The grace of Christ is the rich element of Christ, the love of God is the rich element of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit is the aggregate of the rich element of Christ and God transmitted into our being for our spiritual enjoyment. In this fellowship we enjoy the rich elements of the Triune God, which are the elements for our transformation. Day after day the rich elements of the Triune God are being transmitted into us, and we are being transformed.

We need to be impressed with the fact that in 2 Corinthians 13:14 love, grace, and fellowship are not three separate matters. Rather, they are three aspects of one thing. Love is the source, grace is the expression of the source, and fellowship is the transmission of the expression. Love as the source is expressed in grace, and this grace is transmitted into us by fellowship. The love of God is the source of the grace of Christ, and the fellowship of the Spirit is the transmission of the grace of Christ with the love of God. Therefore, love, grace, and fellowship are all within us for our enjoyment.

We enjoy love, grace, and fellowship all at the same time. While we enjoy the fellowship of the Spirit, we also have the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God. Just as the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are not three Gods, so love, grace, and fellowship are three aspects of one thing. The Triune God is the Father full of love, the Son full of grace, and the Spirit full of fellowship. We should not think that we successively enjoy the love of the Father, the grace of the Son, and the fellowship of the Spirit. No, we enjoy the love of God, the grace of Christ, and the fellowship of the Spirit simultaneously.

Although we enjoy love, grace, and fellowship simultaneously, it is nevertheless true that love is the source, grace is the course, and fellowship is the destination. Our destination is the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. With such a destination, we enjoy the Triune God in the three aspects of love, grace, and fellowship.

Second Corinthians 13:14 is a strong proof that the Trinity of the Godhead is not for the doctrinal understanding of systematic theology, but for the dispensing of God Himself into His chosen and redeemed people. In the Bible the Trinity is never revealed merely as a doctrine. On the contrary, it is revealed or mentioned in regard to the relationship of God with man, especially with His chosen and redeemed people. In order to redeem fallen man that He might still have the position to be one with man, God became incarnated (John 1:1, 14) in the Son and through the Spirit (Luke 1:31, 35) to be a man and lived a human life on earth, also in the Son (Luke 2:49) and by the Spirit (Luke 4:1; Matt. 12:28). At the beginning of the Lord’s ministry on earth, the Father anointed the Son with the Spirit (Matt. 3:16-17; Luke 4:18) for reaching men and bringing them back to Him. Just before He was crucified in the flesh and resurrected to become the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45), the Lord unveiled His mysterious trinity to His disciples in plain words (John 14-17) stating that the Son is in the Father and the Father is in the Son (14:9-11), that the Spirit is the transfiguration of the Son (14:16-20), that the three, co-existing and coinhering simultaneously, are abiding with the believers for their enjoyment (14:23; 16:7-10; 17:21-23), and that all the Father has is the Son’s and all the Son possesses is received by the Spirit to be revealed to the believers (16:13-15). Such a Trinity is altogether related to the dispensing of the processed Triune God into His believers (14:17, 20; 15:4-5), that they may be one in and with the Triune God (17:21-23).

After His resurrection Christ charged His disciples to disciple the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19), that is, to bring the believing ones into the Triune God, into an organic union with the processed God who has passed through incarnation, human living, and crucifixion and has entered into resurrection. It is based upon such an organic union of the believers with the Triune God that Paul, at the conclusion of his second Epistle to the Corinthians, blesses the believers with the blessed Trinity in the participation of the Son’s grace with the Father’s love through the Spirit’s fellowship. Such an enjoyment of the Triune God is possible through the Spirit’s work in the believers to be the fellowship of the Triune God to them.
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