To Live with the Divine Trinity is to Live with Christ as Emmanuel, God with us

Hallelujah, we as believers in Christ can live in the Divine Trinity by abiding in Christ and with the Divine Trinity by having Him abide in us for our enjoyment, for we can live with Christ as Emmanuel – and our spirit is the land of Emmanuel, God with us! Praise the Lord!

This week in our morning revival we come to a new topic, Living with the Divine Trinity (1) Living with Christ as Emmanuel and Having the Resurrected Christ Living in us.

We saw what it means for us to live in the Divine Trinity, and now we will focus on living with the Divine Trinity.

Brother Lee gave the messages on, Living in and with the Divine Trinity in 1988, but not many of us entered into this book; now we are getting into the depths of these matters.

We need not only to understand what it means for us to live in and with the Divine Trinity but enter into the experience of living in and with the Divine Trinity.

To live in the Divine Trinity is to abide in Him, to remain in Him, even to dwell in Him as our home; furthermore, to live with the Divine Trinity is for Him to abide in us so that we may have His presence, His person with us for our enjoyment.

This is truly wonderful, and it can be seen in John 15, where the Lord says that we should abide in Him and He will abide in us.

For the Lord to abide in us, we need to first abide in Him; our abiding in Him is the condition for His abiding in us.

May we all be clear concerning this matter and learn to abide in the Lord in all things, taking Him as our home and the realm of our entire living.

To live with the Divine Trinity is to have the resurrected Christ living in us; resurrection means that everything is of God and not of us, that God alone is able and we are not able, and that everything is done by God and not by ourselves.

We need to learn to live not only in the Divine Trinity but also with the Divine Trinity, and in particular, we need to live with Christ as Emmanuel and have the resurrected Christ live in us.

We need to live with Christ as Emmanuel, God with us; also, we need to have the resurrected Christ live in us. Emmanuel means God with us; in three places the Lord Jesus told us that He is with us.

First, He said that if two or three are gathered together in His name, there He is in their midst; when we come together in the Lord’s name, even if it is two or three of us, He is there with us.

The Lord promised to be our Emmanuel whenever we meet in His name. In Matt. 28:20, after the Lord charged His disciples to baptize all nations into the Triune God, He promises that He is with us all the days until the consummation of the age.

Until He returns, He is with us. Hallelujah! The Lord is with our spirit – grace is with us (2 Tim. 4:22); the Lord as grace is with our spirit, and we have the Spirit in our spirit witnessing that God is our Father and that Christ is with us all the time (Rom. 8:16).

To Live in the Divine Trinity is to abide in Him; to live with the Divine Trinity is for Him to abide in us

Living in and with the Divine Trinity is a mysterious matter seen everywhere in the Bible, especially in the New Testament.

For us to live in the Divine Trinity means that we dwell in Him as our home; we dwell in God, we have our whole being and living and all our activities in Him.

This is what the Lord said to us in John 15, that He is the vine and we are the branches, and as branches in Him as the vine, we should abide in Him.

To live in Him is to abide in Him, to remain in Him; God put us here by faith in Christ (1 Cor. 1:30), now we simply need to abide in Him, for we have been organically joined to the Lord to be one spirit with Him (1 Cor. 6:17).

To live with the Divine Trinity is for Him to abide in us (because we abide in Him) so that we may have God’s presence, His very person, with us for our enjoyment (John 15:4).

Whether the Lord abides in us, however, depends on our abiding in Him; to live in Christ, to abide in Him, is the first part of our enjoyment of the Triune God, and for Him to abide in us and live in us, this is the second part.

When we abide in the Lord, He abides in us, and we have His presence with us so that we live with Him and even live Him.

To live in Christ puts us into the position of the enjoyment of the Lord; to live with the Lord is the enjoyment itself.

We can even say that one-fourth of the New Testament is concerning our living in the Triune God, showing us our need to abide in the Lord and take Him as our dwelling place, while three-fourths is concerning our living with the Triune God.

On one hand, we have been positioned to drink, for we have been baptized in one Spirit into one Body (1 Cor. 12:13); on the other hand, we need to not only drink the Lord but allow Him to live in us.

