Search
I. The all-inclusive Christ being the divine dispensing as the Passover lamb and the unleavened bread, feeding the believers and supplying them with life — 1 Cor. 5:7-8:
1 Corinthians 5:7-8
Purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, even as you are unleavened; for our Passover, Christ, also has been sacrificed. (8) So then let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
А. Not only supplying the believers with the power of life for them to run the God-ordained race of following Him.
B. But also supplying the believers with the nourishment of life and increasing God’s element of growth within them.
II. The all-inclusive Christ being the divine dispensing as the spiritual rock, out of which flows the living water, and as the spiritual bread from heaven, nurturing them and supplying them with life — 1 Cor. 10:3-4; John 6:57b-58a:
1 Corinthians 10:3-4
And all ate the same spiritual food, (4) and all drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank of a spiritual rock which followed them, and the rock was Christ.
John 6:57b-58a
...he who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me. (58a) This is the bread which came down out of heaven...
А. Not only supplying the believers with the life-power for them to run God’s race.
B. But also supplying the believers with the divine element for the growth of God.
III. The all-inclusive Christ being the divine dispensing as the anointing of the compound Spirit and as the sealing of the seal, saturating and transforming the believers — 2 Cor. 1:21-22:
2 Corinthians 1:21-22
But the One who firmly attaches us with you unto Christ and has anointed us is God, (22) He who has also sealed us and given the Spirit in our hearts as a pledge.
А. Not only anointing and sealing God’s divine element into the entire being of the believers inwardly and outwardly.
B. But also transforming the believers’ nature metabolically by God’s divine element so that they may have a divine transformation in their entire being.
IV. The all-inclusive Christ being the divine dispensing within the believers as the inscribing of the ink, who is the life-giving Spirit, and outside the believers as the “xeroxing” of the Spirit who transforms them (as a mirror), constituting the believers ministers of the New Testament; these believers reflect His glorious image to fulfill the New Testament ministry — 2 Cor. 3:3, 18:
2 Corinthians 3:3
Since you are being manifested that you are a letter of Christ ministered by us, inscribed not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tablets of stone but in tablets of hearts of flesh.
2 Corinthians 3:18
But we all with unveiled face, beholding and reflecting like a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit.
А. Not only making the believers the constitution of Christ’s life within.
B. But making them Christ’s glorious expression without.
In the last chapter we saw that Christ is the eternal portion given to us from God. This eternal portion is not a thing but a living person. He is the embodiment of the Triune God. God in the Son was embodied in a man of flesh and blood. Outwardly speaking, He was a man; but inwardly speaking, He was God. He was a wonderful God-man who was born in a manger, grew up in Nazareth, was crucified on the cross, died and resurrected, and in resurrection became a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). This is the One whom God has given us to be our common portion (1:2). He is the One into whom we are called (v. 9). During these few meetings, we have saints coming together from all directions. We may not have known each other before, yet we can pray, praise, and speak in the same way because the factor of our fellowship is Christ Himself.
First Corinthians 1 begins by showing explicitly and clearly that God has given us Christ as our eternal portion to be our power, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. God gave His Son to us as our eternal portion so that we can be supplied and sustained and can live a life that no one can live, endure sufferings that no one can endure, take ways that no one can take, and do a work that no one can do. In this way we become men among men and men of men. Today in following the Lord, in serving Him, in administrating the church, and in testifying for the Lord, the best way is to be crucified with the Lord and to live with Him in resurrection. In the church or in His work, whenever we encounter difficulties, criticisms, or even opposition, and it appears that we have come to a dead end, our way out is Christ and His cross. Our whole Christian living, our administration of the church, and the Lord’s leading in our service all depend on our dying and living with Christ. This is the power, and this is the wisdom.
Moreover, Christ has also become our righteousness from God. He is the living righteousness within us, enabling us to live a righteous and proper living. What we live out should not be our own righteousness, good works, or moral behavior but the righteous Christ. Furthermore, Christ becomes our sanctification from God. He is the power and factor of our sanctification, sanctifying us not only positionally but dispositionally, so that our whole being — spirit, soul, and body — will be fully sanctified. In the end Christ becomes our redemption from God. Everything in us that is of the natural being, the flesh, self, the world, sin, and the old creation, and everything satanic has to be crucified on the cross and judged by God before we can be redeemed and glorified. Superficially speaking, the book of 1 Corinthians deals with all the confusion, division, and improper situations in the church in Corinth. Actually, it reveals to us the all-inclusive Christ, the One who has died and resurrected, and His cross. Hence, in order to solve the problems in the church, we have to give Christ the proper ground in us and among us so that He can be our everything, and we can receive His dispensing. In this way whatever problem we have, whether it is a relationship among the saints, between husbands and wives, or with unbelievers, will be solved readily when we experience the death of Christ and live in His resurrection.
This is the picture shown in 1 Corinthians 1. It depicts a group of people satisfying the desire of God’s heart and produced according to His economy through His dispensing and Christ’s redemption in death and resurrection. All of us should be this kind of people, having Christ as our power, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption within, and being supplied by Him unceasingly. When we all reach this condition, our coming together will be the church, the Body of Christ, as God’s habitation, for the expression of God’s glory.
