As those Grafted into Christ, we should Live a Grafted Life in the Mingled Spirit

As believers in Christ, we have been grafted into Christ as the tree of life, and this grafting has made us one with Him; on His side, He went through a process to be ready to be grafted, and on our side, we also went through a process to be grafted into Him. Hallelujah!

The kind of life that we should live today is a grafted life, a life of depending on the Lord for all things, for He is the vine and we are the branches.

The grafted life is not an exchanged life but a mingling of the divine life with the human life.

It is easy to look at our human life and realize that it is not up to God’s standard; it is not difficult to realize that we’re full of sin and flaws, so we may want to exchange our lower life with God’s life.

But this is not God’s way. He doesn’t want to “wipe us out” so that He can live in us; He wants to infuse us with Himself and make us one with Him to the extent that He lives in us and we live Him.

And all of this is with our cooperation.

Many Christians, however, hold the concept that Jesus is so wonderful and we are so fallen and weak, so we need to surrender all our life to Him and He will give us His higher life in exchange.

Such a concept sounds good but it is not God’s concept in the Bible. God wants to be one with man – He wants man to be one with Him.

And the way He does it is not by convincing us that He is the best or is it by coercing us to do what He wants us to do.

Rather, what God does is dispense all that He is into us so that we may organically become one with Him.

The oneness that He wants to gain with us is not something merely in the mind or conviction; it is organic and it is in spirit.

When we worship God in spirit and in truthfulness, we drink of Him, and His element in us causes a certain kind of constitution to take place.

This constitution of God in man and man in God is the real oneness, and this is the grafted life – a mingled life, a life of mingling of God and man.

For this, He created us in His image and according to His likeness, and He breathed into man the breath of life.

Now we not only look like Him but also have His likeness, and we have a human spirit, something that can contact God and receive God, being very similar to God.

Man and dogs cannot be grafted, for the dog life is very different from the divine life.

But God and man can be grafted together, for there’s a capacity in us for us to be grafted with God and in God. Hallelujah!

We have been Grafted into Christ as the Tree of Life: this Grafting made us One with Him!

In order for us and God to be grafted together, we both have to go through a process.

For us to be grafted into Christ, He had to pass through the processes of incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection to become a life-giving Spirit (John 1:14; 1 Cor. 2:2; 14:45).

If God remains only in the heavens and expects that man would come up to His standard and work hard to match God’s life, the grafting of God and man would be impossible.

How can we, sinners, be grafted into the all-mighty, most powerful, holy and glorious God far away in the heavens?

God loves man, and four thousand years after He created man, he came to become a man in incarnation.

In incarnation, Christ brought divinity into humanity and lived as a man for thirty-three and a half years.

Then, He brought that human life to the cross, and after three days of being in Hades, He resurrected and became a life-giving Spirit.

These are the processes that He went through in order to be “cut” and processed for us to be grafted into Him.

As the life-giving Spirit, He can be dispensed into us, and we can be grafted into Him.

On our side, we heard the gospel, we were pricked in our hearts, and we repented and believed into the Lord Jesus.

By faith and baptism, we were cut off from the old source, the old man, and we were grafted into Christ as the life-giving Spirit.

We have been grafted into Christ as the tree of life, and this grafting has made us one with Him (Rom. 11:24).

When He was on the cross, a soldier pierced His side with a spear, and blood and water flowed. This was an opening, a cut made into the Savior, for us to be grafted into Him.

There has to be a cut on both sides – on the side of the vine and on the side of the branch, and these two cuts need to be put together, kiss one another, and even be bound together to grow together.

When we heard the gospel, the Lord Jesus appeared to us, we were exposed and touched, and we repented; we simply believed into the Lord.

In the spiritual realm, this caused a cut from the old man and a joining to Christ to be grafted into Him.

Our Savior was cut on the cross and we were cut when we repented and confessed our sins.

These two cuts were put together, kissed one another, and the grafting began.

This grafting made us one with the Lord: now Christ and us, His believers, are one tree, for He is the vine and we are the branches (John 15:1, 4, 5).

Christ has become our very life, nature, and person (Col. 3:4, 10-11; Eph. 3:17).

Everything that God does now is in us, in our inner being, through this grafted life.

He brought us into a union, mingling, and incorporation with Him so that we and God can become one entity.

Some Christians may say that they are one with God, and they think that by doing things for God or speaking the word of God or obeying God they are one with God.

Our oneness with God implies an organic union involving the grafting, the bringing together of the divine life and the human life so that there would be one mingled life with one mingled living. This is tremendous!

We and Christ are one – He is the vine, we are the branches; He is in us, and we are in Him.

As branches, we cannot live apart from Him, and as the vine, He cannot be expressed or grow apart from us.

The relationship between the branches and the vine portrays the relationship between us and the Lord Jesus.

Everything we are, everything we have, and everything we do must be in the Lord, of the Lord, and by the Lord, who is our new source and life.

As branches, we just abide in Him and He abides in us; when we abide in Him, He abides in us, and we bear much fruit. Hallelujah!

