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Scripture Reading: Col. 2:19; 1 Cor. 15:45b; John 6:57b; 1 Cor. 10:3-4; 1 Pet. 2:2; Heb. 5:12-14; John 6:31-35, 48-51, 63; Eph. 6:17-18a; Psa. 55:17; 119:147-148; 143:8; Lam. 3:22-26; Eph. 5:13-14; Rom. 8:13
Prayer: Lord, we thank You for opening Your word to us. In Your word we have seen the light, we have been reproved, and we have also received the life supply. Your word is light, and it is Spirit and life. Now we look to You from the depth of our being once more. You have gathered us into Your precious name, that is, into Yourself. We believe that You are here with us. We are all before You and are gathered into You. Touch us so that we can also touch You. Gain us so that we can also gain You.
Lord, grant us again the living word, the fresh word, the high word, and the word of life and light. Bring us to the realm of heaven so that we can walk with You and live with You. Lord, although the condition of each one of us is different, may You grant each one of us a special word through the same message. As long as we can have one word from You, we will be healed, supplied, enlightened, and encouraged. O Lord Jesus, feed us and give us to drink. Satisfy our hunger and quench our thirst. Touch the deepest part of our being. We give ourselves to You and desire to be immersed in You. Amen.
In the two previous chapters we have seen that God’s economy is the processed Triune God dispensing Himself in His Divine Trinity into the chosen, redeemed, and regenerated believers to be their life so that they may become the corporate expression of the Triune God. God’s economy, God’s plan, is His will and goal. God’s dispensing, God’s distributing, is the process and the means whereby He accomplishes His economy. For this reason God’s dispensing is for God’s economy. From this chapter on, we will carefully study God’s dispensing, that is, His means to accomplish His economy.
First, we must have a bird’s-eye view and a general understanding of God’s dispensing. Ephesians 1 can be divided into three sections. These sections speak of the divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity in the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Verses 1 through 6 speak of the Father’s choosing and predestination. Before the foundation of the world, God the Father chose us (v. 4). This is something that happened in eternity past. According to God’s counsel and foreknowledge, He chose us before the foundation of the world.
God’s choosing was not accomplished in time but in eternity past. Before the foundation of the world God chose us. Among millions of people and even before we were born, God saw us and chose us. This is God’s predestination. This means that we were marked out ahead of time. God marked us out beforehand and ordained us to receive the sonship (v. 5) so that we may not only have life to become the sons of God but also may have the position to inherit everything of God.
Verses 7 through 12 speak of the Son’s redemption. Although God loves us and chose and predestinated us to be the objects of His grace, we became fallen soon after we were created. Because of this we needed redemption, which was accomplished for us by God in Christ through His blood (v. 7).
The redemption of the Son is through the blood that He shed for our sins on the cross (1 Pet. 1:18-19). Because the all-inclusive death of the Son on the cross has satisfied God’s righteous requirement, His blood has become the means for our redemption.
Ephesians 1:13-23 speaks of the sealing and pledging of the Spirit. The Father is the source, the Son is the expression, and the Spirit is the reaching forth. The Father as the source chose and predestinated us in eternity according to His plan. The Son as the expression accomplished redemption in time according to the Father’s plan, and the Spirit as the reaching forth becomes our seal and pledge to apply what the Son has accomplished of the Father’s plan.
Today we have heard the word of the truth, which is the gospel of our salvation, and have believed into Christ and have been sealed in Him by the promised Spirit (v. 13). Once we have been sealed by the Holy Spirit, the seal will never fade away and will never be lost. But the sealing of the Spirit, which is the anointing of the Spirit in us, is not something that happens once for all. On the contrary, the sealing work is going on continually. The seal was put into us at the time we believed, but the sealing has continued from that time until now. It will continue until the day of the redemption of our body (v. 14). The Holy Spirit is the seal, and He is also sealing. He continues to do the work of sealing in us.
This sealing will spread from our spirit to our mind, emotion, and will. We have to admit that our soul has not been fully saturated. Even if our soul is saturated, our body has not been sealed. We need to be sealed continually, until our whole being is saturated. We are like a piece of paper or a cotton ball. When we received the seal of the Spirit, this piece of paper or cotton ball began to be saturated and permeated. Today the sealing Spirit as the seal is sealing everything of the all-inclusive Christ, all that He has attained and obtained, into us (vv. 19-22). The result is that we all become one. This is the church, the Body of Christ, the fullness of the One who fills all in all (vv. 22b-23).