From 1 Corinthians 2 to the last chapter of 2 Corinthians, there are twenty-eight chapters. They show the way that Christ is worked into the believers through the divine dispensing. From these chapters I have summarized four pairs of items, with eight things. The first pair is described in 1 Corinthians 5:7-8. Christ is the Passover lamb and the unleavened bread. Both items are food, and both supply life. The real gospel is not only a matter of the redemption by the blood of the Lamb but a matter of the life supply of the unleavened bread. On the night the Israelites left Egypt, every house had to kill a lamb and put the blood on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the house to escape God’s judgment. In addition, they had to eat the flesh of the lamb with the unleavened bread and the bitter herbs. While they ate, they had to gird their loins, with shoes on their feet and with their staff in their hand, and they had to eat in haste (Exo. 12:1-11). This was for their supply in life and for their warfare and move. Christ is the Passover lamb and the unleavened bread; both are for the divine dispensing. Hence, the all-inclusive Christ as the Passover lamb and as the unleavened bread not only supplies the believers with the power of life to run the God-ordained course of following Him but also supplies the believers with the nourishment of life to increase God’s element of growth in them.
This shows that God’s salvation is to dispense Himself to us as our Savior and Redeemer. The way to have this dispensing is to take Christ in as food. Every time we come to the Lord’s table to remember Him, we do not come for a religious worship but to eat and drink of Him. In this way He will have the true remembrance from us (Matt. 26:26-28; Luke 22:19).
The second pair is described in 1 Corinthians 10:3-4, where Christ is the spiritual rock, out of which flows the living water, and also the spiritual food that comes down from heaven. Christ is the spiritual rock that follows us. Out of Him flows the living water, quenching our thirst and satisfying us. In addition, He is the daily spiritual food that comes down from heaven, becoming our life supply for our journeying. When we eat, drink, and enjoy Him every day, spontaneously, we will live by Him (John 6:57-58). In John 6:63 the Lord Jesus 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.” The Lord is not giving the flesh of His physical body to us to eat. That flesh, the human flesh, profits nothing. What He gives to man is the life-giving Spirit, who is simply Himself in resurrection.
The whole Bible is full of this kind of thought, which is that God wants us to eat and to receive Him. Now in resurrection He is the life-giving Spirit. This Spirit is embodied in His word. When we receive His word by exercising our spirit, we are eating and drinking the Lord. By this, we receive the Spirit who is life. Through this, Christ supplies us not only with the life power for us to run God’s race but also with the divine element for God to grow in us.
The third pair is described in 2 Corinthians 1:21-22, where Christ as the compound Spirit is the anointing and the sealing. The holy ointment in Exodus 30 is a type of the compound Spirit of Christ. It was formed by one kind of oil mingled with four kinds of spices, typifying the fact that the Spirit of Christ is a compound Spirit. It includes divinity, humanity, death, the effectiveness of death, resurrection, the fragrance of resurrection, and other elements. When God joins us to Christ the anointed One, we are anointed by God with Him; that is, we are anointed by the compound Spirit of Christ. This anointing is a dispensing, adding God’s divine elements into us. Furthermore, this anointing of the compound Spirit of Christ in us is a sealing, making the divine elements a seal in us, thus expressing the image of God.
Both the anointing and the sealing are a divine dispensing. This dispensing not only waters and saturates us, anointing and sealing us within and without with God’s divine element, but it also transforms us in our nature metabolically with God’s divine element so that our whole being has a divine transformation.
Finally, the fourth pair is found in 2 Corinthians 3:3 and 18. Here we have the inward inscribing by Christ into the believers with the life-giving Spirit as the ink and the outward “xeroxing” by Christ onto the believers as mirrors with His transforming Spirit. As those enjoying Christ, we are letters of Christ, where the Spirit of the living God, as the living God Himself and as the element of the inscribing ink, supplies us with Christ as the content with the result that He is expressed in us, and He is known and read by all men. This is the inward aspect. But there is also the outward aspect, which is that we, the believers, are like a mirror. With unveiled face we behold Christ. Christ is reflected on our face, and we are gradually transformed into the image of Christ.
Through this twofold divine dispensing, Christ will constitute us the ministers of the New Testament, and we will reflect His glorious image, thus fulfilling the New Testament ministry. As a result, not only will we become the very constitution of the life of Christ within, but we will become the glorious expression of Christ without.
This is God’s eternal economy, which is accomplished through the manyfold dispensing of the all-inclusive Christ. In conclusion, after the Triune God has been processed through death and resurrection to become the Spirit and has entered into us, He begins His dispensing. He dispenses the all-inclusive Christ to us as power, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. In addition, He dispenses Christ to us as the Passover lamb and the unleavened bread, as the spiritual rock out of which flows the living water, as the spiritual food from heaven, as the anointing and the sealing, as the inscribing of the inward ink, and as the xeroxing in the outward reflection. By this, we receive such a Christ for our supply, sustenance, feeding, watering, and transformation.
