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Scripture Reading: Gen. 1:26; Isa. 9:6; John 1:1, 14, 29; 14:9-10, 17-20; Matt. 28:19; 1 Cor. 15:45b; Eph. 3:14-19; 2 Cor. 13:14; Rev. 1:4-5; 22:1-2
We have covered these two points—the mystery and the economy. We have seen that this economy is to carry out the mystery. Without the economy God’s mystery could never be brought forth.
The first aspect of God’s economy is to dispense Himself into all of us. Dispensing does not mean primarily a period of time but a kind of doing, a kind of action. God is doing a wonderful work to dispense Himself into His chosen ones. Hence, the first aspect of God’s economy is the aspect of dispensing.
It is so strange that on the first page of the Bible God is revealed as the Triune God. If we would study Genesis 1 in Hebrew, we could see that the title used for God is not a singular noun. It is a triple noun. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (v. 1). God in this sentence is plural in Hebrew. Furthermore, in verse 26 of the same chapter God used the pronoun Our to denote Himself. This means something very mysterious. There is one God, yet He is triple. This is a mystery! In Genesis 1:26 we see that first He said, “Let Us.” He was talking to Himself and called Himself “Us.” That was a time before the creation of man. He did not talk to the angels. Surely the angels would not be implied here. He called Himself “Us.” “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” Then verse 27 says, “God created man in His own image.” “Our image” eventually is “His image.” Now, is God plural or singular? When God came to the point where He was related to man, He revealed Himself in such a triune way, denoting that He is the Triune God. This is the initial stage in Genesis.
We then come to Isaiah 9:6, which tells us, “A Son is given to us.” This is no more objective; now God becomes quite subjective to us because a Son is given to us. A Son is given to us, yet this Son is called the Father. This Son given to us is called “Eternal Father.” This is the proper translation according to the Hebrew. The Father, the eternal Father, is the Father of eternity. This Son given to us in time is the very Father who was there in eternity. There in eternity He was the Father, and here in time, in our age, He is given as the Son. Now, is He the Father or the Son, the Son or the Father? At that end of eternity He was the Father, and at this end of the age He is the Son. He is both because there are two ends.
There is hardly anything that can exist with just one end. For example, a lampstand has a bottom end and seven lamps on the top. The bottom end is one, and the top end is seven. This is why in the Bible there are eventually seven Spirits, and these seven Spirits are just the seven lamps. On the one hand, the lampstand is one; on the other hand, it is seven; so it is both. On the eternal side or end, God is the Father, and at this end of the age as the One given to us, He is the Son. The Son is always the expression, and the Father is always the source. When we pray, we do not pray, “Son,” but we pray, “Father.” We receive the Son, yet we call Him Father. A Son is given, and His name is called the Father. Christians do not say, “We believe in the Father, and we receive the Father.” No! We say, “We believe in the Son, and we receive the Son.” Yet 1 John 2:23 says that he who confesses the Son has the Father also. We believe in the Son, and we receive the Son, yet whosoever receives the Son has the Father. After we receive the Son and pray to the Father, we should not leave the Son. The Son is given to us, and the Son brings us to the Father. The Son given to us is called the eternal Father. This is the way that God dispenses Himself into humanity. He is the very divine source, so He is the eternal Father. He is called the eternal Father, but for Him to dispense Himself into humanity, He must be a Son given to us. Hence, John 3:16 says, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” God has given His Son. Do not consider that this Son is separate from God. This Son given to us is none less than God Himself. When we receive the Son, we just receive God, and in our prayer we do not call Him Son, but we call Him Father.
The Gospel of John says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (1:1). This Word that was God “became” flesh (v. 14). The King James Version renders it “was made,” but He was not “made” flesh; He became flesh. He actively took the initiative to become something. He was the Word and took the initiative to become flesh. In other words, this very God who was the Word became a man. He became a man to be the Lamb of God. How wonderful that this very God who was the Word took the initiative to become a man so that He might be the Lamb to take away our sins! This was not merely for redemption. Praise the Lord that this was also for dispensing through the divine redemption!
Because we all are sinful, we are not suitable persons for God to enter into us. For God to get into such sinful people, He has to be a redeeming Lamb to take away our sins. We must see that this taking away of people’s sins is one step of God’s dispensing. In order to dispense Himself into sinners, He had to become a man to be the redeeming Lamb to take away our sins. Then this very God could dispense Himself into His redeemed ones.
