The giving of the Holy Spirit was probably the greatest thing that ever happened in all God’s great plan of redemption. Even the death of Jesus Christ upon the cross and all that He did would have been of no effect had it not been for the Holy Spirit who deals with men’s hearts and makes real to them the provision of the cross and brings them into it.
The plan of God would have been frustrated long ago had it not been for the coming of the Holy Spirit to lead men into all the truth, to take the provision that Jesus Christ had made and bring people into it.
The Holy Spirit came to bring a oneness to the church. What caused the jealousy and striving within the early church to vanish? What did the Holy Spirit do on the day of Pentecost to effect the oneness and efficiency that came forth, so that people marveled at them and took note that they had been with Jesus?
Here were ignorant and unlearned men, but the people were helpless before their wisdom! God’s wisdom had penetrated the frail thinking of men who only a few days before had been arguing over who was to be the greatest. They had been with the Lord all those years and still had no concept of what it was all about; they just didn’t know, didn’t appreciate it. Suddenly everything was moving by revelation, the wisdom of God. How did men get into God that way? How did God get into men that way? How did they become one before the Father?
Chapters 14 through 17 in the gospel of John should be read almost to the point of being memorized by anyone who wants to understand what God is really doing today. They speak about the unity and oneness that God is beginning to bring forth in the body of Christ.
To help us understand this oneness let us use another word: interpenetration. In the realm of Spirit it is possible for one person’s spirit to be able to reach into another’s. Often this is revealed in ways that people talk or worship; the qualities of one person’s spirit have penetrated into another.
Each time we contact God, something of God interpenetrates us. We must penetrate into Christ and see Christ penetrate into us, until we are filled with all the fullness of God. Oneness is not something that either is or isn’t it exists to varying degrees.
Remember, men were filled with the Spirit in the Old Testament, as many passages tell us. But never before had men been so filled with God! And never had men moved into God so much. The interpenetration of God and man had come about by the Holy Spirit, who is our means of learning how to get into the depths of God and to draw from and give in God in a greater measure. Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus … Ephesians 3:20, 21.
Jesus said to him, “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how do you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me?” John 14:9, 10.
He is not declaring that there is only one, the Father, He is declaring that the Father and the Son have interpenetrated one another so deeply that we cannot look at one or have a revelation of one without having a revelation of the other.
The time will come when people cannot look at us without having a revelation of Christ. We will have this treasure in earthen vessels, that men will see within us the glory in the face of Christ! We will have penetrated into God to such a depth that they will no longer see us at all, but they will see the Christ into whom we’ve penetrated and the Christ who has penetrated into us.
We do not really understand what it means for Christ to live in us until we experience it. It means to the depths of your being, to your very responses, your subconscious mind, your desires, in your spirit, soul and in your body, Christ has penetrated until He has invaded every part of you! Jesus is in you, but the measure you have possessed of Him is not enough; the measure He has possessed of you is not enough. We must follow on to know the Lord, to enter into that oneness, that interpenetration.
The night the Lord was betrayed, Judas’ covetousness got hold of him and the Word says, “Satan entered into him” (John 13:27). Then he went out and betrayed the Lord. Did this mean that he was possessed? When we use this term “possessed,” we mean that Satan or demons have penetrated into certain areas. A demon can enter into your ear, and you have a deaf spirit. A demon can enter into certain parts of the brain, and you could have epilepsy such as that which threw the boy into the fire (Matthew 17:15). This doesn’t signify that they were possessed in other areas; just certain areas were penetrated by the demon power and seemed to be possessed until men would shriek out by a wisdom not of their own, “We know who Thou art, the Christ of God” (Luke 4:34).
Those demons had penetrated the mind, the consciousness, the thinking, the vocal cords, and the expression of that individual. If demons can do that, how much more can we be filled with the Spirit of God, until it will not be we who speak in that hour, but the Spirit of God in us. We shall prophesy the words of the Lord, speak the words of the Lord. This was the key of the early church. They were not professionals or supermen; they were men who had penetrated into God and God into them. They were one.
“Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me; otherwise believe on account of the works themselves. Truly, truly I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do, because I go to the Father.” John 14:10–12. Then He goes on to explain how: by His sending the Holy Spirit.
What are those greater works? Do we mean that we’re going to have a greater ability to perform miracles than Jesus? He made all things, even us, and it would be His authority and provision and power that we would be moving in. It’s not that we will exceed Christ in ability, but that Christ’s ability in us will perform what is necessary. Because the needs will be greater than those Christ faced when He was here, the answers will be greater; therefore, the works are classified as greater. The hour has come in which it is necessary for the whole earth to see the glory and the fullness of Christ in the Body.
He then says, “Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do …” Why? “… that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” John 14:13. He was dedicated to the Father being glorified in Him. And notice that interpenetration!
The Father was committing all things to the Son; He had penetrated into the Son in a oneness until “in Christ,” the Word says, “all the fullness of the Godhead dwelt bodily” (Colossians 2:9). He was given the Spirit without measure (John 3:34). That was a penetration of the Father and the Holy Spirit into the Son, until He moved in that fullness. And He commands us to do likewise, to be filled with all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:19).
