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Scripture Reading: John 20:22; Acts 2:17, 33; 10:45; Titus 3:6; Acts 2:4; 1:5; 13:52b; 1 Pet. 1:3; John 17:2b; 3:5, 6b; 1:12-13; Rom. 6:19, 22; 2 Pet. 1:4; 1 Thes. 5:23
In the Old Testament we can see God’s dispensing according to His divine economy in the promises and types of God’s anticipated redemption and salvation. In the New Testament the divine economy and the divine dispensing are revealed in the accomplishment of God’s full redemption and salvation. First, this accomplishment was in Christ’s incarnation, and second, it was in Christ’s resurrection. We passed over Christ’s death because nothing was dispensed in the death of Christ. After Christ’s resurrection the accomplishment of God’s full redemption and salvation continued in the breathing of the essential Spirit into the believers and then in the outpouring of the economical Spirit upon the believers.
Many Christians celebrate the outpouring of the economical Spirit that occurred on the day of Pentecost. However, they do not consider the breathing of the essential Spirit into the disciples in John 20 as important as the outpouring of the economical Spirit. The resurrection of Christ, the breathing of the essential Spirit, and the outpouring of the economical Spirit may be compared to the birth of a child. After a child is delivered, he first begins to breathe, and then he is bathed. The birth of the believers took place at the time of Christ’s resurrection (1 Pet. 1:3). After this birth the disciples began to breathe the Holy Spirit in John 20:22. Then the Lord Jesus as the Head of the Body “bathed” the Body through the baptism of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.
The Gospel of John may be considered the biography of the Divine Trinity. The Triune God had and still has a biography. The four Gospels are considered by many Christians to be four biographies of the one Savior, the Lord Jesus. The sequence of the arrangement of these four Gospels is very meaningful. Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the synoptic Gospels, mainly concern Christ in His humanity. Christ in His humanity is revealed first as the King-Savior in Matthew, then as the Slave-Savior in Mark, and then as the Man-Savior in Luke. However, what is revealed in the fourth Gospel, the Gospel of John, is Christ’s divinity. The Gospel of John, as a biography of our Triune God in His humanity, reveals Christ as the God-man, a person with the divine nature and the human nature. Whereas Matthew and Luke contain a genealogy of the Lord Jesus (Matt. 1:1-17; Luke 3:23-38), John has no genealogy. Rather, John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The Word had no beginning in time; therefore, He has no genealogy.
For four thousand years of human history, from the creation of Adam, God was only in His divinity. During that time no one knew the real meaning of the universe and of the human life. God contacted man, and the Spirit of Jehovah even came upon man (Num. 11:25; Judg. 3:10; 6:34; 1 Sam. 16:13), but God was God and man was man. Then one day, almost two thousand years ago, the Word came out of eternity and entered into time. As the threefold seed — the seed of the woman, the seed of Abraham, and the seed of David — He came into mankind. The infinite and eternal Word became flesh (John 1:14). He was conceived in a human womb and was born of a virgin to be a wonderful man with blood and flesh. The Lord’s incarnation, as His beginning in His humanity, was a landmark of His biography in His humanity. In His incarnation the Divine Trinity was imparted into man’s being. That was the divine dispensing.
When this wonderful and unique man named Jesus came in His incarnation, He did not come empty-handed. Rather, John 1:14 says, “The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us (and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only Begotten from the Father), full of grace and reality.” His entire being was not full of commandments, ordinances, and regulations but was full of grace and reality.
Few people know what grace and reality are. Many believe that grace is merely unmerited favor. They may even think that having a new home or a new car is God’s grace. However, Paul says that he counted such things as refuse (Phil. 3:8). Grace in its highest definition is God in the Son to be enjoyed by us (Hymns, #497). Reality is God in His Son to be gained by us. The wise king Solomon said that all things are vanity (Eccl. 1:2), but God in the Son gained by us is reality. Christ came filled in His being as God in the Son to be given to us for our enjoyment and to be gained by us as our reality. When people ask us what we have, we may say, “We do not have material riches. Rather, we have God as our grace, our enjoyment, and as our reality, our gain.” Christ did not come with a small amount of grace and reality; on the contrary, He was full of grace and reality. John 1:16 says, “Of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.” The Gospel of John as the biography of the Triune God in His humanity begins in this way.
John 1:12-13 says, “As many as received Him, to them He gave the authority to become children of God, to those who believe into His name, who were begotten not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” To be born of God to be His children is the dispensing of the Divine Trinity into us that we may enjoy Him as grace and gain Him as reality to such an extent that He becomes our life, our nature, our element, our essence, and our very being. Such a dispensing qualifies us to be His children.
