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Scripture Reading: Rom. 8:30; 1 Pet. 5:10a; Heb. 2:10; Rom. 8:23; Phil. 3:21; Eph. 1:13-14; 4:30
The divine revelation concerning the divine economy and the divine dispensing is the central line among the many lines in the Bible. The terms divine economy and divine dispensing are new to most Christians because few know the teaching of God’s economy in the New Testament. The word economy, the Anglicized form of the Greek word oikonomia, is stressed very much by the apostle Paul in his Epistles (Eph. 1:10; 3:9; 1 Tim. 1:4). The Greek word oikonomia refers to a household administration. Hence, God’s economy refers to God’s household administration. In this administration there is a marvelous arrangement for God to dispense Himself into His chosen, created, and redeemed people. God’s divine economy, His household administration, is carried out by His divine dispensing.
The central thought of God’s redemption and salvation is to work Himself into His people. God redeemed us and saved us so that He can work Himself into our being. He also created us with a body, a soul, and a spirit for this purpose (1 Thes. 5:23). Outwardly, we have a body, and inwardly we have a spirit deep within us. Between our spirit and our body is our soul. Many Christians do not know that man has a human spirit. They consider the spirit, the soul, the mind, and the heart as one thing. However, 1 Thessalonians 5:23 definitely mentions the human spirit as one of the three parts of our being, and Hebrews 4:12 even says that man’s soul and spirit can be divided.
When I began to minister in the United States thirty years ago, I stressed the matter of the human spirit very much. Wherever I went, I spoke on this matter. Many told me that they had never known that they had a human spirit. They had heard only about the Holy Spirit, not the human spirit. Today the life of many Christians is poor because they have missed the organ for the Christian life — the human spirit. In 1 Corinthians 6:17 Paul says, “He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” This indicates that the Spirit of God can indwell the spirit of man to such an extent that the two spirits become one spirit.
The dispensing of God is very much related to the two spirits. First of all, God Himself is Spirit. In John 4:24 the Lord Jesus said, “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truthfulness.” In this verse there is no article between the words is and Spirit. This indicates that the phrase God is Spirit refers to the essence of God. The essence of a gold ring is gold, and the essence of a steel table is steel. In the same way, the essence of God is Spirit. Thus, if we would worship such a God who is Spirit, we must worship Him in our spirit.
Not only so, the second of the Divine Trinity, after becoming flesh and dying on the cross and entering into resurrection, became a life-giving Spirit (1:1, 14; 1 Cor. 15:45b). Thus, the Son also is Spirit. Moreover, the third of the Divine Trinity, the Holy Spirit, also is Spirit. Hence, the three of the Divine Trinity are Spirit. The essence of the entire God, the complete Triune God, is Spirit. The Father is the source, the Son is the course, and the Holy Spirit is the flowing, the reaching, of the Triune God to us. The three of the Divine Trinity are Spirit for the purpose of dispensing the Triune God into our being.
In the evening on the day of His resurrection, the Lord Jesus came to His disciples, breathed upon them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22). This indicates very clearly that God’s intention in His redemption and salvation is to make Himself one with His redeemed people by the divine dispensing. God is Spirit, and we have a spirit; therefore, God can make Himself one with us. Only Spirit can touch spirit. Eventually, God as the Spirit touches our spirit. God has regenerated us in our spirit (3:6), and He is now dwelling in our spirit to make our spirit one with His Spirit (1 Cor. 6:17) — a mingled spirit. This is the central line of the divine revelation, and this is the divine dispensing of the Divine Being into our being.
In the foregoing chapters we have seen that the divine dispensing was prophesied in God’s promises to us, was typified in the types of the Old Testament, and is carried out in the accomplishment of God’s full redemption and salvation in Christ. In the remainder of this chapter we will cover the concluding point in the accomplishment of God’s full redemption and salvation in Christ — the glorification of the conformed believers.
