Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom (2 Cor. 3:17). How can we touch and enjoy God today? It is by exercising our spirit to touch and enjoy God in Christ as Spirit. Where and what is God today? God is in Christ, and Christ today is the Spirit.
The Spirit today is the consummated Spirit – the consummation of the process that God went through in His economy – and this Spirit is for reaching us and entering into us. Apart from God being the Spirit there is absolutely no way for us to be one with God, receive God’s dispensing, be mingled with God, be saturated with God, and be God’s corporate expression.
What God wants is to work Himself into us to be our life and everything, and the only way He can do this is by going through a process to become a life-giving Spirit to impart Himself into us and saturate us with Himself. However, the truth concerning the consummated Spirit is missing from today’s Christian theology, and many believers in Christ don’t know how to experience God as the Spirit.
The Gospel of John is rich in details concerning how God became a man (the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, John 1:14) to be the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world (John 1:29), to express God in humanity, and to declare the Father to His disciples. Then, this God-man Jesus Christ died and, in His resurrection, He became a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45); now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom from sin, the world, the flesh, and death (2 Cor. 3:17).
The Lord today is the Spirit, and this Spirit is our spiritual breath; what the Lord wants us to do daily and even moment by moment is to breathe Him in. Christ is the Spirit to be our spiritual breath, and we have a spirit to receive Him; we need to exercise our spirit to exhale everything of ourselves and inhale more of God as Spirit!
The more we breathe God in, the more He works Himself into us, He eliminates the negative and natural things in us, and He supplies us with Himself as life, life-supply, and everything.
The Consummated Spirit as the Breath is Everything to us in Living the Christian Life
Humanly speaking, there are no books on “how to breathe” or “the importance of breathing” because we spontaneously breathe – if we stop breathing, we die! Breathing is the most basic life practice for us to survive and live a normal human life. Spiritual breathing, in the same way, is the most basic life practice in order for us to live Christ.
If we don’t breathe spiritually, we are dying, but if we regularly and constantly breathe ourselves out and breathe the Spirit in, we live Christ and express Him.
Just as the pure air we breathe contains everything we need for our living on earth, so the holy breath, the consummated Spirit, that we breathe contains everything that we need for our spiritual life. In the spiritual air that we breathe, we have God who became a man by being born of a virgin, His perfect human life on earth, His all-inclusive death on the cross for our redemption, His overcoming and life-imparting resurrection, and His all-transcending ascension.
Christ as the Spirit is the spiritual air that we breathe, and this Spirit is everything to us in our Christian life. The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life (2 Cor. 3:6); if we merely take the word of God and try to fulfill it in ourselves – but without the Spirit as life – we will be in death and spread death, but if we exercise our spirit to breathe in the life-giving Spirit, we can live out the Christian life according to what the Bible says.
We shouldn’t try to “analyze the breath”, that is, try to dissect and fully understand everything that’s in the breath; we should simply open to the Lord to receive a revelation of the holy breath and breathe in the Spirit! On His side, Christ breathed out the Spirit (the Spirit is the breath of the Son – this is “mind-blowing” yet so real and enjoyable), and on our side we need to breathe Him in through the exercise of our spirit!
A hymn by brother A. B. Simpson really helps us realize and enjoy what it means to spiritually breathe in the Lord – Hymns #255, which says,
- O Lord, breathe Thy Spirit on me,
Teach me how to breathe Thee in;
Help me pour into Thy bosom
All my life of self and sin.I am breathing out my sorrow,
Breathing out my sin;
I am breathing, breathing, breathing,
All Thy fulness in. - I am breathing out my own life,
That I may be filled with Thine;
Letting go my strength and weakness,
Breathing in Thy life divine. - Breathing out my sinful nature,
Thou hast borne it all for me;
Breathing in Thy cleansing fulness,
Finding all my life in Thee. - I am breathing out my sorrow,
On Thy kind and gentle breast;
Breathing in Thy joy and comfort,
Breathing in Thy peace and rest. - I am breathing out my sickness,
Thou hast borne its burden too;
I am breathing in Thy healing,
Ever promised, ever new. - I am breathing out my longings
In Thy listening, loving ear;
I am breathing in Thy answers,
Stilling every doubt and fear. - I am breathing every moment,
Drawing all my life from Thee;
Breath by breath I live upon Thee,
Lord, Thy Spirit breathe in me.
To breathe in the Lord we first need to breathe ourselves out; we need to open to the Lord and exhale all the things that are in us, call on His name, and breathe in all that He is. We can breathe out our sorrow and sin, and breathe His fulness in.
We can breathe out our own life so that we may be filled with His life, letting go of both our strength and weakness so that we may be filled with His life. We can breathe out our sinful nature and breathe in His cleansing fulness with His life.
