Following God the Father’s dispensing, there are Christ’s dispensing and the Spirit’s dispensing. Christ’s dispensing is in His redemption. Ephesians 1:7 says that in Christ we have redemption through His blood. Through His redemption Christ saves us into Himself that in Him we may experience His dispensing. Let us use the pearl as an illustration. When an oyster is wounded by a grain of sand, it secretes its life-juice around the grain of sand and makes it into a pearl. Wounded by us in His death, Christ saves us into Himself so that by receiving the secretion of His life-juice we are made into precious pearls to constitute God’s precious inheritance (Eph. 1:11).
On one hand, God already loved us in eternity (v. 4), but on the other hand, we who were dead in our offenses and sins (2:1) were not worthy to be loved. A grain of sand is not worthy of love, but a treasure is worthy. We were unworthy to be loved, but by entering into Christ to receive His dispensing in redemption, we have become treasures worthy of God’s love and can be constituted as God’s precious inheritance. Hallelujah! This inheritance is a new man, a new creation.
Once we have become God’s precious inheritance, we take the lead in the whole universe to be headed up in Christ to restore the proper order in God’s creation (1:10). Because of man’s fall, the entire universe has become a heap of collapse, with all things in disarray. Furthermore, in the universe, the authority of God is being opposed and rebelled against. However, we believers have been redeemed to be God’s inheritance through Christ’s dispensing and are taking the lead to be headed up in Christ. This will restore the order in the entire universe. Today, rebellion is seen everywhere. Even a little mosquito is rebellious. Your dog often disobeys you, and your children even more. The grass does not listen to you but grows everywhere and has to be cut. In the schools, the students do not listen to the teachers. And even in the church, we often do not submit to the leadership of the elders. This is all due to a shortage of dispensing. The more we receive the dispensing, the more we can submit. As a result, the whole universe is gradually headed up. This is the goal of God’s economy.
After the dispensing of Christ the Son, there is the dispensing of the Spirit. The action and work of the Spirit’s dispensing in us is carried out through the Spirit’s sealing (Eph. 1:13) to strengthen the dispensing of God the Father and of Christ the Son. Sealing is a gentle and fine work of the Spirit. In the New Testament the Holy Spirit is likened to a gentle dove (Matt. 3:16). If you move a little, a dove will fly away. This indicates that the Holy Spirit is very gentle. In Luke 15 the Lord Jesus used the parable of a woman who sweeps the house and seeks carefully for a lost silver coin, to illustrate the Holy Spirit’s gentle and fine work in us. What the Holy Spirit does is to seal the believers in a gentle and fine way with the essence of the Triune God to saturate them until their body is redeemed (Eph. 4:30).
On one hand, the Holy Spirit is a seal in us to mark us out, and on the other hand, He is in us doing the work of anointing. The Spirit not only seals us but also anoints us. On one hand, the Spirit’s sealing with His anointing impresses the image of the Triune God upon us, and on the other hand, it soaks us and anoints all our inward parts with the essence of the Triune God as the ink. Hence, here we have the dispensing of the essence and the expression of the image. It is in this way that we experience the gentle and fine dispensing so that the essence of the Triune God, His attributes and virtues, His love, His light, His holiness, and His righteousness increase in us day by day. As a result, an image will be formed in us that we may be the expression of God. This is what the new hymn says: “His attributes my virtues are; / His glorious image shines through me.” This sealing results in our being filled and saturated with the Spirit.
Not only so, the divine essence with which the believers are sealed becomes the pledge, the guarantee, and the foretaste of God as the believers’ inheritance (Eph. 1:14). In the dispensing of Christ we become God’s inheritance, but in the Spirit’s sealing God becomes our inheritance. We become God’s inheritance, and God becomes our inheritance. This is God becoming man and man becoming God. God becomes our inheritance through the Spirit as the pledge, the guarantee, and the foretaste in us. One day, at the completion of the sealing, our body will be redeemed. At that time our body will be exactly like God’s and will be completely filled with the divine essence. Today we are still in the process of being redeemed. Therefore, there is the need of a guarantee. This guarantee is the Spirit given to us by God. This Spirit is the guarantee and the foretaste. On that day we will have the full taste. Today we can have a foretaste of the redemption of our body through the sealing of the Spirit.
From Ephesians 4:25 Paul began to speak concerning the details of the believers’ living. In verse 30 he mentioned again the sealing of the Spirit, which he had mentioned previously in chapter one, saying, “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed unto the day of redemption.” This means that the gentle, detailed dispensing of the Holy Spirit takes place in the details of our daily life. Especially in our speaking and in our temper, we very much need to continuously experience the gentle, detailed dispensing of the Spirit in us. We have to admit that we often grieve the Spirit. With regard to our stubbornness and wrangling, the Holy Spirit does not fly away like a dove but remains in us grieving. Paul reminds us that we are those who have been sealed in Him. This means we have God’s image in us and thus are like God. Moreover, we have the essence of God sealing us within. Hence, we should not grieve the Holy Spirit, so that He may freely carry out His sealing within us until our body is redeemed.
Therefore, the way for our entire being to be conformed to His glorious image is to not grieve the Holy Spirit of God and to be joined to the Spirit all the time and to live and walk in the Spirit. We have the seal of God in us, so we need to walk by the Spirit, especially in relation to our speaking and our temper. Thus the gentle dispensing of the Spirit will continually move in us and seal us so that there will truly be glory in every part of us and God will be in us everywhere. God will be not only in our mind, emotion, and will, but even in our speaking, our move, and our actions, from our head to our feet. Hallelujah! This is the dispensing of the processed Divine Trinity in the believers.
M. C. substituting for W. L.
(The Dispensing, Transformation and Building of the Processed Divine Trinity in the Believers, Chapter 2, by Witness Lee)