B. FOR THE EXPRESSION OF HIS SON
It is God’s good pleasure, the desire of His heart, to have many sons for the expression of His Son. As we have seen, Romans 8:29 says that God predestinated us to be conformed to the image of His Son. To have us conformed to the image of His Son is for the expression of His Son. Second Corinthians 3:18 says, “We all with unveiled face, beholding and reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.” This corresponds with Romans 8:29 that we, the sons of God, should be transformed and conformed to the image of the Son of God to express Him. In Philippians 1:20, the Apostle Paul, one of God’s many sons, says that Christ shall be magnified in his body, whether through life or through death. This is to express the Son of God. In Philippians 1:21 Paul continues to say, “To me to live is Christ.” Paul’s life was one that expressed Christ the Son of God. First John 3:2 says, “If He is manifested, we shall be like Him.” To be like the Lord is also to express the Son of God. According to God’s desire and His plan, we, as the sons of God, should express His Son today, and we are destined to express His Son at the coming of His Son.
Concerning the expression of the Son of God, Ephesians 1:23 indicates that His Body is the fullness of the One who fills all in all. This fullness is the expression of Christ the Son of God. Christ, who is the embodiment of the infinite God without any limitation, is so great that He fills all things in all things. Such a great Christ needs the Body, constituted of the many sons of God, for His complete expression. As the expression of the unsearchably rich Christ, the church is the unlimited expression of the unlimited Christ. The church is the fullness of Christ, who is Himself the embodiment of the fullness of God (Col. 2:9). It is God’s desire that the church today be such an expression of Christ, His Son. Eventually in Revelation 21 the New Jerusalem, which is the composition of all the sons of God (Rev. 21:7) and the consummation of the church, will be a corporate expression of Christ the Son of God, who will be the temple within the holy city and the lamp to shine out through the city (vv. 22-23).
C. THAT HE MAY BE EXPRESSED IN THE SON THROUGH THE SPIRIT
God desires to have many sons for the expression of His Son so that He may be expressed in the Son through the Spirit. Through the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ, the firstborn Son of God, God has produced millions of sons. These sons are for the expression of His Son. God’s desire is to have many sons to express His Son, who is now the Firstborn among many brothers. When this Son is expressed, God is expressed in the Son through the Spirit.
Paul refers to the expression of God in Ephesians 3:19 when he speaks of our being “filled unto all the fullness of God.” The fullness of God here is the corporate expression of God by the church. To be filled unto all the fullness of God is to be filled with the result that we, as the church, become the corporate expression of God. In Ephesians 3 Paul prayed that the Father would strengthen us with power through His Spirit into our inner man so that Christ might make His home in our hearts and that we might know Christ’s dimensions—the breadth, the length, the height, and the depth—that we might be filled unto, resulting in, the fullness of God, which is His corporate expression, the church.
In Ephesians 3:19 we have the expression of God, and in Ephesians 3:16 we have a word concerning the Spirit. God’s many sons are the expression of His Son so that God Himself may be expressed in the Son through the Spirit. This is God’s good pleasure, His heart’s desire.
D. BY HIS DISPENSING
For God to be expressed in the Son through the Spirit needs God’s dispensing of Himself into His chosen people to produce a corporate expression. In Ephesians 3 the Father answers and fulfills the apostle’s prayer through the Spirit that Christ the Son may make His home in our hearts. As a result, we are filled unto the fullness of God. This is the dispensing of the Triune God into our being for His corporate expression. This expression is in the church today, and it will consummate in the New Jerusalem, the eternal corporate expression of the Triune God.
God desires to dispense Himself into His chosen people for the producing of the church so that He may be expressed in a corporate way. We have seen the many aspects of God’s person and the items of His attributes. All the aspects of God’s person and all the items of His attributes are the ingredients of God as our food to be dispensed into our being.
(Conclusion of the New Testament, The (Msgs. 001-020), Chapter 12, by Witness Lee)
