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Scripture Reading: 2 Cor. 1:3, 21-22; 4:15; 8:9; 12:9; 13:14; Rom. 5:5
In this chapter we will consider further the divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity through the believers’ enjoyment of the Triune God.
In 2 Corinthians 13:14 we see the enjoyment of the Triune God. In this verse Paul says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” The grace of the Lord is the Lord Himself as life to us for our enjoyment (John 1:17; 1 Cor. 15:10), the love of God is God Himself (1 John 4:8, 16) as the source of the grace of the Lord, and the fellowship of the Spirit is the Spirit Himself as the transmission of the grace of the Lord with the love of God for our participation.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit are not three separate matters but three aspects of one thing, just as the Lord, God, and the Holy Spirit are not three separate Gods but three “hypostases...of the one same undivided and indivisible” God (Philip Schaff). The love of God is the source, since God is the origin; the grace of the Lord is the course of the love of God, since the Lord is the expression of God; and the fellowship of the Spirit is the impartation of the grace of the Lord with the love of God, since the Spirit is the transmission of the Lord with God, for our experience and enjoyment of the Triune God — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit — with the divine virtues. In 13:14 the grace of the Lord is mentioned first because this book is on the grace of Christ (1:12; 4:15; 6:1; 8:1, 9; 9:8, 14; 12:9).
Such a divine attribute of three virtues — love, grace, and fellowship — and such a Triune God of the three divine hypostases — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit — are needed by the believers so that they may experience the divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity. Second Corinthians 13:14 is a strong proof that the trinity of the Godhead is not for the doctrinal understanding of systematic theology but for the dispensing of God Himself in His trinity into His chosen and redeemed people.
It is common in so-called Christian services for the minister to use 13:14 as a benediction at the close of a service. However, this verse speaks of our enjoyment of the Triune God. Do you enjoy the grace of Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit? In the divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity, the grace of the Lord, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Spirit are for our experience and enjoyment.
We have pointed out that just as the love of God is God Himself, the grace of Christ is Christ Himself. The New Testament says, “God is love” (1 John 4:8). We can also say that Christ is grace and that the Holy Spirit is fellowship. If we did not have God, we could not have the enjoyment of love. If we did not have Christ, we could not have the enjoyment of grace. If we did not have the Spirit, we could not have the enjoyment of fellowship.
We also need to be impressed with the fact that in 2 Corinthians 13:14 love, grace, and fellowship are not three separate matters. Rather, they are three aspects of one thing. Love is the source, grace is the expression of the source, and fellowship is the transmission of the expression. Love as the source is expressed in grace, and this grace is transmitted into us by fellowship. The love of God is the source of the grace of Christ, and the fellowship of the Spirit is the transmission of the grace of Christ with the love of God. Therefore, love, grace and fellowship are all within us for our enjoyment.
We enjoy love, grace, and fellowship all at the same time. We should not think that first we enjoy love, then we enjoy grace, and finally we enjoy fellowship. While we enjoy the fellowship of the Spirit, we also have the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God. Just as the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are not three Gods but three aspects or persons of the one God, so love, grace, and fellowship are three aspects of one thing. The Triune God is the Father full of love, the Son full of grace, and the Spirit full of fellowship.
We should not think that we successively enjoy the love of the Father, the grace of the Son, and the fellowship of the Spirit. No, we enjoy the love of God, the grace of Christ, and the fellowship of the Spirit simultaneously.
Although we enjoy love, grace, and fellowship simultaneously, we may nevertheless point out that love is the source, grace is the course, and fellowship is the destination. Do you know what our destination is? It is the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Hallelujah, we enjoy the Triune God and His virtue in the three aspects of love, grace, and fellowship!
In the Epistle of 2 Corinthians we see the abounding grace (4:15), the enriching grace (8:9), and the sufficient grace (12:9). In 4:15 Paul declares, “All things are for your sakes that the grace which has abounded through the greater number may cause the thanksgiving to abound to the glory of God.” According to the context, grace is the very Christ who lived in the apostles as their life and life supply for them to live a crucified life for the manifestation of the resurrection life, that they might carry out their ministry for God’s new covenant.
Concerning grace, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:10, “By the grace of God I am what I am; and His grace unto me did not turn out to be in vain, but, on the contrary, I labored more abundantly than all of them, yet not I but the grace of God which is with me.” We may say that grace here is actually the resurrected Christ becoming the life-giving Spirit (v. 45) to bring the processed God in resurrection into us to be our life and life supply so that we may live in resurrection. Hence, grace is the Triune God becoming life to us and everything to us. It was by this grace that Saul of Tarsus, the foremost of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15-16), became the foremost apostle, laboring more abundantly than all the other apostles.
In 2 Corinthians 8:9 Paul speaks of the enriching grace: “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, for your sakes He became poor in order that you, because of His poverty, might become rich.” It is grace to us that the Lord Jesus, being rich, became poor for our sakes. In the same principle, it will be grace to others if we are willing to sacrifice our material wealth for their sakes.
According to 12:9, the Lord spoke to Paul concerning His sufficient grace: “He has said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness.” Paul was experiencing suffering and trial. Sufferings and trials are often in the Lord’s ordination for us so that we may experience Christ as grace and power. For this reason the Lord would not remove the thorn from the apostle as he had entreated. Rather, the Lord assured him that His grace was sufficient for him.
