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Scripture Reading: John 1:14, 18; 3:34; 5:17, 19, 30, 43; 6:38, 57a; 7:16-18; 10:25, 30; 12:49-50; 14:7-11a, 16-20, 23-24; 15:26; 16:4b, 7; 17:21-23, 26; 20:19-23; 1 Cor. 15:45b; 2 Cor. 3:17; Heb. 1:3
The Gospel of John is particular in the divine dispensation. In it we cannot find that the Lord had any intention merely to teach us what to do or what not to do. Rather, the Lord disclosed that the Trinity of the Godhead wants to dispense Himself into our being. Humanly speaking, we do not have such a concept. We have the concept of culture, religion, ethics, or good character. Even we have the concept of how to worship God and please Him. But this book shows us that all these concepts are obstacles to the divine revelation.
The story of the Samaritan woman in chapter 4 shows that even our worship to God may veil us from knowing and seeing the real God. In her conversation with the Lord Jesus, she turned the subject to the worship of God. Then He showed her that the genuine worship is in our spirit and in truthfulness, or reality (v. 24). Reality is just Christ Himself as the very means by which we worship God. If in our worship to God, there is no element of Christ, that worship is vanity and even becomes a veil to keep us from seeing the real worship. How we need the Lord’s mercy to drop all the things we have picked up in our past! All those items have become veils to us, keeping us from seeing God, from seeing Christ, from seeing the Spirit, and from seeing the divine reality.
On the positive side, this book shows the divine revelation concerning the Triune God being dispensed into our being. On the negative side, it shows the veils — religion, human thought, natural concepts, and even concepts concerning the worship of God. Surely the revelation of such a book demands that we drop everything. Do not leave any veils on your eyes or in your mentality. You have to say, “Lord, unload me and rescue me. I want to drop all the old things.” We need an empty spirit to receive something new, something fresh, something up to date, something that is the genuine revelation in the holy Word.
According to the Gospel of John, at least three things frustrate the dispensing of the Son. First, there is religion. We have been born into religion, and religion is in our blood. We cannot stay away from religion, because religion is within us. The second frustration is ethics. We cannot stay away from the thought of being a good person. The husbands want to be the best husbands. The wives want to be the best wives. The mothers want to be the best mothers. Third, we cannot stay away from our natural thinking. We all have our natural thinking. Philosophy is just the development of our natural thinking. Some people are small in their natural thinking, and others are great. The philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Confucius were great in their natural thinking. The development of their natural thinking produced a philosophy. Not one person is without philosophy. Philosophy is just a kind of logic. Even a small child has his logic. That is his philosophy. Why do little children sometimes reason and argue? It is because they have their philosophy. It is really hard for us to stay away from these three things: religion, ethics, and natural thinking. Yet we must realize that these are hindrances, coverings, veils, to us.
All three of these matters are covered in the Gospel of John. In chapter 11 Martha was full of natural thinking. Natural thinking is just the expression of yourself. She expressed a lot of herself. That was a big hindrance to the resurrection life. In this chapter religion and the expression of self in the natural thinking were a strong frustration to the vitality of the resurrection life. She told the Lord, “If You had been here, my brother would not have died” (v. 21). In verse 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes into Me, even if he should die, shall live.” The Lord Jesus Himself is the resurrection and the life. It is not a matter of time and space. But Martha expounded the Lord’s word from the present time to the resurrection in the last day. Martha’s problem was her natural concept. This was Martha. What about yourself? If you do not prepare yourself by dropping your religion, ethics, and natural thinking, you will be unable to get much from this chapter. Rather, your situation will still be a thick veil upon you.
The revelation of God’s divine economy is this: the Divine Trinity wants to work Himself into your being. For this reason, God created us as vessels (Rom. 9:21, 23). We were made in the image of God so that we might contain God. The form of a container is always according to what is to be contained. If something is square, its container also needs to be in the form of a square. If something is round, its container needs to be round. For God to create us in His image means that He created us in His form. This was a preparation so that God could be contained in His created man.
God’s image is the expression of what He is. God is love, God is light, God is holy, and God is righteous. Although the Ten Commandments are ten laws, actually they are a testimony of God. They testify what kind of God He is. God gave the Ten Commandments according to what He is. He is love, He is light, He is holy, and He is righteous.