We can breathe out our sorrow into His breast and breathe in His joy and comfort, peace and rest. We can breathe out our sickness and breathe in His healing. We can breathe out all our longings in His listening ear and breathe in His answers.
We simply need to breathe the Lord in every moment, drawing all our life from Him, and live breath by breath upon Him! This One, Christ as the consummated Spirit, is everything to us in our Christian life – we simply need to breathe Him in!
Lord, breathe Your spirit on us and cause us to breathe You in! Oh Lord, help us pour into Your bosom all our life of self, sin, sorrow, weakness, sickness, and longings. Lord Jesus, we open to You to breathe ourselves out and breathe You in. We breathe in Your fulness, Your life, Your cleansing, Your joy and comfort, Your peace and rest! Lord, we breathe in all that You are as the consummated Spirit! Oh Lord Jesus, we open to You to breathe You in! We depend on You! You as the Spirit are our very breath!
Only the Breath – the Consummated Spirit – can be a Christian and can be an Overcomer
Many believers try their best to live the Christian life, and most times they fail; we are not meant to try to live what the Bible says but live in spirit, walk according to the spirit, and do everything in the spirit. The only way we can live the Christian life is by exercising our spirit to allow the Spirit to live in us.
To be a Christian is not merely difficult — it is impossible. Only the processed and consummated Triune God living in us as the all-inclusive Spirit can be a Christian. What the New Testament requires of us is too high. The kind of holiness required, for example, is something that we cannot produce. We praise the Lord that it is not we who need to fulfill the New Testament requirements but the Spirit in us who fulfills them. Instead of doing things in ourselves, we should simply enjoy His living and His working. Only the Spirit can be a Christian, and only the Spirit can be an overcomer. Remember, the Spirit is our God, our Father, our Lord, our Redeemer, our Savior, our Shepherd, and our life and life supply. (Witness Lee, Life-Study of Job)
We cannot live the Christian life – only Christ as the consummated Spirit can. We cannot be an overcomer – only Christ as the Spirit in us can.
Only when we receive the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ can all things work out for our salvation, and we can magnify Christ (Phil. 1:19-21). Only by having an ear to hear what the Spirit says to the churches can we be produced as overcomers, and only the Spirit can produce us as God’s overcomers in today’s age of degradation (Rev. 2:7).
The Spirit is everything to us to live the Christian life, and our life should be a living out of God in Christ as the Spirit through us. Our God has been processed and consummated to become the Spirit, and the Spirit in us can live the Christian life and make us overcomers. Only the consummated Spirit can be a God-man husband or wife, father or mother, grandpa or grandma, child, employee, citizen, and man.
As we breathe in the Lord, we exhale ourselves and let go of everything of the past with its problems, longings, disappointments, and wounds, and we breathe in the consummated Spirit to live by the spirit! This is the only way we can live the Christian life in a genuine way according to the divine revelation in the Bible.
Lord Jesus, release the vision of the consummated Spirit being everything to us in our Christian life. Impress us, Lord, with the fact that only the breath, the Spirit, can be a Christian and can be an overcomer! We need You, Lord, as the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Keep us breathing You in. Oh Lord Jesus! Recover the breathing! May we exhale everything of the past and breathe in newness, resurrection, and oneness! Oh Lord Jesus, we praise You as the holy breath as everything to us our Christian life!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, brother Ron Kangas’ sharing in the message for this week, and Life-study of Philippians, msg. 34 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Crucial Points of the Major Items of the Lord’s Recovery Today (ITERO 2015 fall), week 4 / msg 4, The Consummated Spirit.
- All Bible verses are taken from, Holy Bible Recovery Version.
- Hymns on this topic to strengthen this burden:
# Breathing in the Lord / Is how we live today. / Not by thinking do we live, / But breathing is the way. / We just call “O Lord!” / From very deep within, / And with joy we testify / We’re breathing in of Him. / Breathe in Christ, / Breathe in Life, / Breathe Him in today! / He’s our very life supply, / So breathe Him right away. (Song on Breathing in the Lord)
# Breathing, breathing, we are breathing, / With each breath new life receiving, / What a transformation from the old / to the new; / Breathing out the old life from us, / Breathing in new life and oneness, / We are breathing in of Jesus, we are / breathing in of life. (Hymns #1266)
# O, say, aren’t you glad that the Spirit’s outpoured / And God, fully processed, is flowing in us? / So freely we’re breathing this life-giving Lord, / And breathing, receiving His life, glorious! (Hymns #1114)
About aGodMan
The Spirit is everything to us to live the Christian life. The Christian life is altogether the processed and consummated Triune God as the all-inclusive Spirit. In this Spirit we have the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. In this Spirit we are in the Father, the Son, and the Spirit (Matt. 28:19). What kind of God do we have today? Our God is the processed and consummated Triune God, who is the consummated, all-inclusive Spirit as everything for our Christian life. (Witness Lee, Life-study of Job, pp. 109-110)