Romans 8:30 says, “Those whom He predestinated, these He also called; and those whom He called, these He also justified; and those whom He justified, these He also glorified.” First, God called us; then He justified us, regenerated us, sanctified us, renewed us, transformed us, and conformed us to the image of the firstborn Son of God. Ultimately, He will glorify us. On the side of redemption, God’s salvation consists of forgiveness of sins, the washing away of sins, justification, and reconciliation; whereas on the side of life, God’s salvation consists of regeneration, sanctification, renewing, transformation, conformation, and glorification. Glorification is the final step of God’s full salvation in Christ.
Ephesians 1:5 says that God predestinated us unto sonship, that is, to be His sons. The destiny of God’s predestination is the glorification of His sons (Rom. 8:29-30).
First Peter 5:10a says that the God of all grace has called us into His eternal glory in Christ. Thus, the goal of the calling of the God of all grace is His eternal glory. God has called us into His eternal glory. This glory involves not just one kind of grace but the “all grace” of God.
John 1:14 and 16 say that Christ as the Word became a man of flesh, full of grace and reality, and of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. The grace that we have received has many different aspects. In 1 Peter 4:10 this grace is called “the varied grace of God.” First Peter 3:7 speaks of the grace of life, and Ephesians 1:7 speaks of the grace of forgiveness. These are only two examples of the many kinds of grace in God’s salvation. Eventually, God’s salvation in its totality is by grace (2:8). Everything we enjoy of God is an aspect of grace. God’s presence is a grace, His strengthening is a grace, His empowering is a grace, and His sanctifying is a grace. The totality of grace is just God Himself (1 Cor. 15:10; cf. Gal. 2:20). This God of many kinds of grace has called us into His eternal glory.
God’s intent in His salvation is to lead many sons into glory (Heb. 2:10). God is leading us onward into glory. He is not leading us into a heavenly mansion or into any kind of blessing for eternity in the physical realm. He is leading His many sons into the eternal glory of God.
The glorification of God’s conformed sons is the redemption of their body (Rom. 8:23). Before we can be glorified by God, we must already be conformed to the image of God’s firstborn Son (v. 29). We cannot be infants, children, or even middle-aged; we must be mature sons of God. A mature son of God is one who has been conformed in his maturity of life to the image of the firstborn Son of God.
On the one hand, Jesus Christ as the firstborn Son of God expresses the divine attributes, and on the other hand, He expresses the human virtues. In the four Gospels, Jesus was a pattern, a model, of a person who expressed God’s attributes in His divinity and the human virtues in His humanity. As a man, He expressed divinity and humanity. In His divinity He expressed the attributes of God, such as love, light, holiness, and righteousness. In His humanity He expressed the human virtues, such as meekness, forbearance, and humility. In His divinity He was very lofty and high, but in His humanity He was a lowly person who lived a lowly life.
In the four Gospels we can see Jesus as a person who displayed God’s attributes and the human virtues, but in a poor sinner we can see nothing of God or of the human virtues. Instead of the virtues of humanity, we can see all the sinfulness of humanity. After being saved, most Christians do not understand that God’s intention is that they express God not only in the human virtues but also in His divine attributes. As a result, they seek only to improve their character and conduct in their human living, not realizing that this kind of seeking is contrary to God’s intention.
A Christian should be a God-man with two natures, humanity and divinity. First, we are human; then we are divine. We are divine because we have been born of God (John 1:12). We have received the divine life with the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4), and the divine essence has entered into our being. We are not merely sons born of Adam; we are also sons born of God. We have had two births, a human birth and a divine birth. Hence, we are God-men, exactly like Jesus. On the one hand, we should live a high human life with all the human virtues, such as meekness, humility, and forbearance. On the other hand, we should express divinity in all the divine attributes, such as love, light, holiness, and righteousness.
We need to realize that glorification will take place on the conformed sons of God, that is, on the mature sons. Today we cannot be glorified because we are not yet mature. We are in the process of becoming mature. When we are fully mature, glorification will come. Glorification may be likened to the blossoming of flowers. When a flower such as a rose blossoms, that is its glorification. A rose cannot blossom unless it has a bud. If there were simply a stump with leaves and branches, the process of blossoming could not take place. But when a bud appears, it grows and grows until it reaches maturity. At that time it blossoms. The blossoming of the bud is its glorification.