In John 3, Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, came to Jesus in the night to receive some teaching from Him. Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, Unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (v. 3). Nicodemus misunderstood the Lord and responded, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?” (v. 4). The Lord Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (v. 5). The Lord told Nicodemus that he needed to be buried through water and have a new birth through the Holy Spirit; then he would be regenerated. As a result, in Nicodemus as well as in many others, the Lord would have His increase, His bride, His counterpart (vv. 29-30). Although the word dispensing is not found in the Bible, without dispensing there can be no increase of Christ. The increase comes from the divine dispensing. Every point in the Gospel of John is a matter of the divine dispensing.
In John 3 a moral man came to the Lord Jesus, but in chapter 4 the Lord went to contact an immoral woman (vv. 3-4). The Lord told her that He had the living water (vv. 10, 14). She said, “Sir, give me this water so that I will not thirst nor come here to draw” (v. 15). He told her, “Go, call your husband and come here” (v. 16). The woman answered, “I do not have a husband,” and Jesus said to her, “You have well said, I do not have a husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly” (vv. 17-18). In this way the Lord wisely touched her conscience, and she realized that He knew all her sinful history. Eventually, the Lord Jesus led her to receive the living water by drinking of Him. He told her, “An hour is coming, and it is now, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truthfulness, for the Father also seeks such to worship Him” (v. 23). To receive the Lord Jesus as the living water is to worship God the Father. The real worship of God is not to kneel before Him; it is to receive His dispensing. What pleases God the most is our allowing Him to dispense Himself into our being. To open ourselves and embrace and receive His dispensing is the best worship we can render to our God. God is waiting today to dispense Himself into us, the thirsty ones, as the living water. When we drink and receive His dispensing, God is very happy. This is a pleasure to Him.
John 5 tells us that whether or not we are in the tomb, we all are dead persons, but the Lord comes to us that we may have life. Moreover, His life is transmitted into us by His word. If we receive His word and believe the One who sent Him, we receive Him as life, which transfers us out of death into eternal life (v. 24). Again, this is the transmission, the impartation, the dispensing, of the Triune God as life in the Son into us.
In John 6 the Lord said that He is the bread of life (vv. 35, 48), the bread from heaven, and the living bread (v. 51). If we are thirsty, we must drink of Him, and if we are hungry, we must eat of Him. Those who heard the Lord’s word in John 6 did not understand Him (v. 60). Therefore, He said, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life” (v. 63). When we hear the Lord’s speaking, we spontaneously receive the dispensing of Christ as God into us. After we sit in a meeting that is full of the Lord’s speaking, we are filled with this dispensing.
John 7:37-39 says, “Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes into Me, as the Scripture said, out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water. But this He said concerning the Spirit, whom those who believed into Him were about to receive; for the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.” The drinking of the living water is God’s dispensing.
In John 8:12 Jesus said, “I am the light of the world; he who follows Me shall by no means walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” Light is for dispensing. Trees that receive adequate sunshine grow and blossom well, but a tree planted in the shade may not grow well because it does not receive the dispensing of the sunshine.
In John 9 a blind man came to the Lord Jesus. The Lord spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle and anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay (v. 6). The blind man received his sight (v. 7), and through his sight he received light. This was a receiving of the divine dispensing.
In John 10:1-9 the Lord Jesus said that He is the door of the sheepfold. On the positive side, the sheepfold keeps the sheep. It covers them in the winter and protects them at night, and it guards them from wolves. However, the sheepfold also keeps the sheep in a negative way from enjoying the pasture. Christ came to open the fold and call the sheep to follow Him out of the fold to receive sunshine and fresh air and to drink the fresh water and eat the green grass in the pasture. Christ is the real sunshine, air, water, and green grass. He is the pasture. This again is the dispensing of the Divine Trinity into His chosen people.
In John 11 Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. To be resurrected from the dead is to receive the divine dispensing. In John 12:24 Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, Unless the grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” If the Lord had not fallen into the earth and died, He would have been one grain alone. By falling into the earth and dying, He sprouted in His resurrection, and the one grain became many grains. This is the dispensing of the life within the one grain into many grains.
We can never exhaust the significance of John 14—16. The first part of chapter 14 tells us that Christ is the embodiment of God the Father to express Him (vv. 7-11). Verses 16 through 20 tell us that the Spirit is the reality of Christ to make Him real to us and that all those who believe in Him will receive the Spirit. When we receive the Spirit, we have the Son, and when we have the Son, we have the Father. In this way we have the Divine Trinity within us dispensing Himself to us continually.
In chapter 15 there is a vine tree with many branches. Every day and every moment the vine tree dispenses its rich life juice into the branches. In chapter 16 the Lord likened His coming resurrection to the birth of a child (vv. 16-24). Resurrection is a real dispensing of the Divine Trinity into God’s chosen people.