We need to have such a bird’s eye view of the entire revelation of the New Testament and realize that most of it speaks concerning our living with the Triune God.

We need to abide in the Lord and have Him abide in us so that we live in and with the Divine Trinity.

May we pray concerning this before the Lord, opening to Him and asking Him to remove the veils of our opinions, concepts, and religious thoughts, so that we may really see what the divine revelation in God’s word speaks about.

As branches in the vine, we need to abide in the Lord as the true vine, for apart from Him we can do nothing.

As we abide in the Lord, He abides in us, for He is our Emmanuel, God with us, to give us God’s presence and bless us wherever we go and whatever we do.

May the Lord grant us a spirit of prayer and musing on the Word of God so that we may see what it means to abide in the Lord and Him abiding in us.

Lord Jesus, unveil us to see what it means for us to abide in the Lord and for the Lord to abide in us. Grant us to see and enter into the experience of living in the Divine Trinity and living with the Divine Trinity. Amen, Lord, we want to abide in You, remain in You, and dwell in You, so that You may abide in us. We want to live in the Divine Trinity so that we may have Christ abide in us, bringing us God’s presence, His very person, for our enjoyment. Amen, Lord, make us those who live in and with the Divine Trinity today!

To Live with the Divine Trinity is to Live with Christ as Emmanuel, for the Presence of Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us

Matt. 1:23 says, Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel (which is translated, God with us).

To live with the Divine Trinity is to live with Christ as Emmanuel, God with us.

Throughout the Bible, we see that God has an intention, which is not that man would merely obey His word or do what He tells them to do, but that He would dispense Himself into us as life to gain many sons of God to constitute the Body of Christ consummating in the New Jerusalem as the city of life.

God’s intention, as seen in the Bible, is to dispense Himself as life (Rom. 8:2, 6, 10-11) into us, the tripartite men — into our spirit, soul, and body — to make us His sons (vv. 14-15, 19, 23, 29, 17) for the constituting of the Body of Christ (12:4-5) so that we may become the New Jerusalem as the city of life (Rev. 22:1-2).

For this, He was processed and consummated to become a life-giving Spirit; He became the law of the Spirit of life, which is installed in all the believers in Christ to function spontaneously by ministering life to them.

He is in us right now as a spontaneous power living in our spirit, imparting life to our spirit, soul, and body whenever we turn to our spirit to “switch on” the law of the Spirit of life.

First, God in Christ as the Spirit dispenses Himself as life into our spirit to make our spirit life; then, when we set our mind on our spirit, our mind as the leading part of our soul becomes life.

Finally, when He returns, He will swallow up any death in our mortal body and the divine life in us will saturate even our body to make it a body of His glory.

The more we set our mind on our spirit, the more we enjoy life and peace. Our mind can become zoe life, the divine life, whenever we set it on our spirit.

And because the Spirit of the One who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in us (which He does, for He is mingled with our spirit), the One who raised Jesus from the dead will give life to our mortal body through His Spirit who indwells us. Hallelujah!

This is not just for the future but also for the present: whenever we turn to the Lord, enjoy Him, and are in the meetings of the church partaking of Him with all the saints, we have life imparted into our whole being! Hallelujah!

And this is so that we, who were dead in sins and offenses, would be regenerated and transformed to be sons of God constituting the Body of Christ; now we are members of His Body (Rom. 12:4-5).

The consummation of such a wonderful organic work that God does in each one of us is the New Jerusalem, which is a city of life with the tree of life and the river of water of life (Rev. 22:1-2).

In order for us to experience the dispensing of the Triune God as life into our being, we need to be those who are living with Christ as Emmanuel; Matthew is a book on Emmanuel – God incarnated to be with us (Matt. 1:21-23).

The presence of Jesus is our Emmanuel, God with us.

We love the Lord’s presence; the presence of Jesus is Emmanuel. We have the Spirit, whom God has given to dwell in us (James 4:5; Rom. 8:9, 11), witnessing with our spirit that we dwell in us and God in us.

Jesus dwells in us, and our living with the Divine Trinity is living with Christ as Emmanuel, God with us.