As a young believer, I was taught that the glory of God was objective, far away in the heavens. I was told that when the Lord Jesus comes, in the twinkling of an eye He will bring us into the heavens to enter into an objective realm of glory. This teaching was based on Hebrews 2:10, which says, “It was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and through whom are all things, in leading many sons into glory, to make the Author of their salvation perfect through sufferings.” According to this teaching, the destination to which Christ is leading us is the objective glory of God in the heavens. This seems to be confirmed by 2 Timothy 2:10, which says, “Therefore I endure all things for the sake of the chosen ones, that they themselves also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.” It seems that the eternal glory of God is objective, far away from us, and that we are being led until we reach the destination of glory. However, this teaching is not according to the intrinsic revelation of the Bible.
Adam’s fall caused our entire being — spirit, soul, and body — to become fallen. But through Christ’s redemption God saves us from this fallen condition. God’s salvation begins from our spirit. Our spirit is the innermost part of our being. It is enclosed within our soul, which is within our body. When God came in to save us, He redeemed our spirit by washing away our sins and regenerating our spirit. Regeneration is a matter that took place in our spirit (John 3:6). Before we were saved, we were very active in our soul and very living in our body, but we were dead in our spirit (Eph. 2:1). After forgiving us of our sins (1:7), God came in to touch our spirit and to make us alive in our spirit (2:5). In this way God redeemed our spirit.
God intends to redeem our entire being, including our body, but before He can redeem our body, He must redeem our soul, which is between our spirit and our body. From the time of our regeneration, God has been waiting every day, even every moment, to take every opportunity to spread Himself from our spirit into our soul. We must coordinate with Him by setting our mind on the spirit and not on the flesh (Rom. 8:4b-6). God desires to enter into our mind, emotion, and will, but often He finds the door to the three parts of our soul closed. As a result, God has no way to spread Himself within us. Instead of opening the door of our being to God, we may often try to do good by ourselves. Thus, we must learn to set our mind, the main part of our soul, on the spirit instead of on the flesh. When our mind is set on the flesh, these two work together as “good friends.” However, when we turn our mind to our spirit and set our mind on the spirit, our mind will be filled, occupied, and taken over by God. This is the transformation of the soul (12:2).
Regeneration and transformation are the redemption of two parts of our being. Our spirit was redeemed when God regenerated our spirit, and our soul is redeemed when our soul is transformed. By regeneration and transformation we become very spiritual, but our body is still a problem. Sometimes we can sense the lust within our body. Our spirit hates this lust, and our soul abhors the sinfulness of the flesh. Yet there is still something very active in our flesh. This means that although our spirit has been redeemed and our soul is being redeemed, our body has not yet been redeemed. For this reason we must be strong in our spirit to control our mind, to make our spirit the spirit of our mind (Eph. 4:23), so that we can control our flesh. We will then become a spiritual person and an overcoming saint.
When our mind becomes the spirit of our mind, the divine life will gradually spread from our spirit through our soul and eventually into our mortal body (Rom. 8:11). This is the genuine divine healing. The reality of divine healing is that our mortal body is saturated with the divine life from our spirit through our soul. Such an experience of the divine life spreading to our body can heal our body and prolong our life.
A careless person, one who behaves, acts, and conducts himself according to the flesh, may die an early death. In principle, no one who lives according to his fleshly lusts will live a long life. Most who live beyond seventy years of age refrain from indulging in the lusts of the flesh. To eat, drink, and live without any self-control is to commit a slow and gradual suicide. If we would learn to control our flesh by controlling our eating, drinking, and sleeping, we will live a longer life.
We not only control the fleshly lusts by exercising self-control, but we also call on the name of the Lord. Calling on the Lord’s name also will prolong your life. Whenever you are about to be angry or unhappy with your spouse, the best way to deal with your anger or unhappiness is to call, “O Lord Jesus!” Whenever we call on the Lord, our anger and the damage that it causes to our health is stopped. Not only so, by calling on the name of the Lord, the Holy Spirit, as the embodiment of the divine life, spreads even into our body.
