In 2 Corinthians 13:14 Paul says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” The love, grace, and fellowship in this verse correspond to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit in Matthew 28:19. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ means that Christ is grace and that grace is Christ. Likewise, the love of God means that God is love and that love is God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit means that the Holy Spirit is the fellowship and that the fellowship is the Holy Spirit. Hence, grace is Christ, love is God, and fellowship is the Holy Spirit. God as love is the source; Christ, the embodiment of God, as grace is the course; and the Spirit as fellowship is the flow in the course that reaches us for our application.
Second Corinthians 13:14 reveals Christ as the center of the Triune God in the divine dispensing. Christ is the center of the Triune God. He is the Son with the Father as the Spirit. Within Him is the Father, and He is the Spirit. If we have Christ, we have the Father, and we also have the Spirit. Therefore, if we desire to know Him, we must know the Spirit, because the Father is in the Son, and the Son is the Spirit. Also, if we desire to know the Son with the Father, we must know the Spirit. It is in Christ that the processed Triune God is dispensing Himself into the tripartite believers to be their element for their experience and enjoyment.
At the conclusion of 2 Corinthians Paul 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. The blessing in verse 14 is composed of grace, love, and fellowship. The love of God the Father is the source, the fountain; and the grace of Christ is the flow, the expression, of love. The fellowship of the Holy Spirit is a matter of communication, transportation, and transmission. Therefore, love is the source, grace is the flow, and fellowship is the transmission of the flow with the source.
Second Corinthians 13:14 clearly says that grace is of Christ, love is of God, and fellowship is of the Holy Spirit. Grace is actually the Triune God embodied in Christ and transmitted into our being through the Spirit for our enjoyment. Hence, the grace of Christ is the Triune God as our life, life supply, and enjoyment. This grace issues out from the Father’s love and is transmitted into us by the Spirit. Therefore, we have the grace of Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit as the full enjoyment of the Triune God. Because the book of 2 Corinthians emphasizes grace, grace is mentioned first in 13:14; the grace of Christ is the central thought, the subject, of 2 Corinthians. The main purpose of this book is that we experience the Lord as grace (1:12; 4:15; 6:1; 8:1, 9; 9:8, 14; 12:9).
The love of God the Father is expressed in the grace of Christ the Son. The source of this grace is the love of God. Love is the hidden source; when love is expressed, it becomes grace. Grace and love are not two separate things but two ends of one thing. On God’s end, it is love; on Christ’s end, it is manifested as grace. In other words, when the grace of Christ is traced back to its origin, which is God, it is love, and when the love of God is expressed through Christ, it is grace. Grace is the expression of love, and love is the source of grace. The grace of Christ comes out altogether from the love of God.
What the Father does in His dispensing and in His operating in us is in love and based on love. Love is the source of the Father’s dispensing. Hence, when we experience and enjoy the Triune God, we experience and enjoy Him as the Father in the love of God. When the divine love appears to us, it becomes grace.