Through His dispensing God the Father is making the believers His inheritance of glory. Paul in Ephesians 1:18b speaks of “the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.” The Greek word translated “in” may also be rendered “among.” God’s inheritance is in and among the saints. We, the saints, are God’s inheritance. What we are by nature, however, cannot be God’s inheritance. God does not desire to inherit our nature, our flesh, our natural being. He desires to inherit all that He has dispensed into us of Himself. Therefore, whatever God has dispensed into us of Himself becomes His inheritance.
God’s inheritance in and among the saints is an inheritance of glory. The riches of the glory in 1:18b are the many different items of God’s attributes, such as light, life, righteousness, holiness, and love, expressed in different degrees. Since glory is God’s expression, the riches of His glory are the riches of God’s expression. First, God has made us His inheritance (Eph. 1:11) as His acquired possession (v. 14) and gave us to participate in all He is, all He has, and all He has accomplished as our inheritance. Consummately, all these become His inheritance in the saints for eternity. This will be God’s eternal expression, which is His glory with all its riches to express Him to the uttermost universally and eternally (Rev. 21:11).
Ephesians 1:11 says, “In whom also we were made an inheritance.” The Greek word rendered “were made an inheritance” means to choose or assign by lot. Hence, this clause literally means we were designated as a heritage. We were made an inheritance to inherit God’s inheritance. On the one hand, we were made God’s inheritance for God’s enjoyment; on the other hand, we were made to inherit God as our inheritance for our enjoyment. According to our natural being, we are not worth anything, but in Christ we have been made God’s inheritance. It is by having the Triune God dispensed into us and wrought into us that we are constituted into an inheritance. As God’s element is wrought into our being, we become His inheritance in reality. Therefore, we are still in the process of being made God’s inheritance in full.
It is God Himself within us who constitutes us His inheritance of glory. If God is not dispensed into us and wrought into us, we cannot become His inheritance. The believers become precious to Him by being saturated with the divine essence. Only in this way can poor sinners become God’s special treasure. In this universe God is the only One who is precious. Now this precious God of matchless worth is dispensing Himself into us to make us His inheritance of glory. Our enjoyment of God as our inheritance consummates in our being made His inheritance. We enjoy God. Then our enjoyment of Him makes us His enjoyment.
God is in the process of dispensing Himself into us little by little. Whatever God dispenses of Himself into us becomes His inheritance. Eventually, God will inherit us. Actually, He will inherit Himself in us. The enjoyment of God as our inheritance is the dispensing of God into us. The result of this dispensing is that He is making us His inheritance of glory for His enjoyment.
We need to be deeply impressed with the fact that in our natural being we cannot be God’s inheritance, for in our natural being there is no glory. But from the time we were saved, God has been working to transform us, giving us Himself as our enjoyment, our inheritance. The more we enjoy Him and participate in Him, the more He dispenses His element into our being. Then, more and more, we become His inheritance, and the more of His glory we have. Eventually, we shall be fully saturated with Him and constituted of Him as our inheritance, and this enjoyment and constitution will make us His inheritance. Hence, we are God’s inheritance not in ourselves or by ourselves but by His being our inheritance through the divine dispensing. Then our enjoyment of Him in the divine dispensing will consummate in our being God’s inheritance for Him to enjoy eternally. Ultimately, the New Jerusalem, a mutual dwelling place for God and His chosen, redeemed, regenerated, and transformed people, will be a mutual enjoyment, for in the New Jerusalem we shall enjoy the Triune God as our eternal inheritance, and He will enjoy us as His eternal inheritance. This consummation will be the issue of God’s dispensing Himself into us and constituting us of Himself.
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