The redemption of the believers’ body is for God’s purchased possession to be redeemed, with the Holy Spirit as the pledge of our inheritance. Ephesians 1:14 says that the Holy Spirit “is the pledge of our inheritance, unto the redemption of the acquired possession.” Redemption here refers to the redemption of our body, that is, the transfiguration of our body of humiliation into a glorious one. The Holy Spirit today is a guarantee, a foretaste, and a sample of our divine inheritance until our body is transfigured in glory, at which time we shall inherit God in full.
Ephesians 1:14 speaks of the redemption of the “acquired possession.” We, God’s redeemed ones, are God’s possession acquired by His purchase with the precious blood of Christ (Acts 20:28). In God’s New Testament economy, the processed Triune God becomes our inheritance, and we become God’s possession. How marvelous! We give nothing, and we get everything! God acquired us at a cost, but we inherit God at no cost.
Through His redemption, God has acquired, secured, purchased us to be His possession. The redemption of our body, therefore, is for God’s purchased possession to be redeemed. In His salvation God first gives Himself to us as our inheritance. Then we begin to enjoy Him as our inheritance. Actually, the divine dispensing of the divine Trinity is the enjoyment in a practical way of God Himself as our inheritance. As we enjoy the processed Triune God as our inheritance, His element comes into our being and transforms us to make us His inheritance. This means that through our enjoyment of Him we are infused and saturated with His element and transformed to become His inheritance for His enjoyment. Therefore, the coming glorification will be not only for us but also for God. The redemption of our body will be both for our enjoyment and God’s enjoyment. The Holy Spirit within us is not only a foretaste but also a pledge guaranteeing that God is ours and that we shall be His. He is our inheritance for our enjoyment, and we shall become His inheritance for His enjoyment.
Through regeneration in the resurrection of Christ we have become heirs to inherit the Triune God, who is our inheritance with the Holy Spirit as the pledge. The Greek word for pledge in Ephesians 1:14 also means foretaste, guarantee, and partial payment in advance. God gives His Holy Spirit to us not only as a guarantee of our inheritance, securing our heritage, but also as a foretaste of what we shall inherit of God.
The Spirit is the pledge of our inheritance unto the redemption of the acquired possession. As God’s possession, we still need the redemption of our body, for our body is still in the old creation. One day we, God’s possession, will be redeemed in our body. The Triune God has put His Spirit into us as a pledge of Himself as our inheritance unto, or with a view to, the day when, as God’s acquired possession we shall be redeemed into His glory for Him to enjoy us. On the one hand, the Triune God is our inheritance; on the other hand, we are His possession. The crucial matter in Ephesians 1:14 is that the Spirit is pledged into us as a guarantee that God will be our inheritance in full. Eventually, we shall be redeemed to be God’s possession in glory. Then, in glory, we shall enjoy the processed Triune God as our inheritance, and He will enjoy us as His possession.
Daily we enjoy the Triune God in the way of the Spirit’s pledging. God pledges Himself as the Spirit within us for our enjoyment, guaranteeing that we shall eventually have the full taste of the Triune God. This enjoyment of God as our inheritance is the dispensing of the processed Triune God into us. The result of this dispensing is that we become God’s inheritance, His purchased possession, for His enjoyment. We are God’s inheritance not in ourselves or by ourselves but by His being our inheritance. Daily we participate in Him as He dispenses Himself into our being. Eventually we shall be saturated with Him and constituted of Him as our inheritance. This enjoyment and constitution will make us His inheritance. Thus, our enjoyment of the Triune God will consummate in our being God’s inheritance for Him to enjoy eternally. This consummation will be the issue of God’s dispensing Himself into us and constituting us of Himself. His dispensing makes us His inheritance, and through the enjoyment of Him as our inheritance we become His inheritance, His acquired possession, to be redeemed through the redemption of our body.
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