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Scripture Reading: Eph. 3:8-9; 1:4-5, 7-11, 13-14a, 19-23, 6, 12, 14b; Rev. 21:1-3, 10-11
In the previous chapter we saw that the divine economy is the issue of God’s will, purpose, good pleasure, and counsel; hence, God’s will, purpose, good pleasure, and counsel are all for the divine dispensing. The intention of God’s economy is to dispense God Himself into His chosen people, making Himself one with them. God’s intention in His economy is to dispense Christ with all His riches into His believers, who were chosen by God for the constitution of the Body of Christ, the church, to express the processed Triune God (Eph. 3:8-10). First, the divine dispensing dispenses Christ with all that the processed Triune God is, has, and has achieved. Second, this dispensing constitutes the organic Body of Christ. The church as the Body of Christ is not only built up but also constituted. Constitution takes place by the gradual dispensing of a life element.
A house is built up by adding pieces of inorganic material together, but the human body is built up by growth. A baby grows by taking in food as an organic element. Only organic things can be taken in as food to constitute our body. A typical American is the composition of all the rich foodstuffs of America. In order to be constituted with these riches, one must eat and digest them. Digestion plus assimilation issues in growth. For the constitution of the Body of Christ, we must take Christ in more and more. In this way the element of Christ, which is something altogether organic, will grow within us. The intention of God’s economy is to dispense the element of Christ into us for our organic constitution and growth.
God’s intention in His economy is also to head up all things in Christ. Christ is the Head not only of the church but also of all things (1:10, 22). God gave Him as a gift to be Head over all things to the church, His Body. He is the Head of the Body. Our own body is a picture of this. Every part of our body is related in some way to the head organically through the nerves. Christ’s heading up of all things takes place organically by the growth of the Body.
In the previous chapter we also pointed out the relationship between God’s economy and the apostle’s stewardship. The stewardship of the apostle is just the carrying out of God’s economy. Whatever God planned needs to be carried out. The real apostleship is to carry out God’s economy.
The book of Ephesians unveils the dispensing of God as no other book in the whole Bible. In the first four chapters especially, the most crucial thing is the divine dispensing. In order to study the book of Ephesians in a thorough way, we need to study and understand the divine dispensing. In the entire book the word dispensing is not used, but the fact of dispensing is there.
I use the word dispensing in the sense of food being eaten, digested, and assimilated into our being. Eventually, when the element of the food we have eaten is assimilated into our being, that food becomes us. Dispensing is not just to distribute. It means that the things we take in have been assimilated into us to become us.
The divine dispensing is the consummation of the divine economy. In other words, God’s plan is accomplished through His dispensing. The divine dispensing consummates God’s economy, God’s plan. In Ephesians 3:8-9 Paul says, “To me, less than the least of all saints, was this grace given to announce to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ as the gospel and to enlighten all that they may see what the economy of the mystery is, which throughout the ages has been hidden in God, who created all things.” These verses reveal God’s dispensing. Paul received grace to announce the unsearchable riches of Christ as the gospel. To announce means to distribute. Paul’s distributing of the riches of Christ to the believers was according to God’s economy. This is the apostleship to carry out God’s economy.
The divine economy is the issue of God’s will, purpose, good pleasure, and counsel; hence, the intention of God’s will, purpose, good pleasure, and counsel is for the divine dispensing. Everything God has accomplished is for one purpose. This purpose is to dispense Himself into His chosen people.
The divine dispensing of the divine economy is consummated through the Divine Trinity. When I first began to speak on the Divine Trinity in this country, I told people that the Trinity should not be considered as a mere theological doctrine. The Divine Trinity is not for doctrine but for our enjoyment. Second Corinthians 13:14 illustrates this: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” The Trinity — God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit — is revealed here with love, grace, and fellowship. This revelation is for our experience and enjoyment of the Triune God.
The Trinity is for our experience, but if the Trinity could not be dispensed into us, how could we experience Him? Food is for our enjoyment, but if we could not eat, digest, and assimilate it into our body, how could we enjoy it? The food must be dispensed into our body so that we can enjoy it. Second Corinthians 13:14 shows us a kind of dispensing. God the Father as love is embodied in God the Son as grace. The grace is dispensed into us through the fellowship of the Spirit. The fellowship of the Holy Spirit is just the flowing and the dispensing of what the Triune God is and has into us. The Triune God is love with grace, and the grace with love becomes the flow. This flow is the fellowship, and the fellowship is the dispensing of the Triune God into our being for our experience and enjoyment.
The divine nature is dispensed into the believers in Christ through God the Father’s choosing, and the divine life is dispensed through God the Father’s predestination (Eph. 1:4-5). Ephesians 1:4 says that God the Father chose us in Christ to be holy. He chose us for sanctification. To be holy is a matter of dispensing. Without the divine nature of God being dispensed into our being, we do not have the element to be sanctified. By nature we are like a muddy piece of clay. How can we become golden unless some element of gold is mingled with us? Nothing in the entire universe is holy but God Himself. When God’s divine, holy element is dispensed into us persons of clay, we become holy. To be holy we need the sanctifying element to be dispensed into our being.
Ephesians 1:5 says that God predestinated us unto sonship. Predestination means to mark out beforehand. If you go to a supermarket to get some peaches, you first choose the peaches that you want and then mark them out. We were chosen by God and marked out for sonship. Sonship is a matter of dispensing. If God’s life as the divine element were not dispensed into us, how could we be His sons? In order to be God’s sons by birth, we must have God’s divine element as life dispensed into us. Ephesians 1:4 and 5 strongly indicate that God’s holy nature and life must be dispensed into our being so that we can be made holy and so that we can be His genuine sons.
