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In this lesson we will go on to see the remaining aspects of the believers' experience and enjoyment of God as the Father in the love of the Triune God.
Jude 24 tells us that God is able to guard us from stumbling and to set us before His glory without blemish in exultation. This verse clearly indicates that although the believers are charged in the preceding verses to build up themselves upon the faith, to keep themselves in the love of God, and to have mercy on and save those who are wavering, only God our Savior is able to guard them from stumbling and cause them to be without blemish, that is, to have no other element as a mixture besides the holy nature of God. The more we are saturated with the Father by experiencing and enjoying His divine dispensing, the more we are guarded from stumbling and are delivered from our natural, human elements, from our flesh, from our self, and from the things of the world, so that we may be set before His glory without blemish in exultation at the Lord's coming.
In order to make us holy that we may be without blemish, God not only disciplines us but also judges us. First Peter 4:17 says, "For it is time for the judgment to begin from the house of God; and if first from us, what will be the end of those who disobey the gospel of God?" First Peter is concerned with the Christian life under the government of God. God's government is universal, and in His governing He judges all His created things so that He may have a clean and purified universe (2 Pet. 3:13) for His expression. In the New Testament age, this judgment begins from His chosen people, His own household. According to the context of this verse, the sufferings the believers undergo in fiery persecution are used by God as a means to judge them that they may be disciplined, purified, and separated from the unbelievers and not have the same destiny as they. Hence, such disciplinary judgment begins from God's own household, and it is not exercised just once or twice but is being carried out continuously until the Lord's coming.
The judgment in 1 Peter 4:17 is not for condemnation to eternal perdition; it is judgment for discipline, a discipline in this age to purify our life. This judgment is a fiery ordeal, a burning furnace (v. 12), to purify us and remove any dross. We can be compared to gold, but we still have a certain amount of dross from which we need to be purified. No teaching or fellowship can accomplish this purification. The disciplinary judgment of the burning furnace is necessary to carry it out. Hence, God puts us into a burning furnace, into fiery ordeals, to burn away our dross that our life may be purified. Thus, we may be saved through the difficulty of persecution from God's destruction of the world. This is the way God exercises judgment on the believers in His governmental administration. On the one hand, God is gracing us that we may live a life that suits His righteousness under His government. On the other hand, through discipline He judges anything that does not match His government. Therefore, today we believers are under the daily judgment of God. When we are under God's judgment, we also enjoy His dispensing in His love.
Romans 16:20 says, "Now the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly." This word of God's promise is spoken to those who are in the church life, because the preceding verses show the concern between the saints and the fellowship among the churches. Dealing with Satan is a Body matter, not an individual matter. It is only when we experience and enjoy the divine dispensing in the church life that we can overcome Satan and crush him under our feet. The church life is the strongest means by which God overcomes Satan, and it is also the secret of our victory. Whenever we are separated from the church, we become a prey for Satan, for it is impossible for us to fight Satan individually. But as long as we remain in the church and are one with the Body, Satan is under our feet, and we also enjoy God as the God of peace.
God's crushing of Satan under our feet is not merely by the church, the Body of Christ, but also by the life that is in the Body. In this matter, the Body and life are equally important. Life is nothing less than the Triune God dispensed into us to constitute us the Body of Christ. Hence, life and the Body are one; they are inseparable. If there is no life, then there can be no Body. Life is the content, and the Body is the expression. God will crush Satan under our feet through life and the Body.
Here Paul calls God "the God of peace." This is very significant. The God of peace and the peace of God are one. Whenever God is dispensed into us, peace is dispensed into us. Hence, the true peace that we enjoy is God Himself. When God crushes Satan under our feet in the church life, we have the peace of God as a token of our victory. Thus, through the divine dispensing we experience the crushing of Satan and the peace of God in the church life.
We can also experience and enjoy God as the Father in God's love by God's answering our cry and avenging us. This matter is shown in Luke 18:1-8 in the parable in which the Lord taught the disciples concerning persistent prayer. The widow signifies the believers. The believers are a widow in the present age because their Husband, Christ, is absent from them. The believers also have an opponent, that is, Satan the devil, concerning whom they need God's avenging.
This parable indicates that during the Lord's apparent absence, we, the believers (a widow) in Christ, suffer because our opponent Satan is troubling us all the time. Furthermore, while we are suffering persecution, it seems that our God is not righteous, for He allows His children to be unrighteously persecuted. Throughout the centuries, thousands upon thousands of faithful followers of the Lord have suffered unrighteous persecution. Even today we are still undergoing unrighteous mistreatment, yet God does not come in immediately to judge and vindicate. Even so, we still must appeal to Him, pray persistently, bother Him again and again, and not lose heart. Eventually, He will answer our cry and avenge us. "And will not God by all means carry out the avenging of His chosen ones, who cry to Him day and night, though He is long-suffering over them? I tell you that He will carry out their avenging quickly" (vv. 7-8a).
On the one hand, this parable indicates that the Judge, the righteous God, is the sovereign Lord, who has the right to decide when He will avenge us and when He will execute His judgment. On the other hand, this parable indicates that we need to bother the Lord by praying persistently until He answers our cry and avenges us. In the process of His answering our cry and avenging us of our enemy, God dispenses Himself into us that we may experience and enjoy Him in His love.