Man was made according to God, in the image of God, so in man’s created nature there are the elements of love, light, holiness, and righteousness. Even after we fell, these elements are still within us as the very constituent of our ethical thinking. Just as a glove is made in the form of a hand to contain a hand, so our human ethical elements, such as love, holiness, and righteousness, are containers to contain the divine love, holiness, and righteousness.
Because of the fall, however, man became independent of God. Ethical teachings help you to develop your human virtues without God. Whenever you try to be ethical, this is independence from God. When you, by yourself, try to be a good husband or wife, that means you are being independent from God. You try to be a good wife or husband without God. You must admit that you are still very ethical.
In the past few years, though, my confession to the Lord has not been concerning the matter of ethics. My confession was because I did not live Christ. I may not have made any mistake for the whole day; I may not have offended anyone; I may not have had any trespass. But for the whole day I lived Christ very little. We must see that what the Lord wants in us is not merely ethics. What the Lord wants is for Him to live in us and for us to live Him.
The Gospel of John has a particular character and touches a particular thing: the Triune God — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit — is endeavoring to work Himself into the very being of His chosen people so that all of His chosen people may live a life not of religion or of ethics but of the Triune God. Of course, the Triune God is much higher than any kind of ethics. The highest ethics is God Himself. He wants us to have a life that lives the Triune God as life. We must be able to say that our life and living is the Triune God. If we still hold on to a religious concept, an ethical concept, or some concept of our natural thinking, we cannot fully enter into the Gospel of John. We must pray, “Lord, have mercy on me. Take away my religious concepts, my ethical concepts, and my natural thinking. Remove all the coverings.” Then we will be ready to see something. Now let us come to the dispensing of the Son.
The Father is the source, and the Son is the expression, the Accomplisher (1:18; Heb. 1:3). The source and the expression are not two things but one thing with two aspects. It has the aspect of the source and the aspect of the expression. The Father as the source is the Initiator. He initiated all things, including the planning. The Son, as the expression, is the Accomplisher. Whatever the Father planned, the Son accomplished. So the Son is the Accomplisher.
The Son was sent by the Father, and He came in the Father’s name (John 5:43). By reading the Gospel of John you could see that the Lord Jesus never did anything in His own name. He always did everything in the Father’s name. This point is marvelous! But it is not easy to understand. Let me illustrate it in this way: As a husband, you like to be a good husband. Surely you have made up your mind to be a good husband. But let me ask: When you made up your mind to be a good husband, did you do it in the name of Christ? In whose name did you make up your mind? Probably you would have to say in your own name. Although we have been redeemed and regenerated, and even though we may love the Lord very much, we do nearly everything in our own name. We do very few things in the Lord’s name. Sometimes at the end of our prayer we may say, “In the name of Jesus.” Some say, “We are not qualified to pray, so we should not sign our name at the end of our prayer. This is like putting our signature on a check but having no deposit in the bank under our name. So the check can never be honored. We had better use the signature of Jesus. When the heavenly bank sees this check, it will honor it right away. Therefore, at the end of every prayer, we should say, ‘In the name of Jesus.’” “In the name of Jesus” does not mean this. What does it mean? Paul says, “I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). This meant that Paul lived in the name of Christ. This is like Christ coming in the Father’s name, not in His own name. He was the Son, yet He came not in the Son’s name but in the Father’s name.
The name Christian was given by outsiders in ancient times as a kind of nickname because the early saints lived not in their own name but in the name of Christ. In other words, they did not live themselves. They lived Christ. So in the eyes of the outsiders, they were Christ. They were Christ-men. Christian simply means a Christ-man, a man who lives Christ.
When the Son came, He did not simply represent the Father. When He came, the Father came (John 6:46). The Son came in the Father’s name; He lived the Father. This was for the Father’s dispensing in the Son and through the Son. When you have the Son, you have the Father, because the Father came in the Son’s coming. When the Son brought the Father to His believers, it was for the divine dispensing.
This wonderful One came to tabernacle among men (1:14; 16:4b). To tabernacle, of course, is a figure of speech, and to understand it, you have to study the tabernacle in Exodus. In Exodus there was a tabernacle, which typified God incarnated in humanity. The building elements in the tabernacle — acacia wood overlaid with gold — show humanity and divinity. Wood signifies humanity, and gold signifies divinity. In the tabernacle divinity is joined to humanity, and humanity is overlaid with divinity. The tabernacle signifies God in humanity.
