There is really only One Eternal Person in the universe—that is God Himself. Yet, the Triune Godhead includes the three persons of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

His creation, including man, is the means His manifesting Himself. He created human beings, as persons in His image, with the same faculties as He has – mind, emotion and will and “the spirit of man.” but we exist to contain and manifest Him in the universe as ‘The Person.’ Only humans, as persons, can do that.

Like unto God, humans are persons, and therefore self-conscious and free as He is. Thus, mankind can and did refuse to “retain God in their knowledge” (cf. Rom. 1:28-32). They thereby became containers who express Satan’s ‘Sin-spirit of self-love’ in contrast with the Divine “Spirit of God,” The loving, Self-GIVING One.

But I want to stress most plainly that the complementary fact to God being the only Real, thus Eternal, Person is that … we humans are basically living containers created to partake of and bear His almighty, loving, free-willing eternal life.

Mankind and its manmade religions have long held to a misconception concerning the function of the human self, holding to a delusional false Self-Sufficiency that we inherited from fallen Adam. Thus, we instinctively regard ourselves as something very much more than the God intended living containers that we really are.

Remember how the Serpent in the garden of Eden told Eve if they ate of “the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil” they would become “as gods.” They then disobeyed God’s one mandate and ate of that forbidden Tree. Thereby every human born into this world bears the Sin-nature of the Serpent (Satan). This fallen nature is “within our flesh” (cf. Rom. 8:3) as a sort of viral infection in Adam’s lineage, thereby all humans have the false mind-set that they are central as ‘gods of their own lives.’ Sadly, most Christians also apply this independent self-god attitude to their religious pursuits, thinking themselves more capable than they really are. They think they can earn favor from God by their self-effort to appear righteous. But God only recognizes the real righteousness that is of His Son Jesus, as evidenced by His Cross-work … for feeble-minded mankind.

Nevertheless, “vessels,” is what the Bible calls us. This was the first description given by the Ascended Christ concerning the most dynamic Christian of history, the Apostle Paul, saying, “He [Paul] is a chosen VESSEL unto Me,” (Act 9:15), The mighty Paul was just a ‘vessel.’ So, was Paul’s dynamism, wisdom, the revelations, the passionate love, the self-sacrifice the attributes of Paul the vessel’ or of Him whom Paul the vessel contained?

Paul himself went on to call us believers “earthen vessels” (2 Cor. 4:7) made of the dust of the earth. Such humbling is an offense to any man non-enlightened to facts by “the Spirit of God.” But let us get it said without equivocation. If God is the “ALL,” and we are merely the means of His being manifested, is it not a fact that then we must be just His vessels or containers? Paul wrote that “Christ is ALL and in all.” A “Temple” is another like metaphor, for a temple has no reason for existence except to house its god, as we believers do.

“Ye are the temples of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them.” (2Cor. 6:16)

An obvious point then is that a vessel or temple has only one function… ‘to receive’ its intended content We humans have a misconception that the function of a human being is some ‘activity’ as our calling. But activity is not the first function of a vessel, but rather its function is ‘receptivity’ of its intended. As Christians our function is to ‘receive’ Christ, for Him to possess, occupy, and live through our living ‘vessel.’ We can first be at rest in our relationship with God, “Be still and know that I am God [the sovereign]” (Psalm 46:10).

‘Receptivity’ is the simplest, most childlike, of human functions. In Bible terms, “receptivity” is not a ‘work,’ but rather an expression of “faith” that permits us to be at rest in union with Him as our all. This rest is just as our mere sitting in a chair as an expression of our faith that the chair will support us.

Then what we have to re-learn is that receptivity is not just a function for believers, it is THE Function of all believers. All other functions we may be involved with are to be by-products of what we as living containers “contain” – by HIS LIFE. We have a mind, emotion, and will, as our God given soul faculties to be used to express His mind, emotion, and will. All believers contain God, in Christ as “the Spirit of life” in our living container, moving and guiding us… that what we do might be of His Willing and His Doing through us.

