In experiencing and enjoying the processed Triune God in His triune dispensing, we experience and enjoy the Father in His love. Whatever the Father does in His dispensing and moving in us is in love and is based on love. Love is the source of the Father’s dispensing. Thus, when we experience and enjoy the Triune God, we experience and enjoy the Father in His love.
Second Corinthians 13:14 speaks of the love of God, the grace of Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. We may say that this verse refers to the divine flow. God the Father is the source of the divine flow, God the Son is the course, and God the Spirit is the flow itself reaching us. This flow of the Triune God is out of love, through grace, and by fellowship. The point we would emphasize here is that in experiencing and enjoying the Triune God we experience and enjoy the Father with His love as the source of the divine flow. In the progressing stage of God’s salvation, we are experiencing and enjoying the Father, the source of the divine Trinity in His love as the source of the divine flow.
The New Testament says clearly that God is love (1 John 4:8, 16). The expression “God is love,” like “God is light” (1 John 1:5), and “God is Spirit” (John 4:24), is used not in a metaphoric sense but in a predicative sense. These expressions denote and describe the nature of God. In His nature God is Spirit, love, and light. Spirit denotes the nature of God’s person; love, the nature of God’s essence; and light, the nature of God’s expression. Both love and light are related to God as life, which life is of the Spirit (Rom. 8:2). God, Spirit, and life are actually one. God is Spirit, and Spirit is life. Within such a life are love and light. When this divine love appears to us, it becomes grace, and when this divine light shines upon us, it becomes truth.
In His nature God is Spirit, love, and light. We need to be impressed with the fact that Spirit denotes the nature of God’s person; love, the nature of God’s essence; and light, the nature of God’s expression. In our enjoyment of the Father we enjoy Him mainly in His love as the nature of His essence. When this love flows forth, it immediately becomes grace, and this grace comes with Christ (John 1:17). Hence, love is of the Father, and grace is of the Son. Our emphasis in this message is the believers’ experience and enjoyment of God as the Father in His love.
Concerning God’s love, Paul says in Romans 5:5, “The love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” From the day we believed in the Lord Jesus, the love of God has been poured out in our hearts. This is not merely a matter of feeling. On the contrary, something substantial, something essential, has been poured out into our hearts. This means that, as believers, deep in our hearts we have something of the divine essence, and this is God the Father as love. In other words, God as love is the divine essence that has been poured out into our hearts. Therefore, the pouring out of the love of God into our hearts is a matter of the essence of God. Because we have been regenerated, we have love as the nature of God’s essence within us. Because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts, the heart of every believer is a heart of love. In our experience and enjoyment of God as the Father in His love, we experience and enjoy the dispensing of love as the nature of God’s essence into our hearts.
The believers experience and enjoy God as their Father. Galatians 4:6 says, “Because you are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father!” Romans 8:15 tells us that we “have received a spirit of sonship in which we cry, Abba, Father.” “Abba” is an Aramaic word, thus a Hebrew, that means father; and “Father” is the translation of the Greek word pater. When the two terms “Abba” and “Father” are put together, the result is a deep, sweet sense, a sense that is exquisitely intimate. “Abba, Father” is sweetness intensified. This term was first used by the Lord Jesus in Gethsemane while praying to the Father (Mark 14:36). The combination of the Hebrew title with the Greek expresses a stronger affection in crying to the Father. Such an affectionate cry implies an intimate relationship in life between a genuine son and the begetting Father.
Romans 8:15 and Galatians 4:6 are parallel verses. Romans 8:15 says that we who have received a spirit of sonship cry in this spirit “Abba, Father,” whereas Galatians 4:6 says that the Spirit of God’s Son is in our heart crying “Abba, Father.” This indicates that our regenerated spirit and the Spirit of God are mingled as one. Whether the Spirit cries or we cry, we both cry together. When He cries “Abba, Father,” we cry with Him. When we cry “Abba, Father,” He joins with us in our crying. The Spirit cries in our crying because the Spirit of the Son of God dwells in our spirit.
The sense we have when calling “Abba, Father” is sweet and intimate. How tender and sweet it is to call God “Abba, Father!” Such an intimate calling involves our emotion as well as our spirit. The fact that the Spirit of sonship in our spirit cries “Abba, Father” from our heart proves that we have a genuine relationship in life with our loving Father. We are His real sons.
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