2009秋季长老
总题:在神圣三一的神圣分赐中生活并事奉
Message One The Divine Intention, the Divine Economy, and the Divine Dispensing of the Divine Trinity
Scripture Reading: Eph. 1:5, 9-11; 3:9-11, 14-21; 2 Cor. 13:14; Rev. 4:11; 21:2, 10-11
I. The most crucial and mysterious matter revealed in the Bible is that God's ultimate intention is to work Himself in Christ into His chosen and redeemed people to make them His corporate expression—Eph. 3:14-21:
A. God's eternal intention is to have Christ wrought into our being to make us Christ-men, who are filled, possessed, and saturated with Christ and by Christ; there is nothing more important or basic in the whole universe than this matter—Rev. 4:11; Gal. 2:20; 4:19; Col. 3:4, 10-11:
1. God's desire to work Himself in Christ into our being is the focal point of the divine revelation in the Scriptures—Gal. 1:15-16; 2:20.
2. The life factor in the Bible is God's intention to work Himself into us—4:19.
B. God's eternal intention is to work Christ into our being; for the accomplish-ment of this intention, God created man as a vessel to contain Him, He gave man a spiritual organ to receive Him, and Christ became the life-giving Spirit to enter into our spirit—Eph. 3:14-17a; Gen. 2:7; 1 Cor. 15:45b.
C. God wants to work His entire being into us to the extent that He becomes our constitution—Col. 3:10-11:
1. God's intention is to dispense Himself in His Divine Trinity into us so that He becomes every fiber of our tripartite being—Rom. 8:11; Eph. 3:14-17a.
2. God's intention is to dispense Himself into us and work Himself into us as our life, our nature, and our everything until eventually He and we, we and He, are mingled together, and we become His expression—4:4-6.
D. The divine intention is to make us, the believers in Christ, the same as God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead—John 1:12-14; 1 John 3:1-2:
1. God's intention is to make us like Him in His divine life, in His divine nature, and in His image as His expression but not in the Godhead; for God to make us like Him in this way actually means to make us God—Col. 3:4; 2 Pet. 1:4; 2 Cor. 3:18.
2. God has imparted Himself in Christ as the Spirit into us to make us the same as He is in life and in nature but not in the Godhead; this is the divine intention—Rom. 8:11; 2 Cor. 13:14; 2 Pet. 1:4.
II. The divine economy is that God became man so that man may become God in life and nature but not in the Godhead to produce the organism of the Triune God, the Body of Christ, which consummates in the New Jeru-salem—Rom. 1:3-4; 8:3, 6, 10-11, 16; 12:4-5; Rev. 21:2, 10-11:
A. The divine economy is the issue of God's will, purpose, good pleasure, and counsel—Eph. 1:5, 9-11; 3:9-11:
1. God's will is God's wish, God's desire; God's will is what He wishes to do and wants to do—Rev. 4:11; Eph. 1:5.
2. God's purpose is God's intent set beforehand; God's eternal purpose is His eternal plan made in eternity past—v. 9; 3:11.
3. God's good pleasure is what makes God happy; it is what God likes and what pleases Him—1:5, 9; Phil. 2:13.
4. God's counsel is God's resolution consummated in the council of the Divine Trinity—Eph. 1:9; Acts 2:23; 1 Pet. 1:20.
5. After God's will, purpose, good pleasure, and counsel, there is God's econ-omy—God's household administration, God's plan and arrangement—1 Tim. 1:4; Eph. 1:10; 3:9.
B. The intention of God's economy is to dispense Himself into His chosen people, making them one with Him; to dispense Christ with all His riches into His believers chosen by God for the constitution of the Body of Christ, the church, in order to express the processed and consummated Triune God; and to head up all things in Christ in the new heaven and new earth—5:32; 3:8-10; 1:10.
C. The divine economy is that God became flesh, passed through human living, died, resurrected, and became the life-giving Spirit to enter into us as life and dispense Godintoussothatwemay be transformedfor theproducing of the church, which is the Body of Christ, the house of God, the kingdom of God, and the counterpart of Christ, the ultimate aggregate of which is the New Jerusa-lem—John 1:14, 29; Acts 2:24; 1 Cor. 12:12-13; 15:45b; 1 Tim. 3:15; Rev. 5:10; 21:2.
III. The accomplishment of the divine economy is by the divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity—2 Cor. 13:14; Eph. 1:3-23; 3:14-21:
A. The divine economy is God's plan and arrangement out of His desire and pur-pose; the divine dispensing is God's dispensing and distributing according to this plan and arrangement—1:5, 9-11; 3:14-17a.
B. Everything that is mentioned in the New Testament concerning God is related to the divine dispensing for the divine economy—Rom. 8:3, 11; Eph. 1:3-23:
1. The revelation concerning the Triune God in the holy Word is not for doc-trinal understanding but for the dispensing of God in His Divine Trinity into His chosen and redeemed people for their experience and enjoyment— 2 Cor. 13:14.
2. The Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—has been processed to become the life-giving Spirit so that we can drink of Him and that He can become our enjoyment; this is the divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity— John 1:14; 4:14; 7:37-39; 1 Cor. 12:13; 15:45b.
3. The Divine Trinity is for the divine dispensing, that is, for the distribution of God into the believers in Christ; the Father as the origin is the fountain, the Son as the expression is the spring, and the Spirit as the transmission is the flow—John 4:14; 7:37-39.
C. The divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity is the unique way to build up the church, which is the Body of Christ and the dwelling place of God—Eph. 4:16; 2:21-22; 1 Tim. 3:15.
IV. We need a vision of the central matter in the Bible—the divine intention, the divine economy, and the divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity into the believers in Christ for the building up of the church as the Body of Christ, which will consummate in the New Jerusalem as the eternal cor-porate expression of the Triune God—Eph. 1:5, 9-11, 22-23; 3:14-21; 4:16; Rev. 21:2, 10-11.