In 2 Thessalonians 1:11 the apostle Paul prayed for the believers, saying "that our God may count you worthy of your calling and may fulfill in power your every good intention for goodness and your work of faith." We, the believers in Christ, have been made a new creation by God for good works, that is, for doing the will of God. These good works not only were preplanned and foreordained by God for us to walk in (Eph. 2:10; Titus 2:14; 1 Pet. 2:15), but they are our good intention, our delight—we are happy to do them. Furthermore, by the infusion of what God is, our faith in God grows and issues in a proper Christian walk and work. However, although we have the good intention, the delight, for goodness and the walk and work of faith, without the power of God, we do not have the ability to accomplish what we are glad to do. When we live in the love of God and enjoy the divine dispensing, God will fulfill in His power our every good intention and our work. The operating power of God not only works in us and strengthens us but also creates the outward environment needed for the fulfillment of our every good intention for goodness and our work of faith.
First Peter 5:10 says, "But the God of all grace, He who has called you into His eternal glory in Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a little while, will Himself perfect, establish, strengthen, and ground you." All grace in this verse refers to the riches of the bountiful supply of the divine life in many aspects ministered to us in many steps of the divine operation on and in us in God's economy. The initial step is to call us, and the consummate step is to glorify us. Between these two steps are God's loving care while He is disciplining us, and His perfecting, establishing, strengthening, and grounding work in us. In all these divine acts, the bountiful supply of the divine life is ministered to us as grace in varied experiences. Through such dispensing God enables us to attain His glorious goal.
Here we see that there is a progression in the four divine acts of God's grace. Perfecting leads to establishing, establishing to strengthening, and strengthening to grounding in the God of all grace. First, God perfects us, perhaps through the suffering of persecution or through different kinds of environments, that we may be restored, put in order again, equipped, and edified. Then God establishes us that we may be set fast, confirmed, and that we may no longer wander and may no longer be changeable. After this, God strengthens us, empowers us, and eventually He grounds us solidly in Himself. Thus, He as the God of all grace and as the solid foundation enables us to gradually attain the consummate goal of His eternal glory, into which we have been called. What a miracle that fallen sinners could be brought into God's eternal glory! And how excellent is His perfecting, establishing, strengthening, and grounding work in us!
Through the divine dispensing God also raises the believers and makes them stand before Him. In 2 Corinthians 4:14 Paul says, "Knowing that He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and will make us stand before Him with you." This indicates that the apostles considered themselves dead persons (1:9), for they were always being delivered unto death for the Lord's purpose (4:11). Their only hope was in God, who raised the Lord Jesus and who would raise them also. It was by such faith that they lived.
In 2 Corinthians 1:9 Paul confirmed the apostles' experience of resurrection by God: "Indeed we ourselves had the response of death in ourselves, that we should not base our confidence on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead." When the apostles were under the pressure of affliction, despairing even of life, they might have asked themselves what the issue of their suffering would be. The answer or response was "death." This led them to the vital decision not to base their confidence on themselves but on God, who raises the dead. This shows us that the experience of death always ushers us into the experience of resurrection. When we are in all kinds of afflictions, passing through sufferings, pressures, and the killing work of the cross, our self is terminated that we may experience and enjoy God in resurrection.
In 2 Corinthians 5:4-5 Paul said, "For also, we who are in this tabernacle groan, being burdened, in that we do not desire to be unclothed, but clothed upon, that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now He who has wrought us for this very thing is God." What is mortal here denotes our mortal body (4:11; Rom. 8:11; 1 Cor. 15:53). The apostles were expecting to be transfigured in their body, to be clothed with a spiritual body to meet the Lord before they died and were disembodied. Their spirit was regenerated and their soul was transformed, but their body was not yet fully redeemed. They were still living in their dying, physical, and natural body; hence, being burdened, they groaned. However, the apostles did not desire to be unclothed, disembodied, that is, to die, but to be clothed upon, to put on the resurrected, spiritual, and heavenly body, that is, to have their body transfigured and redeemed (Phil. 3:21; Rom. 8:23). At that time the death in their mortal body will be swallowed up by the resurrection life.
The transfiguration of our body, the swallowing up by life of what is mortal, is the ultimate consummation of God's full salvation. In order to accomplish this, God has wrought us and is still doing this work in us continually. The Greek word for wrought may also be rendered fashioned, shaped, prepared, made fit. By dispensing Himself into us God has wrought us, fashioned us, shaped us, prepared us, made us fit, for the very purpose that our mortal body might be swallowed up by His resurrection life. Today He is already in our spirit and is continually spreading to our soul, and then from our soul He will spread to our body. Then one day He will saturate our body and swallow up the element of death in our body. Thus, the body of our humiliation will be transfigured and conformed to the body of Christ's glory (Phil. 3:21).
