Witness Lee teaches Resurrection

Our Experience—Salvation

The resurrected Christ, who is the Spirit, can now be experienced inwardly and subjectively by His believers (2 Corinthians 3:17-18). Before the Lord had passed through death and resurrection, He dwelt among His disciples in a physical body. However, since His resurrection He has dwelt within His believers as the Spirit (John 14:16-20). This wonderful indwelling is possible only through His resurrection, by which He was transfigured from the flesh into the life-giving Spirit. Christ first entered His believers when He breathed Himself as the Spirit into His disciples on the evening of His resurrection (John 20:22). By virtue of His resurrection, His relationship with His believers is now as the Spirit (2 Corinthians 5:16; Romans 8:14, 16) (Witness Lee, Four, 30-31).

By virtue
of His resurrection, His relationship with His believers is now as the Spirit.

Therefore, on the basis of His process of incarnation, death, and resurrection, at the moment a person repents to God and believes into the Lord Jesus, Christ, who is the Spirit in resurrection, enters into him (Acts 20:21; 1 Corinthians 15:45b). Specifically, He enters into and is joined to that person’s human spirit to live in him (1 Corinthians 6:17; 2 Timothy 4:22). The Bible calls this experience regeneration (1 Peter 1:23), a birth which occurs in the human spirit, originating from the Holy Spirit (John 3:6; 1:12-13). Thus, in resurrection, Christ as the Spirit is united with the believer in his spirit and indwells him as his life (Galatians 2:20; 2 Corinthians 13:15; Colossians 1:27; Romans 8:10). Based on Christ’s resurrection, the believer is able to receive Christ as life into him and be united with Him, experiencing His resurrection inwardly (Philippians 3:10). Resurrection thus brings Christ into man (John 14:20) (Witness Lee, Basic, 50).

Regeneration

As the believers use their regenerated human spirit to contact the Lord in fellowship (John 4:24), the resurrected Christ grows within them and transforms their soul (2 Corinthians 3:18). In this way, Christ as the resurrection life spreads from their spirit into their mind, emotion, and will, thus making His home in their hearts through faith (Ephesians 3:16-17) (Witness Lee, Salvation, 75-77; Witness Lee, Seven, 82).

Transformation

Eventually, the resurrected Christ will glorify the believer’s body at His second coming (Romans 8:23, 30; 2 Thessalonians 1:10). The Spirit will eventually saturate the believer’s body, transfiguring it from a body of humiliation to the body of His glory (Philippians 3:21; 2 Thessalonians 1:10; Ephesians 1:13-14; 4:30). This is the believer’s ultimate experience of the resurrected Christ in his entire spirit and soul and body (1 Thessalonians 5:23) (Witness Lee, Salvation, 85-87; Witness Lee, Secret, 68-71).

Glorification