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Scripture Reading: Eph. 1:13-14 Hymns: #539, #493
I. In sealing the believers — Eph. 1:13:
А. As the compound, anointing, life-giving, and indwelling Spirit promised by God.
B. Through the believers’ hearing of the word of the truth, the gospel of their salvation — v. 13a.
C. Through the believers’ believing in Christ.
D. To saturate the believers continuously unto the redemption of their body — 4:30.
E. For transforming the believers into a treasure to God as His inheritance — 1:11; 2 Cor. 3:18:
1. By His renewing — Titus 3:5; Rom. 12:2b.
2. With the life element of the all-inclusive Christ — Phil. 1:19b.
F. To make the believers a mark of God’s image — 2 Cor. 3:18b:
1. With the substance of God.
2. For the expression of God.
II. In pledging to the believers — Eph. 1:14a:
А. Through the sealing.
B. As a foretaste of God.
C. For a guarantee of God as our inheritance.
D. Unto the redemption of the body of the believers as God’s acquired possession.
III. To the praise of God’s glory — v. 14b:
А. In the expression of God’s image.
B. In the enjoyment of God’s riches.
IV. The dispensing of the Divine Trinity issuing in the Body of Christ as the organic constitution (4:4-6) with:
А. God the Father as the source.
B. God the Son as the element.
C. God the Spirit as the essence.
The Bible shows us that there are two stages in the ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ. To understand the New Testament we must realize and comprehend these two stages of the Lord’s ministry.
The first stage was Christ’s earthly ministry, from His incarnation to His crucifixion, that is, from His birth to His death. In this first stage He ministered as a man, speaking forth God in His flesh (John 8:26; 12:49-50). First, He lived for thirty years to become fully mature. According to Numbers 4:23, thirty years is the full age for a servant of God. At the age of thirty He came out to minister for three and a half years, traveling back and forth between Galilee and Judea. In the Gospel of Matthew He spoke much concerning the kingdom, and in the Gospel of John He spoke much concerning the divine life, which is the eternal life. Then He went to the cross and He died an all-inclusive death to solve all the problems in the universe between God and His creation. After finishing His work in His death, He rested, keeping the Sabbath.
Then, from that rest He rose up in His resurrection. In His resurrection He was born. All Christians realize that Christ was born once. He was born in Bethlehem, of Mary, to be a man. But the New Testament shows us that the Lord Jesus was born a second time. Incarnation was His first birth, a birth in which He as God became a man. Resurrection also was a birth to Jesus Christ as the last Adam. To this last Adam, this last man, resurrection was another birth. In this birth He was born to be the firstborn Son of God. This is clearly revealed in Acts 13:33, which tells us that Christ was born in His resurrection to be the firstborn Son of God.
Before His resurrection Christ was already the only begotten Son of God (John 1:18; 3:16, 18). From eternity to eternity He is God’s only Begotten. However, in His incarnation He became a man; He put on humanity. As the only begotten Son of God, He was divine, but in His first birth He picked up humanity and put it upon Himself. Thus, from that day forward He was no longer merely God; He was also a man. He was the complete God and the perfect man. He was such a wonderful person. Nevertheless, there was a problem: As a divine person, He had a human part that was not divine and that had nothing to do with God’s Son. That human part was the Son of Man, not the Son of God. When He finished His earthly ministry, at the time when He accomplished God’s eternal redemption, He finished His work. Hence, He rested. At the end of His crucifixion He declared from the cross, “It is finished!” (19:30) because His earthly ministry, that is, the ministry for the accomplishment of redemption, was finished, consummated, completed. Therefore, He slept and He rested.
However, God’s economy was not yet finished. That was just the first part of God’s economy; it was not the greatest part. The greatest part of God’s economy was yet to come. Therefore, after He rested for three days, He rose up. On the one hand, the New Testament says that God raised Him up; on the other hand, it also says that He Himself rose up (Acts 2:24 and footnote 1; 10:40-41). Both God and He brought Him out of death, Hades, and the tomb. In 1 Corinthians 15, a chapter that deals particularly with the matter of resurrection, verse 45 says, “The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit.” According to this verse, in His resurrection, as a man, the last man, the concluding man, the last Adam, Christ became a life-giving Spirit. He was also born to be the firstborn Son of God. This means that in His resurrection, Christ “sonized” His humanity. He made His humanity also a part of the Son of God. Now Jesus Christ as the Son of God has two natures, the divine and the human. After His resurrection He came back to His disciples as the Spirit (John 20:19-29). At that time He asked His disciple Thomas, “Bring your finger here and see My hands, and bring your hand and put it into My side” (v. 27). This means that the resurrected Christ still had His physical body. We cannot understand how the Lord can be both physical and spiritual at the same time. Nevertheless, in His resurrection Christ was born to be the firstborn Son of God as the life-giving Spirit.