This very God as the tabernacle is enterable. When God remains in His divinity, He is not approachable. In His divinity He dwells in unapproachable light (1 Tim. 6:16). But He became incarnated in the flesh, and this incarnate God in the flesh became the enterable tabernacle. In the ancient days the priests could enter into the tabernacle, which was a type of God incarnated. So the incarnated God, the very divinity in humanity, now has become enterable. His redeemed people, His priests, His serving ones, can enter into Him and dwell in Him and enjoy Him. The Son of God came not just to dwell among us but to tabernacle. If He had come only to dwell among us, we could never enter into Him to dwell in Him. But He came to tabernacle among us. He became our dwelling place. We can enter into Him.
What, or who, is the tabernacle? John 1 says that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us (vv. 1, 14). Here is one entity, the tabernacle, that signifies the Word, the Triune God, and the Triune God in the flesh. How wonderful! This One is full of grace and reality. This is the dispensing of the Trinity, first in the Father and then in the Son. The tabernacle signifies not only the Son but also the very Triune God in the flesh.
In the Gospel of John, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are distinct, but They are not separate. Why are They not separate? It is because the Son, when He was sent by the Father, came with the Father (6:46). He not only came with the Father, but He also said that He was in the Father, and the Father was in Him (14:10-11). The Father sent the Son, and the Son came with the Father. Otherwise, the Son could never have been the tabernacle. The Son had to be all-inclusive so that He could be the tabernacle, the enterable God. I know that this kind of expression, the enterable God, is new to you. You have heard of the almighty God and the omnipresent God, but you probably have never heard of the enterable God. Just to know that He is almighty and omnipresent does not mean so much, but to know that He is enterable means a lot. By tabernacling among us, our God became enterable.
Christ the Son not only coexists but also coinheres with the Father. In the Gospel of John we are told that in eternity past the Son and the Father coexisted, because the Word was with God (1:1). When the Son came, He said that He was not alone, that the Father was with Him (8:16, 29). So while He was on earth, He and the Father were existing together. But on the other hand, the Lord said that He was in the Father, and the Father was in Him (14:10a, 11a; 17:21). Some have said that the Son and the Father are separate and that the Son just represents the Father. But the Lord said, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (14:9). This is not a matter of representation; this is a matter of embodiment. The Father is totally embodied in the Son (Col. 2:9). When you see the Son, you see the Father because the Son is the embodiment of the Father. You cannot separate Them because the first is embodied in the second, and the second is the very embodiment of the first. So the second is in the first, and the first is in the second. The two are one.
This is not for doctrine but for experience on our side and for dispensing on His side. When we called on the Lord and were saved, right away we had the realization that Someone had come into our being. Who was that? Was it the Father or the Son or the Spirit? It is hard to say. First, it seems that the Son is in us; later, it seems that the Father is also in us; eventually, it seems that the Spirit is in us as well. As long as we have the Spirit, we also have the Son and the Father. When we have one, we have three, because the three are one. This is the dispensing of the Triune God, and this is for our experience.
The Triune God has been dispensed into us. This very Triune God now has to be our very living. We need to forget about so many other things. Our life and our living should not be religion or ethics but the Triune God. We must live the Triune God. Today this Triune God — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit — is within us as our life.
Christians today may talk about the Trinity, but after talking, they forget about it and live in their own name. They do not live in the name they talk about. We must live in the name of the Father, in the name of the Son, and in the name of the Spirit. We should not live in our own name. As long as we live in the name of the Triune God, our living will be marvelous. It will be holy and righteous and even divine. This is much more than being religious or ethical. This is living the Triune God. “To me, to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21), not religion, not ethics, and not even the so-called Pentecostal power. Some Christians claim to have the Pentecostal power, but Paul claimed to have the One who empowered him (4:13).
Our Christian life should not be religion or ethics or power but the Triune God. It should be no longer I, but Christ who lives in me (Gal. 2:20). Some of the brothers in this country have listened to me since 1963. They can testify that I have never changed my tune, because this is the unique thing that the Lord is going to recover today. And this is the unique thing that we need as Christians who love the Lord. We need to see such a vision that in God’s economy He does not want something else; He only wants to work Himself into our being. Christ the Son coexists and coinheres with the Father so that He with the Father might be dispensed into our being.
As the Son and the Father are coinhering, They are one (John 10:30; 17:22). The Son is one with the Father. This is a mystery that I cannot explain. They are just one. Because They are one, when you see the first, you see the second.