Our whole of life is a parable of this ‘receptivity.’ Everything we do is to be the expression of the self-giving of God and us ‘receiving.’ Don’t we live by what we “receive” — food, air, the floorboards beneath our feet, the clothes on our backs? And in most cases, something has died to give us life, whether food or trees, etc. So, life is surely based on ‘receptivity,’ and the Bible word for receptivity is ‘faith,’ because we’ve received of all of God’s “spiritual blessings in Christ” … by His giving and our receiving “by faith.” Can anything be simpler?

How wonderfully God has made us, to live spiritually and materially in this life, by exercising a capacity which is as near as possible to doing nothing — just ‘receiving.’ Not reaching up to drag things down from God, but to enjoy His spiritual things already poured into us. “3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath [already] blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:” (Ephesians 1:3) He has dispensed such blessing in abundance that we just open our mouths in faith to say thank you. We receive all this in The One ‘gift of gifts’ - we’ve ‘received Christ’s LIFE,’ dispensed into our human “spirit of man” (Zech. 12:1), the container made especially for God’s indwelling - Spirit to spirit.

“… that which is born of the Spirit [of Christ] is spirit [our ‘spirit of man’].” (John 3:6 (KJV)

“But he that is joined unto the Lord [Spirit] is one spirit.” (1 Corinthians 6:17 (KJV)

You may object saying, “Wait a minute, we do have to act also.” Yes but, our ‘proper activity’ is the Product of Our ‘Receptivity,’ but not a substitute for it. We must guard against self-governed human self-effort We should take extreme measures to dethrone ‘Self’ from its False Position that man’s false Christian religion promotes. We replace it with our True Position of believing who we are as containers in union with “Christ who is our life” (Col. 1:27). For He desires to live, move, and have His being in and through us, needing us to follow and to live in accord with His spontaneous life. He is the active working IN US.

“For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:13 (KJV)
“Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ [at the Rapture]:” (Philippians 1:6 (KJV)

Certainly, we are real persons. We think, we will, and we act. Yet it is not safe for us to regard ourselves as such until first we have “died” to our Independent Selves, and begun the life of constant recognition (reception) of Another as the Real Self within us.

“To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery [secret] among the Gentiles; which is Christ In You, the hope of glory [expressing His life]:” (Colossians 1:27)

We must start at the bottom and remain forever at the bottom—as mere containers, vessels, recipients, capable only of receiving, and with no other capability.

Do we see then what this means? It is NOT that we have a life to live with God as our helper. Not that WE must pray more, give more, love more, witness more. Not that we are God’s partners or fellow co-workers, but that God Himself is THE ALL, WITHIN US. For He is the One who prays, gives, loves, witnesses. He lives our life, our common everyday life.

“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but CHRIST LIVETH IN ME: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” (Gal. 2:20)

So What Are We to Do?

This is what happened to created humanity, we in Adam, being of fallen Adam’s human lineage, received and contain “another spirit”—the Satanic spirit of self-love, the enemy of God. Thus, we were humanly born alive, but living as self-gods. And even as believers being ignorant of the truth, we for some time, have had our being in Him but actually lived our life independent of God. We’ve lived by the life that is exactly contrary to His life, the life of Self-Centeredness. He alone is the Self-Giver and we lived as self-getters.  Thus, we’ve expressed The Reverse of God, not His Yes; not His good pleasure; in His darkness, not His light; not in His grace and mercy toward others.

How then can we become that for which we were created? Nothing can function harmoniously, except according to the laws of its being. Humanity in all its history is thus so obviously out of gear, right down to each of our personal lives. How can we get into gear?

The Lord Jesus from heaven saved and gave the Apostle Paul the revelation of God’s secret plan and had Paul introduce mankind to God’s Reconciliation and Recovery Plan for Fallen Self-Loving Mankind.

“Now to him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began,” (Romans 16:25)

“the law [operative power] of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law [false operator] of sin and death.” (Romans 8:2)

When we have really seen that we are but vessels unto God as seen in Part 1, then we can add to it the other fact—that we humans are obviously more than inanimate containers. We are living people – living vessels! Humanity as seen in Christendom has largely spent all the years of its history running amok, acting as self-governing ‘independent selves’… serving God. For religion has falsely told us what we must do to please God.

