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Scripture Reading: John 1:14; Matt. 1:23; John 1:17-18; 14:9b-11a; 1:29; 12:31; 16:11; 3:14; 12:24; Rom. 8:3; 2 Cor. 5:21
In the Old Testament God’s dispensing in His dispensation consummated in the temple. In the temple was the glory of God, which was the leading of the Lord to His people. Within the temple were also the divine riches. The glory, the leading, and the divine riches were the result of God dispensing Himself into His people.
At this juncture I would like to make a clear distinction between the two words dispensation and dispensing. Because these two words are very similar, we might consider that they have the same meaning. Actually, they are not the same. Dispensation means “a plan” or “an arrangement,” so it is a kind of management and administration. In His Word God has shown us that He has a plan (Eph. 1:10; 3:9; 1 Tim. 1:4). This plan is concerning His household. It is a kind of household plan or household arrangement. Or we may say that it is a household management or a household administration. God has a big household, and in His household He has a plan. He has an arrangement to administrate His purpose. This is the meaning of the word dispensation.
In God’s plan, or arrangement, or dispensation, God intends to dispense Himself into His people. So dispensing means to distribute and to give. God is giving Himself and imparting Himself into His people. He is distributing Himself into His people for His people’s enjoyment. Most Christians today only consider that God redeems us, saves us, and gives us strength and power. Very few Christians have the thought that God is dispensing, distributing, and imparting Himself into His chosen people. Before 1950 even we ourselves did not talk about God dispensing Himself into us. It was only after 1950, within the last thirty years, that we began to see and to minister that God is dispensing Himself into our being. What we want to emphasize in these chapters is not the dispensation but the dispensing.
Let me illustrate: A good kitchen may be set up with a good plan and good arrangement and good administration. But the plan is not for the plan. The arrangement is not for the arrangement. The kitchen is for dispensing food to the guests. If the guests come to the kitchen and simply admire the plan and arrangement and do not receive any food, they will remain hungry. So in a sense, we need to forget about the kitchen with its good arrangement. We need to take care of getting the food — the milk, the eggs, and the bread — dispensed into us. The central thing in the kitchen is not the arrangement but the food. The central view of God’s dispensation is just God Himself as our rich food dispensed into our being, as the Lord Jesus told us in John 6.
In a previous chapter I pointed out to you that a little bit of God was dispensed into Adam, and then a little more of God was dispensed into Abel. Still more of God was dispensed into Enosh and Enoch, and progressively more into Noah and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Eventually, because of all the dispensing, the children of Israel came forth as a corporate dwelling place to God, and God became a dwelling place to them.
We also saw in the type of the good land all the unsearchable riches of Christ (Deut. 8:7-10; Eph. 3:8). Christ is the reality of all the riches typified there: the rain, the hills and valleys, the wheat and barley, the olive oil, the vine, the fig tree, the pomegranate, the springs and waterbrooks and deep waters, the iron stones and copper. And all these riches have been dispensed into His people. For example, whatever we eat for breakfast is dispensed into our being. God is dispensing Himself into us in this way. Our energy and the healthy color of our face come from the food being dispensed into our being. If we do not eat well, we will be short of energy because no food has been dispensed into our being. Today God has been dispensing Himself into us. God planned and arranged to do this. This is God’s dispensation, God’s arrangement, for Him to dispense Himself into His chosen people.
Now we want to come to the New Testament and see the central view concerning God’s dispensing Himself into us. In the New Testament the first step of God’s dispensing Himself into us is that He became incarnated (John 1:14a). The incarnation means that God is born into man. Before the incarnation God was God outside of man and even far away from man. But in incarnation God came to dispense Himself into humanity. When Jesus was born in Bethlehem, God was dispensed into humanity. Jesus was a real man with blood and flesh and skin and bones. When He was thirty years of age, He came out to minister for three and a half years. He was a real man, yet within Him was God. God was dispensed into that man. This is Jesus our Savior.
Incarnation brings God into humanity to make humanity holy and even to make humanity divine. Surely the Lord Jesus is divine and holy. In the same principle, even we ourselves who are His believers are also holy and divine. We are divine, but we are not God. This is just like the children of a king. They are kingly, but they are not the king. They are kingly because they have the king’s life. We are divine because we have a divine Father. We have been born of God (vv. 12-13). We possess His life (3:15) and partake of His nature (2 Pet. 1:4). Although we are not God, we are divine because God’s divine life and nature have been dispensed into our being. When a child is conceived and born, the father has dispensed his life and nature to the child. To be born of God means that God dispenses His life and nature into our being. Because we are born of God, we are not only holy but divine! The word holy may only denote the outward appearance, but divine denotes the inward nature. We are not just outwardly holy but also inwardly divine. When we go to the department store, we should not forget that we are children of God. We have a royal status. We are divine because God has been dispensed into us. Today we all have Christ, and Christ has wrought God into our being.
When the Lord Jesus was on earth, He was the tabernacle of God among men (John 1:14b). This is wonderful! The unapproachable, invisible, hidden, mysterious, and abstract God became solid, visible, touchable, and even enterable. This tabernacle was God in humanity (Matt. 1:23).
When the Lord Jesus was with the disciples before His death and resurrection, all the disciples were around Him. They could see Him and touch Him, but at that time they could not enter into Him, because the way was not paved and the entrance was not opened. After the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, the way was paved and the door was opened for all the disciples to enter into Him. The Lord Jesus had promised them that in that day, the day of resurrection, they would know that He was in His Father and they were in Him and He was in them (John 14:20). This is God dispensed into human beings. When the Lord Jesus was with the disciples before His death and resurrection, He Himself alone was divine. Peter, John, and James were not divine. But when the Lord Jesus breathed into them on the day of resurrection (20:22), He entered into them. They became divine because God had been dispensed into their being.