Although the divine life touches our body today, our body will still be a problem until it is redeemed. Therefore, we are waiting for the final redemption of our being, that is, the redemption of our body. This redemption of our body is the full sonship (v. 23). It will take place when the Spirit with the divine life, which can fully saturate our spirit, soul, and body, soaks our entire being in God’s divine life. This soaking is the blossoming of the divine life from within our body.
The glorification of our body is like the blossoming of a rose. When a flower blossoms, the bud cannot be seen any longer. The bud is transfigured into a blossoming flower. Today our body is troublesome to us, but one day our body will be glorified. Every day the sealing Spirit within us is saturating our body. He is saturating vertically, up and down, and He is permeating horizontally, back and forth. This is the process of our glorification. When the process of glorification reaches its climax, we will be fully mature, and this maturity will be our glorification.
The redemption of the believers’ body is accomplished by the transfiguring of their body of humiliation into the body of Christ’s glory (Phil. 3:21). While He was on earth, the Lord Jesus was transfigured in the presence of Peter, James, and John (Matt. 17:1-8). This transfiguration of the Lord Jesus on the mountain was a model of the coming transfiguration of our body. Today our body is a body of humiliation with no glory, honor, or dignity. We are very mean and low, mainly because of our body. However, one day this body of humiliation will be transfigured into the body of Christ’s glory. Today our body is like the bud of a flower. But in the day of our transfiguration, our body will be transfigured from a bud to a blossoming flower.
The glorification of God’s conformed sons is initiated by the Spirit’s sealing unto the day of the redemption of the believers’ body (Eph. 1:13-14; 4:30). Today the Spirit is sealing us, and this sealing is not once for all but will continue for our whole life. From the day of our regeneration, the sealing of the Spirit began to saturate and permeate us. This saturation and permeation will continue unto the day of the redemption of our body, until the sealing reaches its fullness. Even at that time the sealing of the Spirit will not cease. The sealing of the Spirit will go on for eternity, sealing us with the divine essence continually.
The sealing of the Spirit is also for the redemption of the believers’ body (v. 30). The more the Spirit seals us, the more we are redeemed. When the redemption reaches its consummation, we will be glorified. That glorification will be the redemption of our body.
The redemption of the believers’ body is their full sonship (Rom. 8:23). Full sonship means that we are of full age. In the United States a person is not considered to be of full legal age until he is eighteen. Being of full age is a matter of maturity. It is always dangerous for people to do certain things when they are underage. Today some of the young people want to get married as teenagers. But I have seen that those who married as teenagers always suffered. The reason they suffered is that they lacked maturity. God predestinated us unto sonship (Eph. 1:5). His intention is to make us His sons, but we need to grow until we reach maturity. When we reach maturity, our sonship will become full. Today God cannot glorify us because we are not yet mature. We cannot blossom because we have not yet grown to maturity. Therefore, we must grow.
God’s conformed sons are glorified through the Spirit as the firstfruits dispensing the divine essence into the believers’ entire being (Rom. 8:23). God has given the Spirit to us as the firstfruits, the foretaste, of our enjoyment of God as our inheritance. Today we are enjoying God as a foretaste, not as a full taste. While we are enjoying the Spirit as our foretaste, He is dispensing the divine essence into our entire being. This dispensing proceeds from the initiation of His sealing to the consummation of the glorification of the believers, which will be their full taste of their enjoyment of God as their inheritance.
The glorification, the transfiguration, the redemption, of the believers’ body is the maturity of the divine dispensing in the believers, beginning from their regeneration and proceeding through the entire course of their spiritual life.
The glorification of the believers is the consummation of the accomplishment of God’s full redemption and salvation in Christ and the full qualification for the chosen people of God to be fully mingled with the processed Triune God and to enjoy Him in full for eternity, as signified by the New Jerusalem as the full consummation of God’s eternal salvation by the divine dispensing (Rev. 21:1—22:5).
