God’s highest purpose is attained through the unlimited dispensing of the processed and consummated Triune God. He is the Triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit (Matt. 28:19). In His dispensing, as the Father He regenerates us by dispensing His divine life and holy nature into us. After the dispensing through regeneration, He renews us through the Holy Spirit. Regeneration is the first step of dispensing. Originally, we were people without God’s life, but one day we heard the gospel and received the Lord Jesus into us by repenting and confessing our sins and calling on the name of the Lord. At the same time, the life of God the Father and His life element came into us through His dispensing. Christians like John 3:16. They pay much attention to phrases such as God so loved the world, His only begotten Son, every one who believes into Him, not perish, and have eternal life. Yet, they neglect the key word gave. The most mysterious, excellent, and marvelous thing about this verse is in the word gave. This giving is the dispensing of God the Father. When God the Father gives us the Son, He gives us, He dispenses into us, His divine life that we may be regenerated and become children of God.
Regeneration as the initiation of the divine dispensing has three issues. First, it causes the fallen old creation in Adam to become the new creation in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17). Second, it causes sinners as God’s enemies to become children of God (Rom. 5:10; John 1:12-13). Third, it causes the dead in Adam to become the organic Body of Christ (1 Cor. 15:22; Rom. 12:5). Hallelujah! The old creation becomes the new creation; sinners who were enemies become children of God; and the dead become the organic Body of Christ. How wonderful this is! Before we were saved we were apparently alive, but we were actually dead. Outwardly, we seemed to be active, but inwardly we were full of death. However, once we are saved, we are no longer dead, nor are we individual living ones. Rather, we are the organic Body of Christ! This is the result brought in through regeneration.
When the divine life enters into us, it not only regenerates us but also begins to renew us. Since God is “new,” renewing is the continuous adding of God Himself into us. This is the second step of the dispensing of God. At our regeneration, God enters into our spirit, so our spirit has the divine life. But we still have many troublesome things in us. First, our mind, emotion, and will are still in the old creation. Many of you came from faraway places to attend this conference, but when you go to see the Grand Canyon, you forget everything. Sometimes when we are busy on our jobs, dispensing, regeneration, and renewing seem to become unreal. Instead, the affairs of our daily life and our loans become very real. This is because our soul remains in the old creation.
After the dispensing in regeneration, we first need God to dispense His life element continuously into our spirit by the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5b; 2 Cor. 4:16b). Then, we need to be metabolically renewed in our inward parts, beginning from our mind (Rom. 12:2a). This is not an outward correction or change; it is a change in the inner essence, a metabolic, organic change. This renewing begins in our mind. Our thinking, our concepts, our logic, and our habits need to be renewed. The genuine Christians need to be renewed continuously. It is not a matter of how much you have been renewed, but of whether you are constantly being renewed. In the beginning you may feel that every day you are about the same. But after a period of time, by the change in your mind, people can detect that you are being renewed. If you have been renewed, people can sense that you have the “flavor” of God and you also have the spiritual understanding.
For the believers to be renewed, they need to have their inward parts joined to the Spirit in order to absorb the divine element distributed by the Spirit (Rom. 8:5-6). By ourselves we can never be renewed; we can be renewed only by being joined to the Spirit. The secret of being joined to the Spirit is first to pray unceasingly (1 Thes. 5:17). If all day long we do not pray, it will be very difficult to be joined to the Spirit. But if we pray unceasingly, we are joined to the Spirit even if we pray wrongly. Once they are saved, Christians immediately have the authority and the faculty to pray. But unfortunately, because of the work of the enemy, today’s Christianity has nearly annulled the prayer faculty of the believers. I hope that we all are people who pray unceasingly. Even at the last breath of our human life we would still pray. Thus, when our breathing stops, our spirit is still joined to the Lord. How good this is! Prayer enables us to be joined to the Spirit and to absorb the Spirit that the divine element may spread within us.
In order to be renewed, the believers also need to walk according to the spirit in all things that their inward parts may be renewed by being saturated with the Spirit, until their entire being becomes a new creation that is fully organic (Rom. 8:4). To walk according to the spirit in all things requires us to pray unceasingly and to call on the name of the Lord constantly and in every place (1 Cor. 1:2). When you call, “O Lord Jesus!” the Lord will lead you in your daily walk and render great help to your family life and married life.
Therefore, the issue of being renewed is that the entire being of the believers is filled and saturated with the Spirit of life to be God’s spiritual new creation (Rom. 8:2). It is at this time that man is made God.
(The Dispensing, Transformation and Building of the Processed Divine Trinity in the Believers, Chapter 2, by Witness Lee)