After accomplishing redemption the last Adam, who was the very flesh and the very man, became a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). In order for this wonderful God to carry out His dispensing, He took two steps. By incarnation He became a man, the last Adam, to be the redeeming Lamb. After this He took another step, resurrection. In resurrection He became something further. He became a life-giving Spirit. At the end of the Gospel of John, He came back in resurrection to His disciples but not as the Lamb. In the beginning of John’s Gospel, He was introduced to people by John the Baptist as the Lamb of God (1:29). At the end of this Gospel, after His resurrection, He came back to His disciples in a very mysterious way. Even though the room where the disciples were was closed and no door was open, all of a sudden He was in their midst. All the doors were shut, yet He came in with a physical body that could be touched. Eventually, He breathed into them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (20:22). We can never receive the Lamb into us, but we can receive the Spirit, the pneuma. Pneuma in Greek means “breath” or “spirit.” After His resurrection He appeared to His disciples, not in the sense of the Lamb but in the actuality of the breath, the Spirit. Now, whenever we would call on Him, He as the heavenly pneuma, the very breath, will come into us. This is the dispensing of the very God into our being in His Trinity—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The Father was there in eternity, and after incarnation and before resurrection the Son was right here in front of us, but the Son was not in us yet. He had to take another step to become the life-giving Spirit, the very breath that we breathe in.
If we read the New Testament carefully, we can see that when we receive the Son, we get the Father, and when we call on the name of the Lord, we receive the life-giving Spirit. When we receive the Son, we have the Father. When we call on the name of the Son, we have the Spirit. No one has ever seen the Father, but the Son declares the Father to all of us (John 1:18). The Father is still hidden, but the Son is given for all of us to receive. The Son has been crucified, buried, and resurrected, and now He is the life-giving Spirit! Hence, whoever calls upon the name of the Son gets the Spirit into him. We must all see that the very God is not just the Father hidden in eternity, not just the Son appearing to human society, but also the Spirit who has come into us. This is why the Lord Jesus was on the earth. One day He was going to be crucified, die, be buried, and be raised up to become the life-giving Spirit.
In John 14, while the Lord was talking to His disciples, one of the disciples, Philip, asked, “Lord, show us the Father and it is sufficient for us.” The Lord Jesus said, “Have I been so long a time with you, and you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (vv. 8-9). The Lord was saying, “Do you still ask Me to show you the Father? Do you not know that when you see Me, you see the Father because I am one with the Father?” At that moment the disciples received the revelation. They realized that this very Jesus, who is the Son given to us, is one with the Father. He is not only the Son; He is also the Father. After this clear vision the Lord Jesus went on to say, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Comforter” (v. 16). He was the first Comforter coming to be among them, but they needed another Comforter to get into them. John 14:17 reveals that this other Comforter is the Spirit of reality, who came first to be among the disciples and then to abide in them. The Lord then said, “I will not leave you as orphans” (v. 18). Here we can see that in verse 17 the pronoun He refers to the Spirit of reality, and in verse 18 the pronoun I refers to the Lord. The “I” in verse 18 is the very “He” in verse 17. So, this Spirit of reality is just the Lord Himself in resurrection. In verse 20 Jesus said, “In that day [the day of resurrection] you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.” Through this second step the Lord comes into us. These two revelations are found in John—one concerning the Son being the Father and the other concerning the Son being the Spirit.
After His resurrection, on the mountain at Galilee He told His disciples, “Go therefore and disciple all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19). After He took the two steps of incarnation and resurrection, He had the full position to tell His disciples to baptize people into this Triune God. How could we baptize people into the Triune God except by putting them into the very life-giving Spirit? The very life-giving Spirit is the issue of the Son who is the embodiment of the Father. The Father is in the Son, and the Son became the Spirit. Now we baptize people into the Spirit. This means that we put people into the Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Is this not marvelous? Now we all can see that the Father in the Son becoming the Spirit has come into us, and we all have been put into the very Triune God. Now the very God and we, we and the very God, are just one spirit. It is in this way that the Triune God has been dispensed into our being. This is the first aspect of God’s economy. In God’s economy the first step that He has taken is to become a man. The second step is to become the life-giving Spirit, that we may call on Him, that the Spirit may get into us, and that we may be put into Him. We must realize that today He is right within us, and we are all in Him. He is in us, and we are in Him. This is neither a tradition nor a superstition. This is a fact. Who can deny that this very God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—is right now within us, and we are right now in Him? This is the very mystery carried out by the first aspect of His economy.