As we receive and experience Jesus, we can testify that Jesus is God with us. If we would experience Jesus, we would immediately say, This is God!

And God is not far away from me – He has become my salvation! In Jesus Christ, God is made real and near to us, for Jesus is God with us to be our salvation; we need to live with Jesus as Emmanuel, God with us.

We know that Jesus is our patience, but when we experience Him as our patience, we have the inner feeling that this patience is God with us.

We know that Jesus is the way and the truth, but when we experience Him as the way and the truth, we say, This way and this truth are just God with me. How wonderful!

The presence of Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us; we love His presence, and His presence is everything to us.

There are three main verses that assure us that Jesus is with us, that we can live with Jesus as Emmanuel, God with us.

First, in Matt. 18:20 the Lord said that He is with us in our gatherings; when we gather together in the Lord’s name, He is there with us, present to be God with us.

Even more, Jesus is with us all the days; He didn’t just accomplish redemption and became the Spirit in resurrection and now He’s in heaven – He is with us all the time, even until the consummation of the age (Matt. 28:20).

Jesus is with us all the days, even today; He is with us not only yesterday or tomorrow but especially today, right now, right this very moment.

He is with us in our spirit (2 Tim. 4:22), for our spirit is the land of Emmanuel (Isa. 8:7-8).

Because God is with us, the enemy can never take over the land of Immanuel (Isa. 8:10; cf. 1 John 5:4; John 3:6). Hallelujah!

We all can see that Satan is trying to put us down, to defeat us, and to take over, but because our spirit is the land of Emmanuel because we have Jesus as God with us, Satan can never defeat us. We are still here because of Emmanuel, because of God with us.

We need to be assured of the fact that, That which is born of the Spirit is spirit (John 3:6); our spirit is one with the Spirit, and in our mingled spirit we have the land of Immanuel, where Satan cannot touch us.

1 John 5:4 confirm this, that everything that has been begotten of God overcomes the world; our spirit is an overcoming spirit, for our spirit overcomes the world.

And this is the victory, our faith (2 Cor. 4:13); we overcome because we have a spirit of faith, for our spirit is the land of Immanuel, the land of God with us. Amen!

Doubts are in our mind, but faith is in our spirit; when we exercise our spirit, we experience Jesus as God with us. Hallelujah!

Lord Jesus, thank You for coming to be our Emmanuel, God with us! Hallelujah, our spirit is the land of Immanuel – our mingled spirit is God with us, for Jesus lives in us! Thank You, Lord Jesus, for being with us all the days until the consummation of the age! Hallelujah, Jesus is with us whenever we meet in His name, and He is with us all the time, even in our spirit! Hallelujah, our spirit is of faith, and in spirit, we overcome the enemy, no matter how much he attacks! Praise the Lord, everything that has been begotten of God overcomes the world, and our victory is faith – our spirit of faith! Keep us in our spirit today, dear Lord, to live one spirit with You! We want to learn to live with Christ as our Emmanuel, God with us!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by brother Ed Marks, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1988, vol. 1, “Living in and with the Divine Trinity,” chs. 8, 10, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Living In and With the Divine Trinity (2021 Thanksgiving Day Conference), week 4, entitled, Living with the Divine Trinity (1) Living with Christ as Emmanuel and Having the Resurrected Christ Living in us, by Living Christ for His Magnification, and by the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ in Our Spirit.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – O Lord, Thou art in me as life / And everything to me! / Subjective and available, / Thus I experience Thee… / O Thou art ever one with me, / Unrivaled unity! / One spirit with me all the time / For all eternity! (Hymns #539)
  – Thou art also called “Emmanuel”; / ”God with us” Thou cam’st to be; / God in grace is wholly mingled / With our own humanity. / God in flesh is manifested, / Full of grace and truth therein; / We have seen in Thee God’s glory, / And in faith partake of Him. (Hymns #68)
  – Jesus Christ the Lord is living now in us / As the wonderful Spirit within. / He has been transfigured, we enjoy Him thus, / As the life-giving Spirit within. / Now the Spirit of reality is here / As the wonderful Spirit within. / Now the things of Christ are all so real and clear / By the life-giving Spirit within. (Hymns #1113)