The Ministry of the Word, Vol. 24, No. 4

This issue of The Ministry of the Word contains the final seven messages given during the Fall 2019 term of the full-time training in Anaheim, California. The general subject of this series of messages is "The Christian Life." In these seven messages we continue to consider other aspects of the Christian life. In order to live the Christian life, we need to know the resurrected Christ and to know and experience the power of His resurrection. The first aspect in which we need to know Him is as the Son of God designated in power with His human nature. Christ as the Son of God will make us the same as He is. He is the prototype, and He is in us as the law of the Spirit of life to shape, to conform, us to the image of the firstborn Son. The second aspect in which we need to know Him is as the firstborn Son of God born in resurrection. The first aspect emphasizes His person to be reproduced, and the second aspect is for His propagation. To live the Christian life is to live out the anointing. The anointing is the moving and working of the indwelling compound Spirit to apply all the ingredients of the processed Triune God and His activities into our inner being so that we may be fully mingled with Him for His corporate expression. Life moves, and when Christ as the Spirit entered into us, He came into us as the anointing. In order to experience the anointing, we need to know Christ as the anointed One, as the anointing One, and as the anointing. The Christian life is a life of abiding in Christ as the vine. The true vine with its branches--Christ the Son with the believers in the Son--is the organism of the Triune God in the divine economy to grow with His riches and express His life. As the branches of the true vine, we are the multiplication of Christ, the duplication of Christ, the spreading of Christ, and the enlargement of Christ. To abide in Christ as the vine is to dwell in Him, to remain in fellowship with Him, that we may experience and enjoy His abiding in us. The Christian life is a life of living in the mingled spirit. The essence of the New Testament is the two spirits--the divine Spirit and the human spirit--mingled together as one spirit. We can experience Christ, enjoy Christ, live Christ, and take Christ as everything because we have become one spirit with Him. Ultimately, the Bible requires only one thing of us--that we walk according to the mingled spirit. The key to everything is found in the wonderful Spirit who is in our regenerated spirit and who has become one spirit with our spirit. To live in the mingled spirit is to have the highest spirituality. The Christian life is a grafted life. God desires that the divine life and the human life be joined together to become one life. This oneness is an organic union, a union in life--a grafted life. Because our human life was made in the image of God and according to the likeness of God, it can be joined to the divine life. Our human life resembles the divine life; therefore, the divine life and the human life can be grafted together and grow together organically. As regenerated ones, we should live a grafted life--a life in which two parties are joined to grow organically. The Christian life is not an exchanged life but a grafted life--the mingling of the human life with the divine life. The most wonderful reality in the Christian experience is that the believers in Christ are united with Christ in the way of life. In the grafted life the human life is not eliminated but is strengthened, uplifted, and enriched by the divine life. As a result of our being grafted into Christ, there is a three-stage development of our relationship with the Triune God in Christ as the Spirit--a union in life, a mingling of natures, and a coinherence, the mutual indwelling, of persons. As Christians, we live a life of coinherence in the Father's house, which is the church as the house of God and the Body of Christ. To live in the Triune God and to have the Triune God live in us is th

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