Christ’s being the firstborn Son of God indicates that many sons of God will follow. His birth in resurrection and through resurrection was not just the delivery of one son; it was the delivery of the firstborn Son and of the many sons as well. According to 1 Peter 1:3, we all were regenerated, that is, reborn, with Christ in His resurrection. In His resurrection He was delivered as the firstborn Son of God, and we were delivered as the many sons of God. We all were included in that great delivery (Eph. 2:6a), in which millions of sons of God were born.
We all need to realize that the birth of the firstborn Son with the birth of the many sons created another world. In this universe there is another world — a spiritual, heavenly, and divine world. The unbelievers know only this present human world. They do not know anything about the other world. But we have been regenerated out of the human world and into another world that is spiritual, heavenly, and divine. Thus, Philippians 3:20 tells us that we are heavenly citizens, and Ephesians 2:6 says that we have been seated together with Christ in the heavenlies.
Many Christians say that Christ’s ministry was finished at the end of His death. However, the Bible says that Christ’s ministry still continues after His death. His earthly ministry was accomplished and recorded in the four Gospels in the New Testament. After the Gospels and the Acts, the apostle Paul wrote fourteen Epistles, from Romans through Hebrews. In these fourteen Epistles Paul opens the heavens, shows us that we are seated in the heavens, and unveils to us that today Christ in the heavens as the resurrected One and the newborn One, the firstborn Son of God, is very busy. He is busy in His heavenly ministry. He accomplished redemption in His earthly ministry, but He applies this redemption to us in His heavenly ministry.
Today Christ is both in the heavens and in our spirit (10, Rom. 8:34; 2 Tim. 4:22). We may use electricity to illustrate how Christ can be in two places at the same time. The same electricity is simultaneously in the power plant and in our homes. This is not two electricities but one electricity in one transmission. It is the transmission that connects our homes with the power plant. Today Christ is the same as electricity. As the life-giving Spirit, He is there in the heavens and also here in our spirit. In this way He has brought us all into the heavens. Today the heavens are in our spirit. Hebrews 10:19 and 22 tell us to come forward to the Holy of Holies and to enter the Holy of Holies, and 4:16 tells us to come forward with boldness to the throne of grace. After reading such verses, we may wonder where the Holy of Holies and the throne of grace are today. If they were only in the heavens, how could we come forward to them, and how could we enter the Holy of Holies? Today the Holy of Holies is not only in the heavens; it is also in our spirit. This is why Hebrews 4:12 stresses our spirit to the uttermost. This verse says, “The word of God is living and operative and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit and of joints and marrow, and able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” According to this verse, we must have the capacity to discern our spirit from our soul. The problem today is that many Christians do not have the capacity to discern their spirit from their soul. Many even say that the spirit and the soul are the same.
Today in the Lord’s recovery we have a clear sky and a clear vision to see that Christ is in the heavens, and He has brought the heavens into our spirit. This corresponds to the ladder that Jacob saw in his dream at Bethel (Gen. 28:12). That ladder stretched from the earth to the heavens, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. It brought the earth to the heavens and joined the heavens with the earth, making the heavens and the earth one. In John 1:51 the Lord Jesus told His disciples that they would “see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” Christ today is the ladder in His resurrection. Because of this, when we speak the Lord’s word in His ministry today, we speak not only on the earth but also in the heavens. We speak in our spirit, where the heavens are on the earth. We have much to speak because we are speaking in the heavens, yet we are still on earth.
Many Christians today know only Christ’s earthly life and ministry. Their knowledge is limited to what is recorded in the four Gospels. They do not like to go further. A number of years ago one group of Christians declared that they followed only Jesus and they would not follow Paul. They accepted only the teaching in the four Gospels; they would not accept Paul’s fourteen Epistles. Today, in name, all Christians accept the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, yet, in actuality, many know only the things of Christ in the four Gospels. They know very little concerning Christ in the fourteen Epistles of Paul.
