Search
Scripture Reading: John 12:24; 3:15; 10:10b; 2:19, 21; 1 Pet. 1:3; John 3:29; 14:16-20, 14:23, 26; 17:21-23; 20:22; 15:4a, 5a; 7:38-39; Rev. 22:1-2
The ministry of Christ is the main ministry in the New Testament to dispense God into us. It is clearly of two parts: the first part is for Him to come to us, and the second part is for Him to go back to God. This is a two-way traffic, a traffic both coming and going. He came to bring God to us, and He went back to God to bring us into God. By this coming and going, God has dispensed Himself into our being. The Lord Jesus’ coming began from His incarnation and ended with His crucifixion. From His incarnation to His death was the first part of the Lord’s ministry. The second part of His ministry began from His resurrection and has no ending, so it will last for eternity.
In the last chapter we pointed out that in the first part of the Lord’s ministry He brought God into humanity, He was the tabernacle of God among men, He brought the divine grace and reality to us, and He expressed God in full. These items were the work of the Lord Jesus while He was on this earth. After accomplishing this work He went to the cross and was crucified. His death on the cross did much to enable God to dispense Himself into us. He died on the cross as the Lamb of God to take away our sin; He judged the satanic world; He destroyed Satan, the power of death, in His flesh; and He dealt with our serpentine nature. All these negative things have been annulled by Christ on the cross.
On the positive side, the Lord’s death on the cross released the very divine life concealed within Him. Incarnation brought Him into confinement. His humanity was like a shell that confined His divine life within it. He likened Himself to a grain of wheat (John 12:24). A grain of wheat has a shell that confines the wheat life within it. The only way this confined life can be released is by death. When a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, the life within the shell is released. So on the negative side, the Lord’s death dealt with all the negative things, but on the positive side, His death released His divine life. Crucifixion released Him as the divine life from His human shell. Both of these aspects of His death are so that God can dispense Himself into you and me.
This is the first part of the Lord’s ministry. This is His coming from God to us through incarnation and death. If He had not gone through incarnation and death, God could never have reached us. God’s dispensing reaches us through Christ’s incarnation and death. All the negative things have been put away, and life has been released. Not only has life been released, but it has also been presented to us so that we may receive it by calling upon His name. This divine life is just the life-giving Spirit (Rom. 8:2), and the life-giving Spirit is just the Lord Jesus Himself (2 Cor. 3:17). So when we say, “O Lord Jesus,” He as the air gets into us. When He gets into us, that is God dispensing Himself into us. This is wonderful!
Although this is marvelous, this is just one way. This is the way of Christ coming from God to us. The second way is Christ going from us back to God to bring us into God. This began from His resurrection and goes on in resurrection, not only for this age but for eternity. We have to realize that since the Lord Jesus has gone through incarnation and death, He is now in resurrection. Resurrection is typified by the wave offering, something waving and moving (Lev. 23:10-11, 15). In Revelation 1:17-18 the Lord Jesus said, “I am...the living One; and I became dead, and behold, I am living forever and ever; and I have the keys of death and of Hades.” Jesus Christ today is the living One, the One who is in resurrection.
First He was incarnated to be in the flesh; then He was put to death, but today He is in resurrection. If you sow a grain of wheat into the ground, it will die and grow up out of the earth. Where then is the grain of wheat? It is in resurrection. The Lord Jesus passed through death, and now in resurrection He has brought forth much fruit.
The first thing that the Lord Jesus does in resurrection is to impart His divine life into the believers (John 12:24; 3:15; 10:10b). Resurrection dispenses Him as life into His believers to make them His members. Through His death as a grain of wheat, His life was released. When the Lord Jesus was walking and living on the earth, He was like a grain of wheat. His life was not released, because He was still not touched by death. The Lord Jesus knew that He would have to pass through death. This is why in Luke 12:50 He said, “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how I am pressed until it is accomplished!” Baptism in this verse refers to the death that He had to go through. The divine life concealed and confined in His humanity could not be released except through His death. When Satan was causing the Lord Jesus to be crucified on the cross, he was happy, but he did not realize that actually he was helping the Lord Jesus to release the divine life within Him.