In John 6:57 Christ the Son said that He lived because of the Father. The King James Version reads that He lived through the Father. These are two different translations of the Greek preposition dia. But according to the grammatical structure, it should read “because of,” not “through.” This is more meaningful. The Son lived on earth not just by the Father or through the Father but because of the Father. His living had a cause. That cause was the Father. The Father was the cause of the Son’s living on earth; the Father was not just an instrument through or by which the Son lived.
Today this very Son should be the cause of our daily living. We should live not only by Him and through Him but because of Him. He should be the cause of our living on earth. Otherwise, our living would be meaningless. Without the Father as His cause, the Son’s living on earth for thirty-three and a half years would have been altogether vain. But it was not in vain, because the Son’s living had a cause, and this cause was the Father.
The Son was working in the Father’s name (10:25) and with the Father (5:17, 19). This means that when the Son was working, He was working with the Father as one. He and the Father were not working separately. In John 14:10b the Lord Jesus said, “The words that I say to you I do not speak from Myself, but the Father who abides in Me does His works.” While the Son was speaking, the Father was working. This was not two working on the same thing at the same time separately but two working as one. When the Son spoke the word, the Father was doing the work. The Son’s speaking was the Father’s working.
The Lord told us in John 6:38 that He came down from heaven not to do His own will but the will of the Father who sent Him. In John 5:30 He said that He did not seek His own will but the will of the Father who sent Him. These words indicate that the Lord as the Son did not carry out His own will but the Father’s.
In John 3:34a; 14:24; 7:16-17; and 12:49-50 the Lord made clear to us that when He, as the Son, came, He did not speak His own word but the word of the Father.
The Son was also seeking the Father’s glory (7:18). The Son came in the Father’s name, He did the Father’s will, He spoke the Father’s word, and He sought the Father’s glory. It seems that the Son had nothing for Himself but everything for the Father. Then who is He? He is the wonderful Son who is the embodiment of the Father. The fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him bodily (Col. 2:9). He is the embodiment of the Godhead. This is for the dispensing of Himself into us.
The Son who came in the Father’s name, who did the Father’s will, who spoke the Father’s word, and who sought the Father’s glory also expressed the Father (John 14:7-9). He did not express Himself. He only expressed the Father. He was the Son, yet He expressed the Father.
As the expression of the Father, the Son sent the Spirit from with the Father (15:26 and footnote, Recovery Version; 16:7). Why did the Son send the Spirit from with the Father? This is the Trinity. The Son is the embodiment of the Father, and He sent the Spirit from with the Father.
John 3:34 tells us that the Son gives the Spirit to us. After sending the Spirit, the Son gives the Spirit to us not by measure.
Eventually, through death and resurrection, the Son became the Spirit (20:19-23). First, the Son sent the Spirit; then He gave the Spirit; and eventually, He became the Spirit. As the last Adam, He became a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). Hence, the Lord is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17). This is for the dispensing of Himself into us.
Finally, the Son is abiding in us as the Spirit with the Father. In John 14:23 the Lord Jesus said that the Father and He would come to the lover of Him and make Their abode with him. This means that the Father and the Son come together to abide in the believers. By the foregoing verses, verses 16 through 20, we can see that the Son would ask the Father to give them another Comforter, the Spirit of reality. When this Spirit of reality would come, He would not only be with the believers but also in the believers. Eventually, the Lord indicated in verse 18 that the coming One, the Spirit of reality, is actually just Himself. Finally, He said in verse 20, in that day, the day of resurrection, they would know that He was in the Father, and they were in Him, and He was in them. Not only would the Spirit of reality be in them, but even He would be in them. This indicates that He and the Spirit are actually one. Then in chapter 17 in His prayer to the Father, the Lord Jesus said twice, “I in them” (vv. 23, 26). What is all this? All this is God the Father dispensing Himself into us through God the Son and in God the Son and by God the Spirit. So the entire Godhead — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit — is now abiding in us to be one with us. Now in the divine life and in the divine nature He is making us His expression. As genuine Christians, we should live a life that lives the Triune God. This is not a life that has anything to do with religion or that expresses ethics. It is a life that purely lives the Triune God and expresses Him. This is the dispensing of the Triune God into us to produce many children of God and many brothers of Christ so that the Father may have a house, Christ may have a Body, and the Spirit may have an organism to express the Triune God. It has nothing to do with religion, with human ethics, or with man’s natural concept and philosophy. It is altogether the dispensing of the Triune God into us for His expression.