If Christ’s ministry were only on the earth in the flesh, He could not dispense anything into us. In the earthly ministry of Christ there is only the accomplishing; there is no dispensing. Whatever Christ accomplished was objective to us, not subjective, until He became a life-giving Spirit. In His resurrection He began to impart, that is, to dispense, His divine life into us. The dispensing in Christ’s ministry did not begin from the earth. At the time when Christ went out of death and entered into resurrection, He imparted His divine life into all of us to regenerate us (1 Pet. 1:3). At that time His dispensing began.
Today Christ is in the heavens, and He is very busy. In Galatians 2:20 Paul says, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” For Christ to live in us means that He is not idle in us but is very active. As the Spirit, He not only lives in us, but He also dwells in us (Rom. 8:11). Furthermore, He is now making His home in us (Eph. 3:17). He also strengthens us, sustains us, supports us, comforts us, supplies us, takes care of our case in the heavenly court, and intercedes for us. In His heavenly ministry He does everything for us. As He ministers in His heavenly ministry, He has many statuses: He is the Lord of all (Acts 2:36a), the Christ of God (v. 36b), the Leader of all the rulers and the Ruler of the kings of the earth (5:31a; Rev. 1:5b), the Savior (Acts 5:31b), the High Priest (Heb. 4:15; 7:26), the Advocate (1 John 2:1b), the Intercessor (Heb. 7:25), the Mediator of the new covenant (8:6), the surety of the new testament (7:22), the Life-giver (John 10:10b), the Comforter (14:16-17), and the Lamb-God (Rev. 22:1b). As such a One, He sustains us and supports us with the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ (Phil. 1:19).
I have been speaking for the Lord for more than sixty years. Today I still have many subjects to speak on, and I also have the strength to minister. As far as I am concerned, I am nothing. Nevertheless, the more I speak, the more I have to speak. Although I have spoken on Ephesians a number of times, I still have something further to speak because I am sustained, supported, strengthened, and supplied by Christ with the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. The One who supplies me is not just the Spirit of God; today the Spirit of God has become the Spirit of Jesus Christ.
First Corinthians 6:17 says, “He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” This also is the good news of the gospel. Do you realize that you are one spirit with the Lord? We are one with God. As those who are one spirit with God, we are not small persons. We are one with God; we are a part of God (John 15:5a; Eph. 5:30). Athanasius, a young theologian who participated in the Council of Nicaea, said concerning Christ, “He became man that we might be made God” and “The Word was made flesh...that we, partaking of His Spirit, might be deified.” According to Athanasius’s word, God became a man that man might become God in life and in nature (but not in the Godhead). We are not only God in life and in nature, but we are one with God.
The Spirit today is not merely the creating God. This Spirit is the God who became incarnated, crucified, and resurrected, and who also became a life-giving Spirit. This is the reason that we can be one spirit with Him. He has become a life-giving Spirit, and we have a spirit created by Him (Zech. 12:1) and regenerated by Him (John 3:6). In this universe these two wonderful spirits, the life-giving Spirit and the human spirit regenerated and indwelt by the Spirit, have come together to be mingled as one. This is surely the good news.
We need some new songs to sing about our being one with God in the spirit. We all need to praise the Lord, saying, “Praise You, Lord Jesus! Today You are the Spirit. You were God and You became a man, and now in Your resurrection You have become the life-giving Spirit.” In this life-giving Spirit He can and He does dispense whatever He has, whatever He is, whatever He accomplished, whatever He is doing, and all His attainments and obtainments into our being. Christ is the embodiment of the Triune God (Col. 2:9). Thus, the Father’s dispensing actually is a part of His dispensing. The Spirit’s dispensing also is a part of His dispensing.
The dispensing of the Spirit is carried out in His sealing the believers (Eph. 1:13). If we want to seal something, we must have a seal that bears a certain image, and we must also have the sealing ink. The seal with the sealing ink can be applied to a piece of paper to seal the paper. The sealing makes the sealing ink and the paper one. The sealing ink soaks the paper, saturates the paper, anoints the paper, is mingled with the paper as one, and is even constituted together with the paper to be one constitution. We have been sealed not with ink but with the sealing Spirit, who is the saturating Spirit, the anointing Spirit, the soaking Spirit, and the sanctifying Spirit. The more He saturates us, the more He sanctifies us. We are like pieces of paper. When a piece of paper is sealed, the sealing action does not stop. The sealing still goes on to saturate the paper with the sealing ink, to soak the paper with the sealing ink, to make the paper absolutely one in constitution with the sealing ink. Eventually, the sealed paper becomes full of ink.
