ALL THE DISPENSINGS OF THE PROCESSED
TRIUNE GOD BEING THE SPIRITUAL BLESSINGS
In Ephesians 1 the dispensing is crucial. Ephesians 1:3 says, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ." The blessings we enjoy are spiritual blessings. No doubt, these blessings are carried out by the Spirit. Otherwise, they would not be called spiritual blessings. These spiritual blessings are in the heavenlies and in Christ.
GOD THE FATHER’S DISPENSING
IN CHOOSING THE BELIEVERS TO BE HOLY
BY PREDESTINATING THEM UNTO SONSHIP
The first item of the spiritual blessings is the Father’s choosing. We may think that God’s choosing is one thing, and God’s predestinating is another thing, but this is wrong. We need to look at the grammar of Ephesians 1:4-5. These verses say, "Even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world to be holy and without blemish before Him in love, predestinating us unto sonship through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will." These verses do not say He chose us and predestinated us. Instead they say that He chose us, predestinating us. Predestinating in verse 5 modifies the predicate chose in verse 4, so these are not two things. These are one thing. God chose us. How did He choose us? God chose us by predestinating us, by marking us out. To predestinate is to mark out. God chose us to be holy for the sonship. The choosing of God’s people for them to be holy is for the purpose of their being made sons of God, participating in the divine sonship.
For a person to have sons, he has to beget them by imparting his life into them. This imparting is dispensing. Without the dispensing of life, no children can be produced. Without God’s dispensing, how could God have sons? For God to have sons means that there has been the dispensing of His life. This is fully unveiled in John 1. Christ came to be received. Whoever receives Him, He will give that one the right, the authority, to become a child of God. The right, the authority, to be a child of God is the very divine life dispensed into us. We receive the life of God, and this life is our authority to be the sons of God. We are sons of God because His life has been dispensed into us.
God dispenses Himself in a sanctifying way. God’s chosen ones are made His sons by His sanctifying Spirit. God sanctified us to become His sons. He chose us to be holy for sonship. John Wesley said that sinless perfection is holiness, but the Brethren showed that this was wrong. They taught that holiness, sanctification, is not sinless perfection but is a transfer of our position. In Matthew 23 the Lord Jesus said that the gold is made holy, sanctified, by the temple (v. 17) and that the gift is made holy, sanctified, by the altar (v. 19). When the gold was in the market, it was common and worldly. But when the gold was separated unto God through the temple, it was sanctified because its position changed. Likewise, when the gift’s location changed from a common place to a holy place, it was sanctified. The teaching of the Brethren concerning positional sanctification is scriptural, but this is not the entire truth concerning sanctification.
Sanctification is to separate God’s people unto God for God to work on them and to work in them to make them His sons. God had an intention and made an economy to get many sons. Then the Spirit came to separate the chosen ones unto God so that God could beget them. First, they were sanctified unto God; then through this sanctification they became the object of God’s begetting. God came to beget them, making them His sons, and this was through the sanctification of the Spirit. Verse 4 of Ephesians 1 says that God chose us to be holy. Then verse 5 says that He did this by predestinating us unto sonship. Thus, sanctification is unto sonship, for sonship. First, the Spirit comes to sanctify God’s chosen people. Then they are ready to be begotten by God into His sonship.
For us to be holy and for us to be sons both require God’s dispensing. Without God dispensing His holy nature into our being, how could we be holy? God is the only One who is holy. For us to be holy we need a holy element dispensed into us. When the Holy Spirit comes into us, He brings God’s holy nature into us, and that holy nature becomes the holy element with which the Holy Spirit sanctifies us. Stanza 1 of hymn #841 says, "By Thy holy nature/I am sanctified,/By Thy resurrection,/Vict’ry is supplied." His holy nature makes us holy, and His resurrection power makes us victorious. We have God’s holy nature imparted into our being, and this holy nature becomes the holy element with which we are made holy. Our being made holy is for us to be sons. The imparting of God’s holy nature into us and His begetting us are His dispensing.
(The Issue of the Dispensing of the Processed Trinity and the Transmitting of the Transcending Christ, Chapter 1, by Witness Lee)