As we believers continually enjoy the divine dispensing of God in His love, eventually our entire being—spirit, soul, and body—will be saturated and possessed by Him and become His inheritance of glory. Ephesians 1:18 speaks of "what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints." We, the saints, are God's inheritance. This does not refer to what we are by nature. Rather, it refers to all that He has dispensed into us of Himself. Whatever God has dispensed of Himself into us becomes His inheritance.
What God desires to inherit in the saints is of glory, and this glory has its riches. These riches are the many different items of God's divine attributes, such as light, life, power, love, righteousness, and holiness, expressed in different degrees. God first made us His inheritance (Eph. 1:11) as His acquired possession (v. 14b) and gave us to participate in all that He is, all that He has, and all that He has accomplished, as our inheritance. Ultimately, all these will become His inheritance in the saints for eternity. This will be His eternal expression, His glory with all His riches, which will express Him to the uttermost universally and eternally (Rev. 21:11).
Ephesians 1:11 says, "In whom also we were designated as an inheritance, having been predestinated according to the purpose of the One who works all things according to the counsel of His will." The Greek verb for were designated as an inheritance in this verse means "to choose or assign by lot." Hence, this clause literally means that in Christ we were designated as a chosen inheritance. We were designated as an inheritance to inherit God as our inheritance. On the one hand, we have become God's inheritance for God's enjoyment; on the other hand, we inherit God as our inheritance for our enjoyment. According to what we are by nature, we are not worth anything; but because we are in Christ and God has been wrought into us through the divine dispensing, we have been constituted into God's inheritance. Now we are in the process of being designated God's inheritance in full, and God is in the process of dispensing Himself into us little by little. If God is not dispensed into us and wrought into us, we cannot become His inheritance. We become precious to Him by being saturated with the divine essence. Only in this way can poor sinners become God's peculiar treasure. In this universe God is the only One who is precious. Now this precious God of matchless worth is dispensing Himself into us to make us His inheritance of glory.
From the time we were saved, God has been working in us to dispense Himself into us as our inheritance for our enjoyment. The more we enjoy Him and participate in Him, the more He dispenses what He is into our entire being. As a result, more and more we become His inheritance, and we also express more of His glory. Eventually, we will be fully saturated with Him and constituted of Him to become His inheritance for His enjoyment. This will consummate in the New Jerusalem in eternity, a mutual dwelling place for God and His chosen, redeemed, regenerated, and transformed people, in which we will enjoy the Triune God as our eternal inheritance, and He also will enjoy us as His eternal inheritance.
The final issue of our experience and enjoyment of God as the Father in love is that we believers will be led into glory. Hebrews 2:10 tells us that God is "leading many sons into glory." This is the last step of God's full salvation. Romans 8 shows us that God's work of grace upon us began with His foreknowing, passed through His predestination, calling, and justification, and will end with His glorification (vv. 29-30). Also, Romans 8 tells us that the whole creation eagerly awaits the revelation (glorification) of the sons of God, in hope that the creation itself will enter into the freedom of the glory of the children of God (vv. 19-21). This will be accomplished by the Lord's coming back (Phil. 3:21), at which time we will be manifested with Him in glory (Col. 3:4); this is our hope (1:27). This glorification of the sons of God, as the goal of God's salvation, will last through the millennial kingdom and will be manifested in full in the New Jerusalem for eternity (Rev. 21:11, 23).
God's leading us, the believers, as His many sons into glory will be the ultimate consummation of the divine dispensing. This means that God's dispensing will consummate in His bringing us as His many sons into His glory. Therefore, it is only by the divine dispensing that we will be constituted into God's inheritance and brought into God's glory. Through regeneration God's life of glory has been dispensed into us as a seed of glory in us. This seed, the divine life of glory, is Christ in us, the hope of glory (Col. 1:27). Now, through the divine dispensing, it is continually growing and developing until it blossoms. When it blossoms, that will be the time of our glorification. Today we participate in God the Father's dispensing to experience and enjoy Him daily, and in that day we will enter into His glory and reach the goal of God's salvation.
In His divine dispensing God the Father guards us from stumbling and sets us before His glory without blemish in exultation at the Lord's coming. He also judges us that by undergoing suffering in fiery persecution we may be disciplined, purified, and separated from the unbelievers and not have the same destiny as they. God also promises us who are in the church life that He will crush Satan under our feet and that we will enjoy God as the God of peace. Furthermore, by our persistent prayer we compel God to answer our cry and avenge us of our enemy, Satan. Moreover, God will fulfill our every good intention for goodness and our work of faith in power. Meanwhile, He perfects, establishes, strengthens, and grounds us in Him by the suffering of persecution and different kinds of environment. Although we are always being delivered unto death for the Lord's purpose, God will raise us and cause us to stand before Him through His divine dispensing. Today, being burdened, we groan, because we are still living in our dying, physical, and natural body, yet God has wrought and prepared us by dispensing Himself into us that our mortal body might be swallowed up by His resurrection life. By continually enjoying God's divine dispensing in His love, our whole being—spirit, soul, and body—will be completely saturated with Him and constituted of Him to become His inheritance of glory for His enjoyment. Eventually, God will lead us as His many sons into His divine glory. This is the ultimate goal of God's salvation; it will last through the millennial kingdom and will be fully manifested in the New Jerusalem for eternity.