The Spirit by whom we are sealed, soaked, and saturated is the Lord Himself (2 Cor. 3:17). He is the Spirit, and the Spirit is the seal. This seal as the Lord Himself seals us, saturates us, and soaks us. This too is the good news of the gospel.
When a husband is about to exchange words with his wife, he should wait so that he can remain under the sealing for a while. This will cause him to forget the exchanging of words. Instead, he will be full of praises. He will rejoice because he has been soaked and saturated as a result of being under the sealing of the Lord as the life-giving Spirit. The sealing of the Spirit within us regulates us, controls us, and causes us to behave ourselves properly. Often after a church meeting or a ministry meeting we all are happy, singing, praising, and full of joy because we have been under the Spirit’s sealing.
According to Ephesians 1:13-14, the Spirit’s sealing will continue unceasingly unto the redemption of our body (4:30). The Greek preposition unto does not mean “until”; it means “resulting in.” The Spirit is sealing us, resulting in the redemption of our body. We need to believe that this sealing of the Spirit is still going on. As this sealing proceeds, we even have the sense that our lust, our sickness, our weakness, and our deadness are being reduced. After these things are fully reduced, we will be redeemed in our body. Our body will be transfigured and glorified. This is the consummation of the Spirit’s sanctification.
As we have seen, the sanctification of the Spirit began with the Spirit’s seeking us out, and it continues through His regenerating, His transforming, which includes His renewing and conforming, and then His sealing. Sealing implies transformation, and it also implies renewing and conformation. The Spirit’s sealing is transforming us, renewing us, and conforming us to the image of Christ (Rom. 8:29). This will result in the transfiguration of our body, which will be our glorification. At that time the sanctification of the Spirit will be consummated, reaching its peak.
Day by day we are under the sealing of the Spirit. This sealing is our daily salvation. The more we are soaked, saturated, and sealed by the Spirit, the more we are saved. If we do not experience such a daily salvation, we may lose our temper and become angry and argue with others. However, now the sealing is going on to save us from our temper, from our anger, and from our evil speaking and evil thinking concerning the other saints. Every day, every hour, morning and evening, this saving is going on. It is this saving that can save us to the uttermost, as mentioned in Hebrews 7:25. Through the sealing there is a continuous saving as we remain under the sealing. Ultimately, this sealing will result in the transfiguration of our body to bring us all into glory. At this juncture we will be fully sanctified, from our spirit, through our soul, and to our body. At that time our spirit, soul, and body will be wholly sanctified (1 Thes. 5:23).
This is the heavenly ministry of the resurrected and transcending Christ. In His transcending He is ministering the entire sanctification of the Spirit to us. On the one hand, it is the Spirit who performs the sanctification in us. On the other hand, it is Christ who ministers the sanctification to us. Christ, the heavenly One, is ministering to us a sealing, a saturating, and a soaking that saves us from our unpleasant feelings concerning our fellow believers. As we are under such a heavenly ministry, we feel quite pleasant toward the saints. We are saved by the sealing in Christ’s heavenly ministry. In this way we are sanctified, we are matured, and we have the growth in life.
Today our Christ is not ministering on the earth. He is not ministering in Galilee and Judea. He is ministering in us, in our spirit. He is ministering in all our spirits simultaneously. While He was on the earth, at the time He ministered in Galilee, He could not minister in Judea. But today He can minister in thousands of us at the same time. I can testify that every day He ministers the heavenly ministry to me to meet my need. As a little servant of the Lord, I am caring for the churches and the saints in seventeen regions on this earth. This causes me to have a great need. Although I am limited, I have One who is never limited. He is the Lord, the Christ, the Leader, the Savior, the High Priest, the Advocate, the Intercessor, the Mediator, the surety, the Life-giver, the Comforter, and the Lamb-God. He is so much! Therefore, in all my labors I am happy and pleasant. We do have an unlimited, heavenly Christ ministering to us in the heavens and in our spirit. Through the rich supply of His heavenly ministry, our work becomes our rest and our enjoyment. Every day I work under a sealing that goes on continuously, day and night.