Therefore, again we say, our Self-Acting Self must be dethroned and replaced by a ‘RECEPTIVE self,’ lest we allow the usurper of our Old Man [the Sin-nature) back into favor again. Only if the dethroning of ‘Self as a god’ has taken place, and the lesson learned, then the Proper Self-In-Action can be recognized again in its Rightful Function. Yet, all our lives we will have to be reminded of where ‘self’ belongs and snubbed when self tries to take over again.

Man’s proper place and function is portrayed for us by Christ’s parable of ‘the Vine and branches’ (John 10), and Paul’s analogy of the Head and the body. The Vine and branch truth emphasizes the indissoluble union of Christ and the believer. We are organically one. One tree, one life; yet in that relationship Jesus underlined the fact that we, as the branches, are merely channels of the life-giving sap from the vine.

The branch of a Tree is more than a channel. Because the branch is connected to the tree it is alive whereas a pipe is not alive. Christ Himself is the real Biblical “tree of life.” A branch absorbs and utilizes the sap to produce the fruit of the life of the tree. So, the branch is not entirely inactive, though it is entirely dependent. It was this dependence that Jesus was pointing to in saying: “apart from Me, ye can do nothing” (John 15:5). So, the tree illustration takes us one step further than the vessel. First, we are containers. Then, having absorbed and accepted that fact, we are more we see that we are united with Him whom we contain in a way a mere vessel can never be united to the liquid in it. We are united because we are living people and He is THE Living Person. In that union, as branch to vine, we remain as totally dependent as the living vessel. Without the sap of His “Spirit of life” flowing in us we can do nothing pleasing to God. We live in utter dependence, thus we must “abide in [stay in union with] the Vine.” (John 15:4).

Once more then, Paul’s illustration takes us further. We are Christ’s “body” with Him as “the Head.” Again, that makes for One Person acting, just as it was One Tree produces fruit. In fact, here the Bible speaks of ‘the body specifically as “Christ,” not the head.

“For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. “(1 Corinthians 12:12 (KJV)

Yet the “body” is the agent of “the head,” as ‘branch’ of the ‘vine.’ Total dependence is maintained, as union is maintained. But in the head and body, the activity of the members comes to the fore. A body is made for action. A head is useless without a body, so the body in Eph. 1:2-4 is specifically spoken of as ‘the fullness of the head, as the head of the body.’ They are necessary to each other. So here we come back full circle to the proper active self, but dead, but risen and ascended, forever knowing itself as basically containing The Other, motivated by The Other. He lives His life and expresses His Self through ourselves; yet we are freely involved in action, just as if it is we, thinking, willing, working, laughing, talking, living as normal human beings in normal situations. The world thinks it is just us, except for something unusual they can’t identify about us.

We know that Paul wrote; “your life is hid with Christ in God… Christ our life.” (Colossians 3:3-4)

“For in him [Christ] dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. ¹⁰ And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality [rank and authority] and power:” (Colossians 2:9-10 (KJV)

“Whereof I [Paul] am made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which is given to [received by] me [Paul] for you [grace believers], to fulfil [Gk. pleroo, complete] the word of God; ²⁶ Even [that which was dispensed is] the mystery [Gk. musterion, God’s secret plan] which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints: ²⁷ To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of This Mystery [secret information as applies] among the Gentiles; which is CHRIST IN YOU, the hope of glory:” (Colossians 1:25-27 (KJV)

But to get all this into focus, we must probe deeper. To recap;

• God Himself is The One real Personage in the Universe who is genuine LIFE, that is ETERNAL.

The Triune God consists of God, who is seen in the person of Jesus Christ, who today is expressed as “the Spirit of LIFE in Christ Jesus”!

• We the believers have life as individual persons, so that our unique God given personalities can be the means of manifesting and expressing HIM by “the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” flowing in and through us.

“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ Liveth In Me…” (Galatians 2:20)

Humanity, as all creation, lives, and exists by His life, all are forms of Him. Yet, we being individual soul-persons, bearing also the “spirit of man,” are the only creatures who can “receive Him” or refuse to be who and what we were made to be — persons who contain THE ONE PERSON that is God.

- As Adapted from “God Unlimited” by Norman Grubb's "God Unlimited" -