Our mutual coinherence with the Father through Christ by the Spirit

And the Lord is the Spirit…. – 2 Cor. 3:17a

In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. – John 14:20

That they all may be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us; that the world may believe that You have sent Me. – John 17:21

The concept of coinherence (mutual indwelling) cannot be fully comprehended by our natural mind. It is a matter of faith and must be “spiritually discerned,” as Paul writes in another place.

Coinherence is the essential state of the Triune God. That is to say, at all times in the godhead, the Father is in the Son and the Spirit; the Son is, at the same time, always found in the Father and in the Spirit; and the Spirit is at all times found in the Father and in the Son.

The Lord Jesus introduces us to something new in the coinherence relationship in the Gospel of John. He says that we “all” are not only to be made one (i.e., brought into oneness), but we “all” (17:21) are to be made one in the same way (read: “even as”) as the Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father. We are introduced by the Lord Jesus to an expanded Trinity that brings the corporate man—the Body of Christ—into the enlargement of God and His expression.

Note: This does not mean that we are brought into the godhead to become God as an object of worship. Only God is God and there is none other like Him. Nevertheless, the scriptures are clear that by the dispensing of the life of God into the believers in Christ and by the Spirit, there is a real and expanded oneness within God into which the believers are invited to dwell.

In the illustration above we are given a small glimpse as to how this new organic oneness operates by God the Father “who is over all, through all and in all.” While God remains God in His godhead, we—the believers—are brought into this divine oneness through our mingled spirit and the divine dispensing. Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit becomes Jacob’s ladder joining (in reality) “heaven and earth” (Gen. 28:12; John 1:51).

This is the branch abiding in the vine. This is “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” This is the mutual coinherence of the genuine believer in the Father and in the Son by the Spirit in their human spirit.