THE THREEFOLD DISPENSING
OF THE PROCESSED TRINITY
I am so grateful to the Lord that we can touch the intrinsic revelation of Ephesians 1. This revelation is altogether wrapped up in God’s threefold dispensing— the Father’s dispensing, the Son’s dispensing, and the Spirit’s dispensing. These are not three kinds of dispensings. This is just one dispensing which is threefold. Firstly, the Father chose us, predestinating us to be His sons in holiness (vv. 4-5). This implies the Father’s dispensing. If the Father had not dispensed Himself as the holy nature into us, how could we be holy? In the whole universe there is only One who is holy— God Himself. Furthermore, if the Father had not dispensed Himself into us, how could we become His sons? We are His sons not by adoption but by birth. Birth implies dispensing. Our Father begot us. In that begetting He spontaneously dispensed His life into us. So in the Father’s dispensing we all were made His sons in sanctification.
Also, as lost ones we needed redemption, so the Son came to redeem us out of Adam (vv. 7-12). Adam was the sphere and the element into which we fell. But Christ came in the flesh as a man, went to the cross, and died an all-inclusive death to rescue us from Adam and bring us into Christ Himself as another realm. Now we are in Christ. In the New Testament, this is a strong phrase — in Christ. To be in Christ is a great thing. We have been redeemed into a sphere, into a realm, and also into an element. This element is living, organic, and working. Christ is the life into which we have been redeemed.
Now Christ as the life-giving element is working within us. Any kind of life works and operates. When the divine life works, this is the working of the life-giving Spirit. Christ as the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). This means that the Spirit works with Christ as life to transform us. In this transformation, we are being made right-side up. We were in Adam, altogether upside down in a situation of collapse. In the whole universe, there is nothing but collapse, and we were a part of that collapse. But Christ redeemed us out of the collapse into Himself as life. Now this life element is working within us to adjust us, to bring us back to the divine order.
Now we all are in His Body being headed up under Him. In the past we did not have any head. Rather, we made ourselves the head. Consider today’s society. Everyone is their own head. In today’s modern families, the children even become heads. Today’s universe, today’s world, today’s America, and today’s society are a collapse. But we have been redeemed out of this collapse into Christ, our realm, our element, and our Head. He is now working within us all the time by transforming us.
We are now in Christ to be transformed all the time. As we remain in Christ, we experience the sealing of the Spirit. The Spirit today is not just the Spirit of God. He is the Spirit of Jesus Christ (Phil. 1:19), the life-giving Spirit, and this life-giving Spirit is Christ Himself. Such a life-giving Spirit is the consummation of the Triune God. The entire Triune God has been consummated in this Spirit. In this Spirit there are the Father, the Son, the Spirit, Christ’s divinity, His humanity, His incarnation, His human living, His crucifixion, His resurrection, and His ascension. All these are compounded in this consummation of the Triune God, which is the life-giving Spirit, and such a Spirit came to seal us.
Sealing is a matter of saturation, a matter of soaking. The sealing ink has a spreading effect. I like this phrase spreading effect. Eventually, the entire piece of paper is saturated with the sealing ink. Such a spreading effect is a finer dispensing. When we were saved, we were sealed and this sealing will continue until our body is redeemed (Eph. 4:30). This sealing came upon us to spread finely within us in everything—in the way we think, in the way we talk, in the way we deal with people, in the way we cut our hair, etc. We need to realize that even the way we cut our hair impresses people with who we are. We should bear the Lord’s testimony and expression in everything we do and in everything related to our person.
(The Issue of the Dispensing of the Processed Trinity and the Transmitting of the Transcending Christ, Chapter 4, by Witness Lee)