Eventually, this sealing is for God’s heritage. This sealing transforms the believers into a treasure to God as His inheritance. In the Father’s dispensing we were all made sons of God, but in the dispensing of Christ, the Son, we, the many sons of God, have been made a treasure as God’s heritage, as God’s inheritance. The Greek verb translated “were designated” in Ephesians 1:11 means “to choose or assign by lot.” Hence, the clause were designated as an inheritance literally means that in Christ we were designated as a chosen inheritance for God. This inheritance was chosen through the transformation of the sealing Spirit. Thus, in the Son’s dispensing, all the sons of God become a treasure to God.
In the Spirit’s dispensing He seals us, putting a mark upon us. This mark bears an image with a form. The more we are sealed, the more we bear the image of God (2 Cor. 3:18b; Col. 3:10). The more we are sealed, the more we look like God. Eventually, the image we bear becomes not just an image, not just a mark, but an expression. Through the Spirit’s sealing we express God.
Eventually, this sealing becomes a pledging (Eph. 1:14). The more a piece of paper is sealed, the more the sealing ink will be on the paper. Likewise, the more the Spirit seals us, the more the Spirit shares with us God’s element. This sealing element becomes a pledge to guarantee that God is our inheritance. The sealing declares that we are God’s inheritance. Eventually, such a sealing becomes a pledge guaranteeing that God is our inheritance. The Spirit’s pledging guarantees that God is our inheritance. How good it is that we are God’s inheritance and He is our inheritance! Although a brother may lose his job, he is still God’s inheritance, and God is still his inheritance. Under the Spirit’s sealing and pledging, we do not need to worry about anything. No matter what may happen to us, we are still God’s inheritance, and He is still our inheritance. This is because we are participating in the Spirit’s sealing and pledging as His dispensing.
The Spirit’s sealing and pledging eventually make us God in His life and nature but not in His Godhead. They also cause us to have the full assurance that we are God’s and God is ours.
(1) The Spirit’s dispensing in His sealing and pledging issues in the redemption of our body, the transfiguration of our vile body into a glorious body like that of Christ.
(2) The Spirit’s sealing of the believers as God’s heritage is the Spirit’s anointing, saturating, and soaking of the believers with the divine element of Christ’s riches of life in the believers. This is for the Spirit’s transforming of the believers metabolically.
(3) The first section of the divine revelation presented to us in the book of Ephesians is the Triune God’s triune dispensing. The three aspects of the Triune God’s triune dispensing are the three sections of the Holy Spirit’s sanctification performed in the believers. The first section is the regenerating sanctification in our spirit to bring forth many sons for God to form an organism for God’s corporate expression, which is the organic Body of Christ, the church. The second section is the transforming sanctification in our soul to transform the regenerated believers by renewing them and conforming them to the glorious image of Christ so that they may become a heritage of worth, a treasure to God as God’s private possession. This will bring the upside-down universe into an upright order by heading up all the collapsed things under Christ. The third section is the consummating sanctification in our body to transfigure the believers’ body by redeeming their vile body into God’s glory so that they may be fully and wholly sanctified in their spirit, soul, and body to be a consummated corporation of God’s many sons who are matured in the processed Triune God as their life so that they may express God as the New Jerusalem for eternity.
(4) Hence, the carrying out of God’s eternal economy is the Spirit’s sanctification. The accomplishment of God’s eternal economy hinges on the sanctification of the Spirit. Thus, the Spirit’s sanctification has very much to do with the Body of Christ, which is the issue of the Spirit’s sanctifying work. It is because of this that Ephesians 4:4 says, “One Body and one Spirit,” and the sanctified life of the saints is the infilling of the sanctifying Spirit in our spirit (5:18). Our new man is created according to God in His holiness by the renewing in the spirit of our mind.
(5) Since the book of Ephesians is the revelation of the church as the issue of the Spirit’s triune dispensing, it stresses the Spirit’s infilling for the saints’ holy living and the divine holy element for the saints’ holy constitution. We, the pursuers of Christ, must pay our full attention to our inward constitution with the divine element and to our outward living by the Spirit’s inner filling.