Actually, the sealing of the Holy Spirit is the divine dispensing. The sealing of the Holy Spirit is a saturation, and a saturation is a dispensing. Wherever there is saturation, there is dispensing. This Spirit is the last Adam who has become the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45). Today this all-inclusive life-giving Spirit has accomplished redemption and has washed away our sins. Now He is living within us and is continually sealing us. This sealing dispenses the divine life into us. First, through regeneration He becomes the life in our spirit (Rom. 8:10). Then this life saturates our mind through our spirit so that the soul to whom the mind belongs may be transformed until there is life in the soul (v. 6). Finally, this life saturates our body to become the life in our body (v. 11). The ultimate result is that our body will be transfigured. This is the redemption of our body (v. 23).
First Corinthians 12:4-11 shows us that all the gifts in the Body of Christ are produced by the operation of the Spirit in the believers and are distributed to each of the believers according to His will. These gifts, and especially the gifts that are for the building up of the church, require the growth in life and even the maturity in life. The growth in life of the believers is a matter of the increase of the element of God in the believers (Col. 2:19b). God is perfect; in Himself He is eternally perfect. But as far as we are concerned, what we have received is only a small amount of God. For this reason we need to grow. If we desire to grow, we must have the increase of the element of God in us. This is not a matter of whether God is complete or incomplete. This is a matter of how much we have gained of God. The reason that many Christians have not grown today is that they have not given God the ground. They are not holding the Head, Christ. This being the case, God has no way to dispense more of Himself into them.
In His position Christ is the Head, but in our experience He is the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). The Lord is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17). He is now with our spirit (2 Tim. 4:22). When we enjoy Him in the spirit, we are holding the Head. Then something will come out from the Head that will enable God to grow in us. This means that more of God’s element will be dispensed into us. Through the joints the whole Body will then receive the rich supply, which is the rich dispensing of the life of Christ as the Spirit (Col. 2:19a; Eph. 4:16a). The more we receive the supply, the more we will have the dispensing. Without the dispensing, there will not be any supply. The way we receive the supply and the dispensing is through eating, drinking, and enjoying Christ (John 6:57b; 1 Cor. 10:3-4).
Almost the entire Bible speaks of eating, drinking, and enjoying God. After God created man, He did not give many commandments and regulations for man to keep. Instead, God put man before the tree of life (Gen. 2:9) that man might enjoy the fruit of that tree. The tree of life is a type of God Himself. After man was created, the first impression that God gave to man was that he should eat, drink, and enjoy God.
In Exodus the Israelites ate the passover lamb, which is a type of Christ (12:21-28). By doing so, they received the strength to walk out of Egypt. While journeying through the wilderness, they became weary, and there was no food. At that time God sent manna from heaven as their daily supply (16:4, 14-15, 35). When they were thirsty, God gave them water from the riven rock (17:6). In the New Testament the Lord Jesus came. He too spoke of eating and drinking. The Lord Jesus said that He is the bread of life and that he who eats Him will live because of Him (John 6:35, 51, 57b). He also said that He is the fountain of living water and that those who drink of this water will not thirst (4:14). Then in Revelation He said that the overcomers will eat of the tree of life in the Paradise of God (2:7), and of the hidden manna (2:17). At the end of the Bible the Spirit and the bride are still calling the thirsty sinners to drink of and be satisfied by the water of life (22:17).
Man’s problem before God is not a problem of behavior but a problem of eating. If man does not eat, drink, and enjoy God Himself, he will eat and drink things other than God. Through man’s eating, drinking, and enjoying of God, God is dispensed into man to be his constituent and element. God does not expect man to do anything. He desires only to become man’s food by dispensing Himself into man. For this reason we must eat, drink, and enjoy God, and we must absorb Him into us so that He becomes our life and everything.
In Luke 14 the Lord spoke a parable in which He likened God to a man who made a great dinner. When the time came, the man sent out the invitation through his slaves: “Come, for all things are now ready” (v. 17). God has been processed to become our everything. Today all we need to do is to come to the feast and eat, drink, and enjoy all that He has prepared for us. We know that a few hours after we eat, the food will be digested and assimilated and will become our nutrients. These nutrients will in turn become our blood and our cells; they will become our constituents and elements. That is why nutritionists say that we are what we eat. Those who eat the Lord will have the Lord mingled and digested within them to become their constituent, supply, and nutrients, and they will be able to live by the Lord.
First Peter 2:2 says, “As newborn babes, long for the guileless milk of the word in order that by it you may grow unto salvation.” Through regeneration the believers are born as babes (1:3, 23). Then they grow in life through the nourishment in the milk of the word. The Bible is like a milk cow. It is also like a fattened calf that has been slaughtered. We not only need to drink the “cow’s milk”; we need to eat the “calf’s meat” as well. Milk is mainly for babies, whereas meat, which is solid food, is for grown-up persons. Milk refers to the rudiments of the beginning of the oracles of God (Heb. 5:12-13), which is the good word of God and the word of the beginning of the Christ. We have all tasted these good words. The eternal life spoken of in John 3:16 and Romans 6:23, and the words of comfort spoken in Matthew 11:28, are examples of the good word of God. The solid food, on the other hand, is the word of righteousness in the Bible. This word speaks explicitly of God’s righteous dealing with His people in His government and administration. In other words, it is the word of God’s economy and dispensing. Most Christians do not pay attention to this word. Many people like only the words that comfort and soothe their hearts like candy. We must learn to digest not only milk but solid food as well so that we can be delivered from the stage of being babes and can grow and mature in life.