Paul prayed to the Father that we might be strengthened through His Spirit into our inner man, that Christ may make His home in us (Eph. 3:14, 16-17). Here we have the Father, the Spirit, and Christ. Could we see the Trinity here? The apostle Paul prayed to the Father that He might strengthen us into our inner man through His Spirit, that Christ may make His home in us to take full possession of our being. He prayed that eventually, we may be able to apprehend with all the saints what the breadth and length and height and depth are. In other words, with all the saints we can apprehend the dimensions of the whole universe, which is just the capacity of the Triune God in His Christ. Could anyone tell us what the breadth of the whole universe is? Could we tell what the depth and height are? No one can tell. This is the dimension of the universe, and this is just the capacity of our God in Christ, “that you may be filled unto all the fullness of God” (v. 19). I just cannot explain this to you. This is not a moral teaching. This is not an ethical teaching. This is not anything philosophical. This is just to pray to the Father that He might strengthen us into our inner man through His Spirit, that Christ may make His home in us. Then eventually we will be filled unto all the fullness of God. We all have to shout that we are one with God in a mysterious way! This is not evolution into God, but this is immersion; that is, all the redeemed human beings are immersed into God. We all have been immersed into God. We are all filled with God, possessed by God, permeated, soaked, saturated, immersed, and mingled with God. God and we, we and God, all become one. Do not think that this is too much. How wonderful! We all are soaked, permeated, immersed, infused, and mingled with God. God is in us, and we are in God. Hallelujah! God is one with us, and we are one with Him. This is the mystery, the mystery carried out by God’s economy.
Most Christians today only know the Bible on the surface; they do not know things under the surface. They know the Bible in black and white, but they do not know the mystery. What we are touching now is the mystery hidden underneath the black and white. Hallelujah! We do have the subjective, personal experience to confirm that the more we call on His name, the more we are immersed, saturated, permeated, and infused with Him. Our whole being will be soaked in His being. The more we pray to Him, the more we call on His name, the more we sense that He becomes one with us, and we become one with Him! What is this? This is the dispensing of the Triune God into our being. This is not a Christian religion. This is the reality of the Triune God dispensing Himself into our being. Then we will be so nice, so good, and so loving yet without any realization. People may say that we are so nice, yet we do not feel that we are nice. People may say that we are so loving, yet we do not feel that we have any love. This is not the human love. This is not the human niceness. This is just the issue of the divine dispensing. This is absolutely different from ethical teachings or any kind of philosophy. This is a divine fact, a divine reality, wrought into our very being by the dispensing power, the dispensing operation, of the Triune God.
Second Corinthians 13:14 says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” This is just the dispensing. It is the immersion of our being in all the attributes of the Godhead. The love of the Father, the grace of the Son, and the fellowship of the Spirit be with you all. We all are soaking ourselves in such a “big ocean.” We are soaking in the divine ocean. Day after day all the divine attributes will be soaked up by our being.
The Bible is more than consistent. In the first chapter you have the Triune God. In the last chapter the Triune God is also revealed. The last chapter mentions God, the Lamb, and a river of living water (Rev. 22:1-2). No doubt God is the Father, the Lamb is the Son, and the river of living water signifies the flowing Spirit. Here we see the Triune God again, but very much developed. In chapter 1 of Genesis the Triune God was just called God. In the last chapter of the Bible this God is the fountain on the throne; the Son is the redeeming Lamb, and the Spirit is the flowing river of water of life to reach every part of the whole city of humanity. The New Jerusalem represents the whole body of humanity, which is watered by the flowing river. The flowing river issues out of the redeeming God, who is the Son with the Father. Now the created man not only bears the image of the processed and dispensing Triune God, but this humanity is fully saturated and permeated with the flowing river, the consummated Spirit as the consummation of the processed Triune God.
Do not listen to all the inaccurate teachings concerning the Triune God. In the Vatican in Rome there is a big painting on the wall. An old man is sitting there with a long beard, a young man is standing there as the Son, and a dove is soaring above as the Spirit. They call that the painting of the Trinity. There is also another painting there that is very similar to this one. The old father is sitting, the young son is standing, and the dove is soaring. Right in between them there is a lady. They add one into the Trinity—Mary. That is devilish! That is the leaven added into the pure revelation of the Divine Trinity.
The Divine Trinity today is right within us. The Father is here, the Son is here, and the Spirit is here. Right now we all are in the Trinity. Praise Him for such a mystery! This is a mystery, yet it has been carried out by God’s economy through His way of dispensing. First, He became a man to be the Lamb to accomplish redemption and take away our sins. Then in resurrection He became the life-giving Spirit. The life-giving Spirit is the realization of the Son, and the Son is the embodiment of the Father. So, today when we believe in the Son, we have the Father. When we call on the name of the Son, we get the Spirit. Now we are one with Him. Praise Him! This is the divine mystery carried out by the divine economy through the steps of the divine dispensing.
In the last chapter of Revelation this Triune God is the One on the throne, the One who redeemed us, and the One who is flowing in a spiral way through us to water us with all that He is. Here we have the quenching of thirst. Here we have the nourishment of the tree of life. Here we have satisfaction, and here we have rest.
The most impressive thing is that we become one with God in a mysterious way. Hallelujah! We can shout that God is no more merely God; He is now God with humanity. He is now God wrapped up and mingled with us. And we are no more merely human beings; we are now human beings saturated, immersed, and infused with the Triune God.