God desires to bring us into a oneness, a penetration of one another, until we’re not even looking out for ourselves, but for our brother and sister. I have penetrated into his life, his being, his spirit, and he has penetrated into mine. And that can be only because Christ is in me, and I am in Him and Christ is in the Father.
This is what Pentecost was all about. Never again was their jealousy among those apostles or the one hundred and twenty believers; they laid down their lives for one another. “Yea, because He laid down His life for us, we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren” (1 John 3:16).
It is very simple: they were all one and loved each other that way. That interpenetration of spirit was so great that after the day of Pentecost, people sold their properties and laid the money at the apostles’ feet, so that there would be plenty of food and provision for everyone in the time of persecution. Even before persecution started, they had all things in common because they had lost their state of individuality. Those early Christians had such a oneness because they had penetrated into one another’s lives so much!
This was why the sin of Ananias and Sapphira was such a great sin against the Holy Spirit. When all of them had so penetrated into the Spirit and so much of the Spirit had entered into them, to turn around and lie to one another was to lie to the Holy Spirit. It had to be deadly! With greater endowment, a greater penetration into God, will come greater accountability before the Lord. To whom much is given, much will be required (Luke 12:48). We dare not walk selfishly again. We dare not do anything but pursue wholly after the Lord our God and this oneness of spirit with one another.
You cannot see this truth and then prophesy distant from God; you must be one with Him, and then prophesy. The effectiveness of the gifts and of the ministries—everything depends upon this. You cannot be distant from one another, having enmity in your heart toward one another, and prophesy effectively. You can’t expect to worship with a remoteness: “Here I am worshiping away, singing in the spirit, and maybe the Lord is somewhere listening.” There has to be an awareness of Him, a reaching into Him and the Lord reaching into you. This is what the worship and the ministry are all about; this is the level we are ready to reach.
We have to see that to prophesy to someone, first you penetrate into the Spirit and then you penetrate into a person’s spirit. Let’s start making bones rattle and armies of the Lord stand upon their feet! Draw more of the Lord, penetrate into Him even more, and then focus it.
The issue is that we do not prophesy just to reveal facts to people, but to impart to them from the Lord. Jesus said, “My words are spirit and they are life” (John 6:63), and what we speak to the people is to be spirit and life.
If a man goes down into the sea without the proper equipment, it wouldn’t be long before the pressure of the water would kill him, because he does not have built up within him the force necessary to withstand what is coming against him on the outside. We are facing some pressures in the days to come, and we had better learn to have a depth in the Spirit.
Days of tribulation and judgment are near, We must get into that penetration into God until He becomes our fortress and strength. But if we are abiding in the Lord and the Lord is abiding in us, then we can ask what we will, and oh, it will be done (John 15:7), because the force we turn loose in the very words we speak will be almost beyond description.
If we are filled with the Spirit until we are overflowing as we speak the word of the Lord to people, they can’t help but feel the power and the impact of it as that word comes and the anointing of the Lord sweeps over them.
When you listen, draw the Spirit; open up those ears to hear what the Spirit is speaking. Everyone can put thoughts and ideas together; there is an element of comprehension on a human level, but we want an element of appropriation on a divine level.
Always be mindful of that army that is to be raised up through prophesying the word of the Lord (Ezekiel 37). Remember how the Spirit of prophecy was so great that John fell down and was ready to worship the man when he sensed Christ speaking through him? He thought it was his Lord speaking. The man said, “Don’t do it, I’m of your brethren” (Revelation 19:10). It was the testimony of Jesus.
The day has come when we’re to be the mouthpiece of Jesus speaking in the world. Keep that goal before you, becoming yielded channels of the Lord. It means a oneness with the Lord, and it means a real flow outward by the Holy Spirit, coming as God speaking through you. Not about what God has to say but speaking the word of the Lord written on your heart with the anointing of the Spirit.
We are to prophesy until men can’t stand the wisdom of God in it. That’s how it was in the days of Stephen and Philip, when people couldn’t stand to listen to those first seven deacons because of the word of the Lord. They were full of wisdom, full of the Spirit, full of faith. They had penetrated into God and God had penetrated into them. The oneness of it was such that men could no longer bear it. They were either converted or full of anger.
John 14:20 In that day you shall know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. He who has My commandments, and keeps them, he it is who loves Me; and he who loves Me shall be loved by My Father, and I will love him, and will disclose Myself to him. See? “I will disclose Myself to him.” Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, “Lord, what then has happened that You are going to disclose Yourself to us, and not to the world?” Jesus answered and said to him, ‘If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him, and make Our abode with him.” Do you see the picture? It is God penetrating deeper and deeper into us.
The fifteenth chapter deals with the same theme, penetrating into the Lord and the Lord interpenetrating into us. Verse 4: “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself … so neither can you, unless you abide in Me.”
You can’t see anything but perfect victory in Jesus Christ or have anything short of perfect victory when you are interpenetrated into Christ in fullness, because according to every promise, every declaration, every word, His victory is complete in you.
We seal the word to our hearts, taking to ourselves even the willingness to bear one another’s’ infirmities. interpenetration. When one member is honored, we all rejoice. When one member suffers, we all suffer.