The Lord Jesus in His ministry brought the divine grace and reality to man (1:14c, 17). Grace is a big term in the New Testament. John 1:17 says that the law was given through Moses but that grace and reality came through Jesus Christ. Grace came when the Lord Jesus came. What is grace? Grace is a free gift. The real grace in the whole universe is just God given to us freely. It is not a good house or a good car or a good job given to us freely. All those things are considered by Paul as trash (Phil. 3:8). In the whole universe there is only One who is the real grace. That is our God. And God has given Himself to us freely. Before the Lord Jesus came, God had never been brought to man. But when the Lord Jesus came, He brought God to us as a free gift. This is grace for our enjoyment. When we have Christ, we have God.
The Jewish people today have rejected Christ, yet they insist that they worship God. Actually, they have God only in name and in term. They do not have a personal God within them. It is the same with the Muslims. They have God only in term and in name. They do not have God within them.
But we have the person of God within us as our daily enjoyment. He is our supply, our support, our food, and comfort. We daily enjoy Him as grace. Outside of the Lord Jesus you cannot have God. If you would meet God, you have to come to the Lord Jesus. God is here in the person of Jesus. The Lord Jesus has brought God to us as a free gift. After God has been dispensed into you and becomes your enjoyment, this is the real grace.
When the Lord Jesus came, reality also came. Reality is harder to illustrate. You have to realize that without God the entire universe is an empty shell. If you do not have God as the reality in your family, your family is empty. If you do not have God, you are empty. This is why King Solomon said that everything is vanity (Eccl. 1:14). Only God is reality. When we have God, we not only have enjoyment, but we also have reality. Other things that we enjoy will vanish away. A good house will vanish away. A good car will vanish away. Money will vanish away. Only One will never vanish away. He will remain forever, He will exist forever, and He is the reality. He is the real enjoyment, and this enjoyment is the reality. The Lord Jesus came with the enjoyment and the reality. He has brought us grace and reality. Both grace and reality are God Himself dispensed into our being.
Christ expresses God. No one has ever seen God, but Christ, who declared God, also expressed God (John 1:18; 14:9b-11a). When you see Him, you see God. God is love, God is light, God is holy, and God is righteous. All these attributes of God can be seen in the Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus is love and light and holiness and righteousness because He is the expression of God for us to participate in God and so that God can dispense Himself into our being.
The Lord Jesus was born, and for the first thirty years He did not have any disciples. But during His last three and a half years He collected some disciples who were with Him. They had Him with them, but they did not have Him within them. This means that God still had not been dispensed into them. But He had collected them, and He had prepared them. Then He died and resurrected and came back to them as the Spirit. He breathed into them, and they all received the Spirit out of Him (20:22). At that time God began to be dispensed into all the disciples. The Lord Jesus had spent three and a half years to prepare the disciples to receive God into them as grace and reality. After that, God was infused and dispensed into them.
Many of us were like those disciples. I was in Christianity from my youth, but I never had gotten God dispensed into me, until one day when I was nineteen, the very God dispensed Himself into me. That made me different, and from that day onward I began to enjoy God as my grace and my reality. I did have something so sweet and so real. I enjoyed Him. I found that He was so trustworthy and everlasting. He never disappeared. He was my grace, and He was my reality. This is God’s dispensing Himself into us.
The Lord Jesus prepared His disciples for three and a half years, and then one day He went to the cross and died on the cross. His death on the cross was a complete preparation. By His death He paved the way and opened the door so that His disciples might enter into God. How did He do this? First, on the cross through His death, He took away their sin (1:29). Sin is the main obstacle between man and God. If man would enter into God and God would dispense Himself into man, surely this obstacle of sin must be removed.
A second obstacle that the Lord dealt with on the cross is the world (12:31a). The entire world is a satanic system that distracts people and takes them away from God. For man to enter into God so that God may enter into man, the world has to be judged. Christ judged the world, Satan’s satanic system, on the cross through His death.
A third obstacle that the Lord dealt with on the cross is God’s enemy, the devil or Satan (v. 31b; 16:11). Through His death on the cross the Lord Jesus destroyed Satan.
Furthermore, our serpentine nature, that is, our sinful nature, the indwelling sin, was dealt with on the cross (Rom. 8:3; 2 Cor. 5:21). Because we are fallen, we have a sinful nature that is serpentine. It is full of the poison of the old serpent, Satan. Every human being has the poison of the old serpent, so in the eyes of God every human being is serpentine. The Lord Jesus died on the cross as a bronze serpent, that is, in the likeness of the flesh of sin (John 3:14), to deal with our serpentine nature.
By the cross sin was taken away, the world was judged, Satan was destroyed, and our serpentine nature was dealt with. This means that all the obstacles have been cleared away, and the way has been paved. The veil has been opened (Matt. 27:51; Heb. 10:19-20). Now every disciple of Jesus is ready to enter into God.
Furthermore, the Lord Jesus’ death on the cross released His divine life (John 12:24). The divine life was in the Lord Jesus just like life is in a small seed. Every seed has life concealed within it. The seed must die in the earth in order for the life to be released. The divine life was concealed within the Lord Jesus. When He died on the cross, the divine life within Him was released. All the obstacles have been removed, and the divine life has been released, so everything is ready for us to enter into God and for God to enter into us so that we might have the divine life dispensed into us. This is not only God’s salvation but also His dispensing. God has not only saved us but also dispensed Himself into our being to make us the children of God, even to make us divine.
