«　WEEK 4　DAY 3　»

　　John 7:39 But this He said concerning the Spirit, whom those who believed into Him were about to receive; for the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.

　　Rom. 8:9 …You are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Yet if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not of Him.

　　The process of the Triune God is clearly revealed in the New Testament, but this matter has been missed by most Christians. Although such words as process and Trinity cannot be found in the Bible, the facts that these words describe are definitely revealed in the Bible. Theophilus of Antioch (A.D. 115-188), one of the early church fathers, was the first to use the word Trinity in his writings. The word triune also began to be used at about the same time.

　　In Matthew 28:19 the Lord Jesus charged the disciples to baptize the nations “into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” In this verse name is singular in number, yet the one name refers to three persons. This shows that there is one name for the Divine Trinity. (CWWL, 1990, vol. 1, “The Triune God to Be Life to the Tripartite Man,” pp. 265-266)

　　The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are not three separate persons or three Gods; they are one God, one reality, one person. Hence, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are denoted by one name. The name denotes the person, and the person is the reality of the name. The name of the Divine Trinity is the sum total of the Divine Being, equivalent to His person. God is triune; that is, He is three-one…He is one God, with the Father, the Son, and the Spirit as His reality, His person…Father, Son, and Spirit are not three different names; they are the unique name of the Divine Trinity…Many of the divine titles in the Bible, such as God the Father, the Lord Jesus, and the Lord Spirit (2 Cor. 3:18), are compound titles. The compound name in Matthew 28:19 is composed of three parts— Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

　　The Triune God took several crucial steps in being processed to be the life- giving Spirit. First, He was incarnated. As God, He entered into the womb of a human virgin and stayed within that womb for nine months. In this way He took on humanity as His shelter, His dwelling place. His incarnation surely was a process. Second, He lived and walked on the earth, passing through the long “tunnel” of human living for thirty-three and a half years. This also was a process. Third, He entered into death and passed through death, which included the grave and Hades. Fourth, after three days, He walked out of death and Hades and entered into resurrection. His death and resurrection also were a process.

　　After the Lord’s resurrection He stayed with the disciples for forty days (Acts 1:3), during which time He made His presence both visible and invisible to them. Then He led them to Jerusalem and ascended to the third heaven from the Mount of Olives (vv. 12,9). Through His ascension the Lord Jesus completed His process…All three—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—were fully consummated in the Lord’s ascension.

　　The word consummation indicates that a work or a process has been completed, or finished…Before His incarnation God was “raw,” having the divine nature but not the human nature. Through incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, God was processed and consummated. Now, He is no longer the “raw” God; He is the consummated and completed Triune God with divinity, humanity, human living, the all- inclusive death, the powerful resurrection, and the transcendent ascension. All of these are elements, or ingredients, in the processed and consummated Triune God. (CWWL, 1990, vol. 1, “The Triune God to Be Life to the Tripartite Man,” pp. 266-267)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1987, vol. 3, “The Scriptural Way to Meet and to Serve for the Building Up of the Body of Christ,” ch. 12