In John 17 Jesus prayed to the Father, saying, “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” (v. 21). The oneness for which the Lord prayed here is a coinherence, that is, a mutual dwelling of the Father, the Son, the Spirit, and the believers in one another. The Father is in the Son, the Son is in the Father, and all the believers are in the Father and the Son. In this way the believers share the oneness of the Divine Trinity. This kind of sharing indicates the dispensing of the Divine Trinity. He is dispensing, and we receive and enjoy the oneness that is in and among the Divine Trinity. Now, in addition to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we become the fourth party in this oneness. Whether or not we can explain this, it is a fact that the oneness revealed in John 17 is a oneness of four parties. To include the fourth party in this oneness was not easy. The Lord accomplished many things to get into us and bring us into the Triune God, to make us one with the Triune God. This is all due to the divine dispensing.
In John 18 the Lord was arrested, and in John 19 He was crucified. Through His crucifixion, blood and water came out of His side (v. 34). The blood is for redemption, and the water is for the imparting of life. This imparting of life is the divine dispensing.
In John 20 the Lord resurrected. After the Lord was crucified, the disciples were frightened and sorrowful. They might not have been able to sleep well, but the Lord rested well in the tomb, and on the day of resurrection He came out of the tomb. When Mary went to the tomb, she saw that the stone had been taken away (v. 1). She then told Peter and John, and when they came and saw the empty tomb and the grave clothes lying in order, they believed that the Lord had resurrected (vv. 2-8). The two then returned to their home, but Mary lingered at the tomb and wept for the Lord (vv. 10-11). At that time Jesus appeared to her and said to her, “Do not touch Me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to My brothers and say to them, I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God” (v. 17). The Lord wanted to present the freshness of His resurrection to the Father.
In His word to Mary the Lord Jesus referred to the disciples as His brothers, and He referred to God as His Father and their Father, and His God and their God. It was at that time that the disciples became the brothers of the firstborn Son of God. On that morning Jesus, who had been the only begotten Son of God, became the firstborn Son of God with many brothers. Mary announced this to the disciples, but they were not comforted and still shut the doors to the room where they were for fear of the Jews. All of a sudden Jesus stood in the midst and said to them, “Peace be to you” (vv. 18-19). He showed them His hands and side, and they rejoiced when they saw the Lord (v. 20). Then He breathed into them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (v. 22).
The breathing of the Lord into His disciples was greater than His incarnation and His resurrection. It was the practical impartation of the resurrected Christ, the pneumatic Christ as the life-giving Spirit, into His believers. It was also the breathing of the Holy Spirit as the consummated, processed Triune God into His chosen people. The goal of all the events in the Gospel of John was the consummation of the Triune God. In eternity past the Triune God was not consummated. He was only divine, not human; He had only divinity without humanity. The element of the wonderful all-inclusive death of Christ was not yet in Him, and although He was resurrection (11:25), He had never had the experience of resurrection. After going through the processes of incarnation, human living, crucifixion, and resurrection, the Triune God was consummated as the complete God with divinity, humanity, human living, the all-inclusive death and its effectiveness, and resurrection with its power. Today our God is not only divine but also human. In His humanity He passed through incarnation and human living, He entered into death and passed through that death, and He then entered into resurrection and remained in that resurrection. Now He has everything: divinity, humanity, human living, the all-inclusive death, and the powerful, excellent resurrection.
Such a processed and consummated God became the best “dose” in the universe. When we take this dose, His element is dispensed into us, and the “antibiotics” in this dose kill all the “germs” within us. He is everything. He is God, He is man, He is death, He is resurrection, and He is life. He is such a dose to us, the sick ones. When the Lord Jesus came to the disciples on that night, He brought such a consummated dose for them to breathe in. When we receive the processed and consummated Triune God as our dose, we are healed, supplied, and supported by the dispensing of Himself into our being. This is the breathing of the essential Spirit into the believers.
Our heavenly, divine, and spiritual birth took place at Christ’s resurrection (1 Pet. 1:3), and we began to breathe when Christ breathed Himself as the life-giving Spirit into His disciples. This is true even though we were not present physically at the time that these things took place. When a doctor gives us an injection in the arm, the injection is for our entire body. We do not need to receive the injection in every part of our body, because after a few minutes the injection we received in our arm spreads to the rest of our body. When Christ breathed the Holy Spirit into the disciples, this breathing was an injection of the Holy Spirit into His entire Body, of which we are members. Just as there is no element of time with God, there is also no element of separation with the members of the Body. What God does is for every part of the Body. We were born again in Christ’s resurrection, and we began to breathe at His breathing of the consummated Triune God into His believers. This is the divine dispensing.
