Galatians 4:6 says, “Because you are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father!” God’s Son is the embodiment of the divine life (1 John 5:12). Hence, the Spirit of God’s Son is the Spirit of life (Rom. 8:2). God gives us His Spirit of life not because we are lawkeepers but because we are His sons. As law-keepers we have no right to enjoy God’s Spirit of life. As sons of God we have the position with the full right to participate in the Spirit of God, who has the bountiful supply of life. Such a Spirit, the Spirit of the Son of God, is the focus of the blessing of God’s promise to Abraham (Gal. 3:14).
In verses 4 through 6 of Galatians 4 the Triune God is producing many sons for the fulfillment of His eternal purpose. God the Father sent forth God the Son to redeem us from the law so that we might receive the sonship. He also sent forth God the Spirit to impart His life into us so that we might become His sons in reality.
Galatians 4:4 and 6 speak of two kinds of sending. Verse 4 says that God sent forth His Son, and verse 6, that God sent forth the Spirit of His Son. According to the promise in Genesis 3:15, Christ came under law as the seed of the woman in order to redeem those who were under law, that they might receive the sonship. The goal of Christ’s redemption, therefore, is sonship. Through His redemption Christ has opened the way for us to possess God’s sonship. However, if God had not sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, our sonship would be empty. It would be a sonship in position or form, not a sonship with reality. The reality of sonship, which depends on life and maturity, comes only by the Spirit of God’s Son. Thus, Galatians 4:6 declares that God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts.
We should not think that the Spirit of the Son is a person separate from the Son. Actually, the Spirit of the Son is another form of the Son. The One who was crucified was Christ, but the One who enters into the believers is the Spirit. In crucifixion for our redemption this One was Christ, but in the indwelling to be our life He is the Spirit. When the Son died on the cross, He was Christ, but when He enters into us, He is the Spirit. First He came as the Son under the law to qualify us for sonship and to open the way for us to share in this sonship. After He had finished this work, He became, in resurrection, the life-giving Spirit and comes to us as the Spirit of the Son. Thus, first God the Father sent the Son to accomplish redemption and to qualify us for sonship. Then He sent the Spirit of the Son to vitalize the sonship and to make it real in our experience. Today sonship actually depends upon the Spirit of God’s Son.
Galatians 4:6 says that God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts. Actually the Spirit of God came into our spirit at our regeneration (John 3:6; Rom. 8:16). Because our spirit is hidden in our hearts (1 Pet. 3:4) and because the word in Galatians 4:6 refers to a matter that is related to our feeling and understanding, both of which belong to our heart, this verse says that the Spirit of God’s Son was sent into our hearts.
Romans 8:11 says “If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from among the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from among the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who indwells you.” The God of resurrection who raised Christ from among the dead gives life, the divine life, to the believers’ mortal bodies to strengthen their bodies and even make their dying bodies alive through His Spirit who indwells our spirit. It is by this that a believer can give life to a sinning brother as mentioned in 1 John 5:16. This brother does not give life to others by himself; he gives life to others by being one spirit with the Lord (1 Cor. 6:17), thus he can impart, through the life-giving Spirit, the Lord’s life to others in the fellowship of the Lord’s divine life.
In 1 Corinthians 3:6-7 the Apostle Paul, the master planter in God’s farm, tells us that only God gives the growth to the believers, the spiritual plants on God’s farm. Regardless of how much Paul can plant and Apollos can water, they cannot give growth to the plants. God is the only One who makes us to grow, because He is the unique source of life with the unique life-supply. The growth God gives to us is the growth in life, which is crucially needed for us to be transformed into precious materials, the precious stones, for God’s building (1 Cor. 3:9-12a).
Philippians 2:13 says, “It is God who operates in you both the willing and the working for His good pleasure.” Philippians is a book showing us the way to experience Christ. In this verse it tells us that for us to experience Christ, God operates in us both the willing inwardly and working outwardly, that we may live Christ as our life for God’s good pleasure, as Christ did in His humanity while He was on the earth. God’s operating in us is to carry out our salvation in our daily life as indicated by the proceeding verse, even in murmurings and reasonings as pointed out in the following verse.
In speaking about spiritual gifts, concerning the distributions of operations, the Apostle Paul says, in 1 Corinthians 12:6, that God operates “all things in all.” In God’s new dispensational work, He also operates all things, especially, according to the context of 1 Corinthians 12:6, the things related to the exercise of the Spirit’s gifts for the Lord’s ministries. To carry out His New Testament economy in and through all the believers God operates all things in the believers according to His desire. This is mainly done in the church meetings through the believers’ functions in the exercise of the Spirit’s gifts for the Lord’s ministries under God’s diverse operations. This is the way that God in His divine Trinity works in the believers, according to His New Testament economy, to accomplish His eternal purpose for the expression of Himself in His manifestation.
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