Concerning the divine love, Paul says in Romans 5:5, “The love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” From the day we believed in the Lord Jesus, the love of God has been poured out in our hearts. This is not merely a matter of feeling. On the contrary, something substantial, something essential, has been poured out in our hearts. This means that, as believers, deep in our hearts we have something of the divine essence, and this is God as love. In other words, God as love is the divine essence that has been poured out in our hearts. Therefore, the pouring out of the love of God in our hearts is not merely a matter of feeling; rather, it is a matter of the essence of God.
Because something of the divine essence has been poured out in our hearts, the heart of every Christian is a heart of love. I can testify that from the time of my regeneration my heart has been very different from what it was before regeneration. Because we have been regenerated, we have the loving essence within us, even if we are temporarily angry about something. This loving essence is God Himself as love. The Father’s nature, His essence, has been poured out in our hearts, and now we have this essence within us.
In 2 Corinthians 1 we have the Holy Spirit as the anointing Spirit, the sealing Spirit, and as the pledge in our hearts (vv. 21-22). Concerning these aspects of the Spirit, Paul says, “The One who firmly attaches us with you unto Christ and has anointed us is God, He who has also sealed us and given the Spirit in our hearts as a pledge.” Because we have been attached by God to Christ, the anointed One, we are automatically anointed with Him by God. The anointing in 1:21 is the sealing in 1:22. Because God has anointed us with Christ, He has also sealed us in Him. Moreover, we have the Spirit as the pledge. The pledge of the Spirit is actually the Spirit Himself as the pledge. The sealing of the Spirit is a mark that we are God’s inheritance, and the pledging of the Spirit is a guarantee, an earnest, of God being our portion in Christ.
If we would enjoy the Triune God, we need to spend more time to pray. However, we should not pray in the sense of asking God for so many things; instead, we should pray in the sense of staying with God. We may say that God is a burning fire, and by prayer we should stay in Him as the fire and allow this fire to burn something of God Himself into our being.
If we stay with the Father through prayer, we will experience not only the love of God but also the grace of Christ. We will have the riches of the Lord’s grace for our enjoyment, and this grace will be abounding, enriching, and sufficient to us in our experience. This grace, in particular, will make us competent, or sufficient, in ministering and in dispensing Christ to others. This sufficiency comes from the abounding and enriching grace within us.
As we stay with the Father of love, enjoying the abounding grace of the Lord, we will also be in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Actually, we will be merged with the flowing Spirit. We will have the sense deep within that something is flowing in us, even that the Holy Spirit is flowing in us. This is the enjoyment of the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, and this is also the dispensing of the Triune God into our being.
Day by day, we need to spend more time with the Father as the source. We need to pray in order to stay at the source. Today this source is in our spirit. If we stay in our spirit with God the Father for a period of time, we will experience the divine dispensing. While we are remaining with the Father as the source, we should not pray in a way that will distract us from Him. If we find that our prayer is distracting us, we should not continue to pray in that way. The kind of prayer we need is the prayer that keeps us with the Father as the source.
Likewise, we should not be distracted even by reading the Word. If we find that the reading of the Word becomes a distraction that takes us away from the Lord Himself, we need to turn to our spirit again and say, “Lord, I praise You. How good it is for me to be here with You!”
We should not pray to the Lord in a religious way. Instead, we should talk to Him in an intimate way, in the way we speak to those who are close to us. I encourage you to go to the Lord and talk to Him as to an intimate friend. When the Lord was with His disciples, as recorded in the four Gospels, there is no indication that they prayed to Him in a religious way. The disciples prayed to Him as if they were speaking to a friend. They did not offer any religious prayer or religious worship. We need this kind of prayer, the prayer that keeps us in the presence of the Lord.
Actually, instead of speaking of being in the Lord’s presence, I would rather say that we should be in oneness with the Lord. We are not simply in the presence of the Lord — we are in oneness with Him. Speaking to the Lord in an intimate way keeps us in this oneness.
If we daily practice speaking to the Lord in this way, the fragrance of the divine incense will permeate us, the ointment will anoint and seal us, the “ink” of the Spirit will saturate us, and the divine light will illuminate us. As a result, we will be thoroughly permeated with the Triune God. Then we will enjoy the Father’s love, the Son’s grace, and the Spirit’s fellowship. This is what we need today.
It is crucial for us to realize that the ultimate person of the Godhead is the Spirit. The Spirit is the consummation of the Triune God. In and through resurrection Christ has become the life-giving Spirit. As the Spirit, the Triune God is awaiting the opportunity to anoint us, permeate us, and illuminate us so that we may be thoroughly saturated with Him. The more we are saturated with the Lord, the more we will become His living witnesses. In Acts 1:8 the Lord Jesus told the disciples that they would be His witnesses. They would be living witnesses of the living Jesus, witnesses saturated by Christ and with Him.
Through the divine dispensing we enjoy the Triune God. We enjoy the Father’s love, the Son’s grace, and the Spirit’s fellowship. Through this enjoyment in the divine dispensing, we become one with the Triune God. Then we can dispense Him to others. Whenever we preach the gospel or teach the Word, we dispense Him. Whenever we fellowship with the saints, we dispense Him. This is the divine dispensing among the saints in today’s church life. May we all experience more of the Triune God in His dispensing.