The best thing that you can do to a grain of wheat is to bury it in the earth. This is why the Lord Jesus prayed, “Glorify Your Son that the Son may glorify You” (John 17:1). To sow the seed into the dirt is to glorify it. To the Lord Jesus, death was a wonderful release. When a grain of wheat rises up from the dirt, it brings forth many grains, which are its manifestation, its glorification. Today we are the many grains of wheat that have come out of the glorification of Jesus. Our Jesus has been universally glorified. There are many grains all over the globe that have come out of the glorification of Jesus.
The life within the Lord Jesus, within the one grain, was released and imparted and dispensed into many grains. The many grains that come out of the glorification of one grain are exactly the same as the original grain. He was a grain, and now we have become grains. He was the unique grain, and we are the many grains. In life and nature there is no difference between the one grain and the many grains.
Even as the way to release the life within the Lord Jesus was through death, so the way for us to enjoy life is also through death. The more we experience the death of Christ, the more we will experience and enjoy His life.
Throughout the centuries different people have tried to terminate the Christians by killing them. But killing never terminates the Christians. Rather, killing germinates many more Christians. When one Christian is martyred, many more are germinated. The more the Christians have been persecuted, the more they have multiplied. Martyrdom is a kind of glorification. In 1949 I left mainland China. At that time there were only about three million Christians including the Catholics. Today there are thirty to forty million Christians. They have been increased more than tenfold.
Through the centuries Christ has been multiplied many times through death. After His first crucifixion Christ has gone through many deaths within His believers. He was killed in the first century, in the second century, and in many following centuries. In the twentieth century He was killed many times in China. But through every killing, that is, through the martyrdom of the believers, Christ was glorified and multiplied. Do not be afraid of any kind of opposition. To us opposition is a glorification. The way of life is wonderful, but the way of life is through death. It is of life, but it is through death. The divine way of life is to go through death for multiplication. It is through death and resurrection that the divine life has been dispensed into us.
Christ in His resurrection raised up the destroyed temple (2:19, 21; 1 Pet. 1:3). In John 2:19 the Lord Jesus told the Jews, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The temple that the Lord Jesus was referring to was the temple of His body. When He raised up the temple of His body from the dead, He raised up an enlarged temple including Himself as the Head and all His members as the Body. As members of the Body, we were resurrected at the same time that the Lord Jesus was resurrected. Before we were born, we were resurrected through the resurrection of Christ. The same principle applies to our being saved. We were regenerated nearly two thousand years ago when the Lord Jesus was resurrected from the dead (1 Pet. 1:3).
Likewise, although the book of Revelation is a book of prophecy, many of the verbs are in the past tense. John said that he saw the New Jerusalem (21:2). To us the New Jerusalem will come in the future, but to John’s perspective it was there already. To our way of thinking, the church will be built up, but in John’s vision the church was already built up, and the bride had made herself ready (v. 2).
The Jews were used by Satan to destroy the fleshly body of the Lord Jesus by crucifying Him on the cross. In doing so, they thought that they had terminated Him. They did not realize that they had helped the Lord Jesus to multiply. He was put to death in His physical body, but when He was raised up, He not only had a physical body but also a mystical Body, which is universally great. We all have been regenerated in the resurrection of Christ from the dead. By His resurrection He has regenerated us. The resurrection life has been dispensed into our being. As regenerated people, we are the enlarged temple of God, and this is the universal church. Today in the church we are enjoying God’s dispensing in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
It is by God’s dispensing in the resurrection of Jesus Christ that He obtains a bride, a wife, composed of all the regenerated ones. The issue of regeneration in John 3 is a bride to Christ (v. 29). Christ gained a bride through God’s dispensing. Regeneration in Christ’s resurrection is God dispensing Himself into us, and this dispensing issues in a bride to Christ. Through regeneration all of us are a part of this bride.