Every living creature needs to grow and to mature. An inorganic object does not have life; hence, it does not need to grow. The human life is the highest life in God’s creation. Today, in addition to our human life, we have God within us as life. The divine life needs to grow all the more. The growth in life depends on the increase of the life supply. We need to receive the supply in the milk of the word. We also need to receive nourishment through the solid food. Many Christians do not grow. They are like a person with an ulcer: although they may eat a lot, they do not assimilate the food. When they come to listen to a message, they may criticize the speaker. Of course, this kind of person cannot receive the supply of life and cannot grow in life.
There are conditions to the growth in life. For a plant to grow, first, there is the need of sunlight; second, there is the need of air; and third, there is the need of water. After these things, there is still the need of nutrients and the soil. If they have these five things, plants can grow well. When we read the Bible, we see that Christ is the real soil; He is the good land (Col. 2:6-7). He is also the light, the air, and the water (John 8:12; 20:22; 7:37-39). At the same time, Christ is the food (6:27, 33). This food is our nutrient.
Christ is all the elements for our growth. But how can we receive and enjoy all these items of Christ? First, we must know the Bible. The Bible is not a book for the increase of our knowledge. No doubt the Bible is a book of teaching. However, it is not merely a book for our mental knowledge but one that supplies us with food through its teachings. The Bible is a heavenly, spiritual, and mysterious book. It is full of symbols. It says that Christ is the unleavened bread (1 Cor. 5:8), the Lamb of God (John 1:29), and the living water (4:10; 7:38-39). All these are symbols that speak of spiritual realities.
When we read the Bible, we must come before the Lord to have a quiet time to take in His word as food. We not only need to read the Bible, but we also need to pray with what we read. We must turn the words that we read into prayer. Through this kind of pray-reading, we bring the words that we read into the Holy Spirit, and the words will become spirit. When we read the Bible, we receive the Lord’s word. When we pray, the words that we receive become the Spirit. The word and the Spirit are one. When we receive the word, this word becomes the Spirit within us. When we speak it out to others, it becomes the word again, and when others receive this word, it again becomes the Spirit in them. This is why the Lord Jesus said in John 6:63, “The words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.” This is the supply of life, and it is also the dispensing of life.
Christ is the bread of life based on His being the word, which is spirit and life (v. 63). When we the believers receive the word of Christ, we receive and enjoy Christ Himself in spirit. By receiving the Lord’s word in reading the Bible and by contacting the Lord’s Spirit in prayer, we receive and enjoy Christ (Eph. 6:17-18a).
Just as we need to take our meals daily at set times, so we need to come to the Lord at set times every day (cf. Psa. 55:17) to feast on and be filled with God through His word and His Spirit. It is not healthy to stuff ourselves with food for three days and then go without food for the next three days. All healthy people eat at set times and eat a fixed amount of food; they eat frequently but in moderation.
Christ is our daily manna; He is our food (John 6:31-35, 48-51). The most important time to receive Christ as food is the time of morning revival (Psa. 119:147-148; 143:8; Lam. 3:22-26). We need to spend twenty to thirty minutes every day to pray-read three to five verses. When we pray-read in this way, we are eating, drinking, and enjoying God. The word is the embodiment of the Triune God. When we eat, drink, and enjoy God’s word, we eat, drink, enjoy, and assimilate God. In this way we receive God’s rich supply and His bountiful dispensing.
In addition to the above, during our morning break, our lunch hour, our afternoon break, and when we return home in the evening, we can take out the Lord’s Word and enjoy it in this way. If we do this, we will become one who enjoys and receives the Lord through His word, and our spiritual life will surely be healthy and living.
Furthermore, when we pray-read the Lord’s word, we not only need to receive and enjoy the sweet supply in the Lord’s word, but we also must receive the enlightening and rebuking of the Lord’s word and the killing function of the Spirit in the Lord’s word (Eph. 5:13-14; Rom. 8:13). The Lord’s word always enlightens. With this enlightening, there is a rebuking. In our daily life we often offend the Lord and are defiled by the filth of the world. We often walk by the flesh and make mistakes. Through His word the Lord enlightens us, rebukes us, and points out our shortcomings. We do not need improvement. Our only need is to hand over our transgressions to the cross through the Spirit in our spirit and to allow the effectiveness of Christ’s all-inclusive death to do the killing work. In this way we will not only receive the supply and dispensing of all the riches of the Triune God, but we will also be washed and rescued through the water in His word.