The divine element, of which the believers in Christ are made God’s excellent inheritance, is dispensed into the believers through God the Son’s redemption unto God’s economy of the fullness of the times, to head up all things in Christ (vv. 7-10). God the Son, Christ, has redeemed us. This implies that we were lost. Before we were saved, we had fallen into at least four categories of things: sin, self, Satan, and the world. Christ redeemed us through His redeeming death from these negative things into Himself. We were in sin, self, Satan, and the world, but now we are in Christ.
The phrase in Christ implies a sphere, a realm, and an element. We were in Adam, and Adam was our sphere. In Adam we were fallen, but now we have been redeemed into Christ. Christ has become our sphere and our realm. Christ is also our element. His element is the divine element, the divine substance. To be in Christ means that we are in the divine element. Day by day Christ Himself is being worked into us so that He can become our element. If we did not have Christ as our element, how could we be called Christians? We are Christians because we have Christ as our element. A cup is golden because it has the element of gold within it. If a cup does not have any element of gold, it cannot be called a golden cup.
Today we are in Christ, who is our element. This element has made us an excellent treasure to become God’s inheritance (v. 11). In ourselves, we are pieces of clay, unworthy for God to inherit. What God desires to inherit is something excellent. Since Christ has become our element, this element makes us excellent. Thus, we are inherited by God as His inheritance. In order to be such an inheritance, the divine element, which is Christ Himself, must be dispensed into us.
When I was young, I doubted concerning my salvation because I did not have much of the divine element. One day I was reading John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. When I got to the chapter where Christian received some kind of “certificate,” which indicated that he had been saved, immediately I stopped reading and began to consider if I had this certificate. The “certificate” was faith. At that time I began to doubt my salvation, and I was very troubled. I then checked with the Scriptures in portions such as John 3:15-16 and 36, and I read them repeatedly. I doubted my salvation because I did not have very much of the element of Christ. Christ had not been that constituted into my being, so I doubted. Today, however, I have no doubts about my salvation, because I have had an accumulation of Christ within me; I have a greater amount of Christ within me. Christ has been and is being dispensed into me as the element.
First, the Father’s nature has been dispensed into us. Second, the element of Christ has also been infused into us. Third, the divine essence, of which the believers in Christ enjoy the processed Triune God, is being dispensed into us through God the Spirit’s sealing and pledging (Eph. 1:13-14). This sealing and pledging is very subjective.
The Spirit as the seal is the consummation of the Triune God. This seal is a wet seal, full of the divine ink. The Spirit as the seal is also the sealing ink, the divine ink, as the essence. With the seal there is the nature of the Father, the element of the Son, and the essence of the Spirit. The nature is in the element, the element is in the essence, and the essence has been sealed into us.
From the time that we were first sealed with the Spirit, this wet seal has been saturating us. When a seal is stamped on a piece of paper, the ink of the seal spreads into the paper and saturates the paper. That saturation is a kind of dispensing. In the same way, we have been sealed with the Holy Spirit. We have received the dispensing of the wet seal of the Holy Spirit, which includes the Father’s nature, the Son’s element, and the Spirit’s essence.
The essence of the element of a substance is its extract. Orange juice is the extract of an orange. When we drink the juice, we receive the essence of the orange. The Spirit as the processed Triune God is the essence. God has been processed so that we can take Him in. This is the reason that God is triune. He has to be the Father for planning His economy, He has to be the Son for the accomplishment of His economy, and He has to be the Spirit to be the extract of the Divine Trinity. As the Spirit, He is available for us to enjoy and receive. When the Spirit is with us as the essence, we have the Son as the element and the Father as the nature.
The divine dispensing of the divine economy constitutes the organic Body of Christ, the church, with all that the processed Triune God is, has, and has achieved, as the issue of the processed Divine Trinity unto His glory and for His full expression, which consummates in the New Jerusalem.
Ephesians 1 is full of the truth of God’s dispensing. In verses 4 through 5 God’s nature is dispensed into us with His life. In verses 7 through 11 Christ’s element has been dispensed into us through His redemption. In verses 13 through 14 the Spirit’s essence has been sealed into our being. In verses 15 through 18 Paul prays for the church regarding revelation. Then from verse 19 to the end of the chapter, Paul speaks concerning the power that was wrought in Christ and that is now toward the believers. This power is the extract of the Triune God — God the Father in the Son as the Spirit. The Divine Trinity has become such a power. Just as electricity is the power that has been installed in our homes, the Triune God is the power that has been installed in our being.
This power raised Christ from the dead, seated Him in the heavenlies, subjected all things under His feet, and gave Him as a gift to be Head over all things to the church (vv. 20-22). All that transpired on Christ, with Christ, and in Christ is for the transmission to the church. Thus, the church is the great issue of the Divine Trinity’s transfusion. The church as the Body of Christ is the result of the Triune God’s transfusion. We may even say that the Body of Christ is the extract of the Divine Trinity.
The church as the Body of Christ is the fullness of the One who fills all in all (v. 23). I believe that the phrase all in all in Ephesians 1:23 is similar to the phrase all and in all in Colossians 3:11. In Colossians 3 Christ is all the members who comprise the new man and in all the members. In Ephesians 1 the church is the fullness of the One who is in all the believers and who is all the believers. The dispensing of the Divine Trinity issues in the Body of Christ as the fullness of the processed Triune God, who is all the believers and who is in all the believers.