Hallelujah, we as believers in Christ have been grafted into Christ as the tree of life, and we are now one with Him organically! Thank You, Lord, for Your incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection through which You were cut in order for us to be grafted into You. Thank You for making a way for us to be grafted into God! Now we are one with You and You are one with us, for You are the vine and we are the branches. Amen, Lord, You are our life, our nature, and our person, and we are Your expression. Keep us abiding in You as the vine so that we draw out all the riches and enjoy all that You are to be Your corporate expression. Grow in us and increase through us. Amen, Lord, we take You as our life and person today. We want to live this grafted life, this mingled life, all the day!

As those Grafted into Christ, we should live a Grafted Life in the Mingled Spirit

As those who have been regenerated by the Lord, we have been grafted into Christ, and we should live a grafted life.

This grafted life is a life in which two parties are joined to grow organically.

The very life that has entered into us is not just a divine life; it is a grafted life, a mingled life.

What we have in our spirit is a life involving divinity and humanity.

For example, in 1 Cor. 7 Paul was speaking to the Corinthians concerning the matter of marriage and the married life, and he said he didn’t have any commandment of the Lord but he gave his opinion, as one who has the Spirit of God.

He said, The virgins, I charge, not the Lord…but I think that I have the Spirit of God, and I have been shown mercy.

It was Paul speaking his opinion, but he was so mingled with the Lord that his opinion was actually the Lord’s feeling.

This is a description of the highest spirituality of a person who lives a grafted life.

We may do this and that, speak and act, but what we do is not of ourselves but of the Lord, and yet it is us but it is the Lord.

Since we have been grafted into Christ, we should no longer live by ourselves but rather, allow the pneumatic Christ to live in us (Gal. 2:20).

What an amazing and miraculous matter that we are part of this universal vine, this organism of the Triune God!

Christ is the organism of the Triune God, and we are part of this organism.

Without Christ, we can do nothing and we are nothing, for the branches can do nothing without the vine.

Without us, Christ cannot grow, act, work, or have any kind of activity, for the vine depends on the branches.

We need Him for the purpose of enjoying the wonderful, excellent and marvellous divine life, and He needs us for the purpose of fruit-bearing, the multiplication and the enlargement of Christ in humanity.

If we realize this, we will simply abide in Him and allow Him to abide in us and supply us with all His riches for the expression and increase of Himself.

As those who have been grafted into Christ, we should no longer live by ourselves but allowChrist to live in us.

We shouldn’t live by our flesh or our natural being; rather, we should live by our mingled spirit, for in our spirit we are grafted with Christ (1 Cor. 6:17; Rom. 8:4).

We have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer us who live but it is Christ who lives in us.

On one hand, we no longer live, for we no longer live in our natural man and by our old source.

On the other hand, we still live, for we live Christ, our new source, and we live by being organically joined to the Lord.

God doesn’t discard our old life altogether; yes, our old life has problems, weaknesses, failures, and sins, and all these need to be crossed out, terminated, and removed, but He wants to fill our life and be expressed through us.

There is something in man, according to God’s original creation, that God can join and fill, so that He may be expressed and live out.

May we be those who exercise our spirit and live in the mingled spirit today so that we may live the grafted life for the expression and increase of Christ.

May we not look at our problems, weaknesses, and sins but come to the Lord, again and again, confess our sins, mistakes, and trespasses, and simply receive and enjoy His continual, rich, wonderful divine dispensing.

It is only by turning to our spirit and remaining in our spirit that we can live the grafted life to express Christ and cause Him to increase in man.

Lord Jesus, we want to live a grafted life today, a life in which You and we are joined, mingled, and organically united together. Grow in us, Lord, and keep us open to Your divine dispensing. We no longer want to live by ourselves; we allow You as the Spirit to live in us. We no longer want to live by our flesh or our natural being; we choose to live by our mingled spirit! Amen, Lord Jesus, keep us in our spirit today. Keep us enjoying You with all Your riches in spirit so that there would be an increase, an overflow, and an expression of Your riches in us and through us. Teach us what it means to live a grafted life, a life in the mingled spirit where we are grafted into Christ and He is flowing His riches into us!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, a sharing by brother James Lee in the message, and portions from, The Experience of God’s Organic Salvation Equaling Reigning in Christ’s life (chs. 2 and 4), by Witness Lee, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Taking the Way of Enjoying Christ as the Tree of Life (2022 Memorial Day Weekend Conference), week 4, entitled, Grafted into Christ to Become Part of the Tree of Life.
• Hymns on this topic:
  – Thou art the true and heav’nly vine, / And we in Thee are branches; / In Thee abiding, Thou in us, / We share in all Thy riches. (Hymns #187)
  – No more in vain need we struggle, / Trying the way in to find. / Praise God—we’re in Him already, / Hallelujah, abiding in the vine. / Abiding in the vine, / Abiding in the vine, / All the riches of God’s life are mine! / Praise God, He put us here, / Never to leave; oh, we’re— / Abiding, abiding in the vine. (Hymns #1162)
  – He’s the vine and we’re the branches, / We should e’er abide in Him, / And let Him abide within us / As the flow of life within. / In the vine, in the vine, / In the vine, in the vine, / We would know Thee, Lord, / more deeply, / E’er abiding in the vine. (Hymns #1163)