mediator and Saviour and exalts in it. He is the glorious thinking, animating, leading and protecting One, if you will, the working Head who alone does it all in all His members and for them. And there we are, in all that we are out of ourselves, working not for God but for satan. Should Jesus forsake us in the hour of our death, not expecting an ascent into Heaven but a descent into hell?

That, that is the mystery. There the chasm gapes across which our faith will certainly carry us across, but that nevertheless leaves the mystery unsolved and calls for further explanation.

And then that great light that now brings you to Pentecost. Do you have immediate direct communion with the Father? Of course not, for the Father may be the ground , the origin and the creating cause of everything, butit is not the Father who descends into His Church.

Do you then perhaps have immediate fellowship with the Son? Even that is not the case, for no one can say that Christ is Lord, except through the Holy Spirit. To be sure, He took on your flesh and thus established communion with your human nature, but that is not yet to have fellowship with your inner consciousness. That’s why it was beneficial for the disciplesfor Jesus to go away, for without doing so, the Comforter could not come.

Do pay close attention. There is no fellowship with the Father for you except through the Son. For no one knows the Father except the Son and to whom the Son reveals Him (Matthew 11:27). Similarly, there is no fellowship with the Son for you, except through the Holy Spirit. For no one can even say that Christ is Lord, except through the Holy Spirit (I Corinthians 12:3). It is when the Holy Spirit comes that He takes up all the treasures from Christ in order to glorify Christ in you. Once it has come to this stage, the Holy Spirit comes to live in you and then in the Holy Spirit comes the Son, and in the Son also the Father. That is why the Lord Jesus could prophesy so gloriously: I and the Father shall come and live with you, that is, after the Holy Spirit will have descended.

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Give this some thought with deep reverence and what will you find? This, that our precious, glorious Mediator, who in His deepest being was God, but as God adopted human nature in unity with the Persons and who in Himself stood in personal unity of substance with God the Holy Spirit from all eternity. Before the mountains were born and the pillars of the great abyss were established in immeasurable space, the Son with the Father and the Holy Spirit was/were in eternal personal unity of substance. Thus it could in no way be said that He, the Son, would first receive the Holy Spirit.

God the Son cannot receive any power or working from God the Holy Spirit, for He is equal to Him in majesty and divinity. In addition, God the Holy Spirit cannot take up residence in God the Son, for the relationship between the two is not that of residing in each other but of divine and full unity of substance. God the Holy Spirit could therefore never contribute anything to God the Son. Rather it must be confessed that it is God the Holy Spirit who, together with the Son, equally proceeds from the Father.

Thus it can in no way ever be said of God the Son, the second Person in the Holy Trinity, that He was filled with the Holy Spirit or received the Holy Spirit or entered into fellowship with the Holy Spirit. In order to achieve any of these, the Son would first have to cease being God the Son.

But—and here we enter an even deeper remarkable step into the Most Holy—that Son adopted our human nature in such a way that He Himself became truly human. With that man Jesus Christ the situation is naturally completely different. The man Jesus Christ is not of one substance with the Father and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit did not proceed from the man Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit had definitely to be poured into, on and over the man Jesus Christ.

The real soul mystery is that the entry into a human heart in order to live there, to rule and to comfort there as God, is the peculiar and unique work not of the first or second Persons, but it is the peculiar and special work of the third Person of the Holy Trinity, that is, of God the Holy Spirit.

This goes so far that God the Son cannot live in the soul of the man Jesus Christ as God. God the Son was linked with human nature in the incarnation through a mysterious manner, a link that the Holy Spirit could never form. But to enter the soul of any human being, including that of the man Jesus Christ, was not the work of the Son but of the Holy Spirit.

The above explains that, though He was the Son, the man Jesus Christ still had to receive the Holy Spirit, that the Holy Spirit poured His power and working on Jesus, that Jesus was filled by the Holy Spirit without measure, but that He nevertheless received the complete and rich indwelling of the Holy Spirit after He ascended into Heaven. Thus He could pour out the Holy Spirit for the first time through all the veins of His Body on Pentecost.

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Once you have seen all this in worship, then suddenly the light surrounds you from all sides. Then it becomes absolutely clear how the Holy Spirit, who dwells in Him as our Head and in us as His members, could finally begin His work of giving divine comfort from that hour on. It is from that hour on that God the Holy Spirit, dwelling in the soul of the man Jesus Christ, meets in that Mediator the Son and lifts all the limitations of His state of humiliation.

Now it is no longer enigmatic how the Holy Spirit can dwell in us long before we notice Him. Though the mother knows it, the child in her womb lives without being aware of anything. So it goes also in the mystical Body of Christ. Whether you are already living or not, whether you have already become conscious of your life, is immaterial. The only thing that counts is whether Jesus has already taken charge of your life. If He has, then the same situation pertains in the Body of Christ. That is to say, then the same animated life already pulsates in your veins just as a mother’s blood feeds life into her as yet unborn child.

What’s more, then you can feel the great difference between the work of the Holy Spirit becoming noticeable in you, whether it is still merely the potential of the gift of the Holy Spirit, or whether it be that other, totally different and much deeper feature, the personal indwelling of God the Holy Spirit in you.

When is the mystery of godliness perfected in you for the first time and the indwelling of Immanuel in you complete? It can only happen when the Lord God enters the very centre of your being. Within you, puny being that you are, this majestic God, who holds all the heavens in His hand, works this incomprehensible miracle of entering you, penetrates your unfathomable hidden being and establishes His throne in your heart. And from that throne He embraces your entire person and your innermost being in His tender mercy for now and for eternity, and comforts you with His deep and glorious blessings. Then and only then is all this possible.

At that point, victory is assured and the triumph cannot forever be postponed. That’s when death, sin and the devil in you suffer defeat, for they cannot resist God for ever. Even if all the forces of unrighteousness and depravity, like the tribal enemies of Israel in the land of Canaan in the Old Testament, were to unite against you in order to destroy your soul, they cannot and will not defeat you. To be able to do that would require them to push God the Holy Spirit out of the hidden kernel of your innermost being—and that they cannot possibly do, the simple reason being that the power of all that is created cannot resist God the Holy Spirit; those unholy powers are simply incapable of defeating God the Holy Spirit.

And therefore, you oppressed and driven by the storms of life, be of good courage! Your Saviour lives to pray for you, and in you dwells and works God the Holy Spirit. Your God lives deep within you and He will not forsake or leave you. “Be strong and courageous!” (Joshua 1:18). Know this and pass it on to your descendants after you, saying, “The precise work of God the Holy Spirit in you is this, that He dwells in you in order to work through you.” He can do that to you and you do it out of and through Him!