Then Christ in His resurrection brought all His believers into God (14:16-20; 17:21). Where are we today? Do we realize that, as regenerated ones, we are in God? Whether I am in the United States, in Hong Kong, or in Stuttgart, my home is in God. This is not a superstition; this is a fact. This is a reality. Christ in resurrection has brought all of us into God through the Spirit.
Christ brought us into God, and at the same time He entered into us as the Spirit (14:16-17; 20:22). Let us read John 14:20: “In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.” In this verse it is hard to say who is in whom. We all are in the Son, and the Son is in the Father, so we also are in the Father. This means that we are in the Son and in the Father, and the Son is in us. This is God’s dispensing. The dispensing of God has been neglected and missed among today’s Christians. Today’s Christians mostly stress the ethical teachings, such as husbands love your wives, and wives submit yourselves to your husbands. But eventually, no wife can give the proper submission, and no husband can give the proper love apart from God’s dispensing.
The Lord’s recovery is not a matter of human love or submission. It is a matter of the living God dispensing Himself into you. When, as a husband, you have the living God dispensed into you, surely you will love your wife. When, as a wife, you have the living God dispensed into you, surely you will submit to your husband. This will not be simply your loving or your submitting; this will be Christ living in you. This will not be a matter of ethics or religion but of the living God entering into you as the Spirit. This is to be merged in God and to have God merged in you. This is to be blended with God. This is God’s dispensing. This is the Lord Jesus’ ministry, the real salvation.
Today among most Christians what is taught is mostly ethical teachings. People are mainly taught to improve their character and behavior. This is just ethics; this is not the living Christ in resurrection. In the Lord’s recovery we are not teaching people mere ethics. We are ministering Christ in resurrection, who is the very God being dispensed into all of us. We are not living merely an ethical life; we are living a life that is God Himself. Christianity has become mostly an ethical religion, but the Lord’s recovery is the living God dispensing Himself into all His chosen people. Our ethics and our morality by the living God are on a much higher level because they are God Himself living in us and through us and from within us.
After entering into His disciples Christ abides in them with the Father through the Spirit (vv. 23, 26; 15:4a, 5a). He not only enters into us; He also abides in us for eternity. We need to have the realization that we have the living God now abiding in us. The very Christ in resurrection lives in us. If we really see this, we cannot be so silent. Anyone who realizes that the living God is abiding in him would be excited. This is not a doctrinal Christ or merely a historical Christ but the present Christ, the practical Christ, the very living Christ who is the embodiment of God dispensing Himself into our entire being by abiding in us with the Father through the Spirit.
God’s dispensation in the ministry of Christ is also to mingle the believers with the Triune God (17:21-23). For example, when you put a tea bag into a glass of water, sometimes you help it by mixing it up. You stir the water to mix the tea with the water. That is mingling. Sometimes you want to go home and sleep well, but instead the Lord sends something to stir up the situation. You have to realize that your troubles and problems are for the mingling. You can all testify that suffering helps you to be mingled with the Triune God. The Lord Jesus is not satisfied just to abide in you. He wants to mingle you with Himself. When you put a tea bag into the water, your intention is that the tea will saturate the water, causing the very essence and taste and flavor of the tea to be mingled with the water. This will make the water tea. Christ within you is doing something all the time to mingle Himself with you to make you Christ. This mingling I would call “Christifying.” You are like a glass of plain water, and the tea is “teaifying” you to make you tea. That is the tea being dispensed into the water. This is a good example of God dispensing Himself into us to make us Christified.
This is wonderful, but this is not all. Eventually, this dispensing Christ who has mingled Himself with us will overflow from within us like rivers of living water for all eternity (7:38-39; Rev. 22:1-2). I am so happy because whenever I speak, I have the deep sensation that something is overflowing endlessly. At the end of the Bible you can see a city with a river flowing all the time. There the river of life is flowing and even overflowing with the water of life. In this flowing water grows the tree of life, full of life supply. That will be our eternal living. That is our eternal destiny. Today we could have a foretaste. The very dispensing God eventually overflows from within us to water others, to quench others’ thirst, and to supply others with the tree of life. This becomes their very life supply. This is God’s dispensing in Christ’s ministry.