Our God’s eternal intention is to transmit, infuse, impart, dispense, and work Himself into us. Before His incarnation God did not dispense Himself into man, but from the time of His incarnation, human living, all-inclusive death, and resurrection until today, His dispensing has been taking place. His breathing never stops. This is for His continuous, unceasing dispensing within us that we may be one with our Triune God. Ephesians 4:4-6 says that we — the one Body — and the one Spirit, the one Lord, and the one God and Father are mingled together. There is such a mingling in this universe, and this mingling is the church. The church is the dispensing of the Triune God into the called and chosen people to make them one with God.
The accomplishment of God’s full redemption and salvation in Christ was also in the outpouring of the economical Spirit upon the believers (Acts 2:17, 33; 10:45; Titus 3:5-6). After the delivery of the believers in the Lord’s resurrection, there was a need to bathe the believers as a newborn child. Hence, on the day of Pentecost the believers were baptized in the Spirit.
The outpouring of the economical Spirit is the outward filling of the Spirit of power and the baptism in the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:4; 1:5). The outpouring of the economical Spirit goes with the inward filling of the essential Spirit, and the infilling of the essential Spirit is the dispensing of the processed Triune God as life into the believers (13:52b). The baptism in the Spirit was not a direct dispensing into the believers, but the baptism in the Holy Spirit, the outward filling of the Spirit, always goes together with the inward filling. The outward filling of the Spirit may be compared to bathing in water, whereas the inward filling of the Spirit may be compared to drinking water. According to the natural laws of God’s creation, if we take a bath every day and drink some water after our bath, we will be very healthy. The water for drinking follows the water for bathing. One water is within for the inward filling, and the other water is without for the outward filling.
The accomplishment of God’s full redemption and salvation in Christ is also in the regeneration of the believers (1 Pet. 1:3). The regeneration of the believers is the reality, the fact, of the impartation of the resurrected Christ into His believers, whom God the Father has given to Him (John 17:2b). It is also the dispensing of the Spirit, the divine life, and the processed Triune God into the believers (3:5, 6b; 1:12-13).
We were born again in Christ’s resurrection, but before a certain time this was not yet our experience. As we have seen, Christ’s resurrection was a great delivery. In resurrection Christ was delivered to be the firstborn Son of God. He took the lead, and we all followed Him to be delivered also. That was the accomplishing of the reality, the fact, that God brought forth many children through Christ’s resurrection. However, we still need the practical, personal experience of regeneration.
Our need for a personal experience of regeneration can be illustrated by the exodus of the children of Israel out of Egypt. The exodus of the children of Israel was a corporate matter, but each Israelite needed to experience the exodus personally. The experience of walking out of Egypt was the personal exodus of each Israelite. The fact was corporate, but the experience was personal. We were born in Christ’s resurrection, but at that time we were not yet born physically. After our physical birth God set a time for us to experience what He accomplished. What He accomplished was a reality, a fact; what we experience is the practicality of the fact.
Both the corporate and the personal experience of regeneration are for God’s dispensing. When we were regenerated, we experienced the dispensing. We might not have understood all the doctrines concerning regeneration, but at the time of our regeneration something very strong came into us to revolutionize our entire human life. That was the divine dispensing in our regeneration.
The accomplishment of God’s full redemption and salvation in Christ progresses in the subjective sanctification of the saints (Rom. 6:19, 22). After our regeneration we need to be sanctified subjectively. Subjective sanctification is the dispensing of the holy nature of God into the saints, separating the saints unto God by the saturation of God’s holy nature into the saints’ being (2 Pet. 1:4; 1 Thes. 5:23).
When we were regenerated, a great change occurred in our life. However, at that time we were still common and worldly, both within and without. The applying of the blood of Christ to separate us from the world (Heb. 13:12) is an outward, positional matter, not a dispositional matter. We still need a dispositional sanctification by the inner life, by the indwelling Spirit, by the very God who is within our spirit. Every day the divine life as the Holy Spirit, who is God Himself, is operating, moving, working, saturating, and anointing us little by little. Today we may be much holier than we were when we were regenerated. After we were regenerated, we might have enjoyed certain worldly entertainments, but today we would not do those things. When we do those things, we do not feel right in our spirit. Because we are being sanctified subjectively, we prefer to meet with the saints to enjoy and praise the Lord.
We need sanctification to follow our regeneration. Regeneration is a beginning, a renewing, but sanctification is a continuation, a constant renewing day by day. By such a sanctification we will not be fashioned according to this age but will be transformed by the renewing of our mind (Rom. 12:2).
Both regeneration and sanctification are a dispensing of God into us. God’s intention is to work Himself into our being. He does this little by little, saturating us vertically and permeating us horizontally in every part of our being until our body is redeemed (8:23). The redemption of our body is the transfiguration of our body (Phil. 3:21). This is to have our entire being saturated and permeated with the glorious element of the divine God. When we are saturated to this degree, we will be glorified. All of this is the dispensing of the Divine Trinity, from regeneration to glorification. This is the accomplishment and experience of God’s full redemption and salvation in Christ.
