Message Eight

The Dispensing of the Triune God as Life
into the Tripartite Man according to His Righteousness, through His Holiness, and unto His Glory

Scripture Reading: Rom. 1:17; 6:19, 22;
8:2, 6, 10-11, 18, 21; 9:23; 11:36; 12:1-5; 16:27

1. God’s eternal economy is to dispense Himself as the law of the Spirit of life into man so that His divine attributes of righteousness, holiness, and glory would become man’s human virtues for God’s corporate expression as the reality of the Body of Christ in the local churches to consummate the New Jerusalem as the city of righteousness, holiness, and glory—Gen. 2:9; John 10:10b; 14:6a; 1 Cor. 15:45b; Rom. 8:2; 2 Pet. 3:13; Rev. 21:2, 9-11:
   1. God’s desire is to work Himself into us to the extent that He becomes us and we become Him, that we and He become completely identical in life, nature, and image; this is the pinnacle of His economy—John 1:12-13; 2 Pet. 1:4; 2 Cor. 3:18.
   2. Man was created in the image of God as a living vessel to receive and contain God as life for the reproduction, the duplication, of God in life—Gen. 1:26; 2:7; Rom. 9:21, 23; 2 Cor. 4:7; John 12:24.
2. Christ died on the cross to satisfy the requirements of God’s righteousness, holiness, and glory and was resurrected to become the life-dispensing Spirit as the reality of the tree of life to be our righteousness, holiness, and glory—Gen. 3:24; 1 Cor. 15:45b; 1:30; cf. Eph. 5:25-27:
   1. The life of the Triune God dispensed into our tripartite being makes us men of life to be God’s sons and the members of Christ to constitute the Body of Christ for His expression, thus fulfilling God’s original intention—Gen. 2:7, 9; Rom. 8:14; 12:5:
      1. “The law of the Spirit of life [Gk. zoe] has freed me in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and of death”—8:2.
      2. “If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life [Gk. zoe] because of righteousness”—v. 10.
      3. “The mind set on the spirit is life [Gk. zoe] and peace”—v. 6.
      4. “If the Spirit of the One who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life [Gk. zoe] to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who indwells you”—v. 11.
   2. The three primary colors of the rainbow around God’s throne are blue (the color of the sapphire throne, which signifies God’s righteousness—Ezek. 1:26; Psa. 89:14), red (the color of the sanctifying fire, which signifies God’s holiness—Ezek. 1:4, 13, 27; Heb. 12:29), and yellow (the color of the glowing electrum, which signifies God’s glory—Ezek. 1:4, 27; Heb. 1:3):
      1. The rainbow around God’s throne signifies that God is the covenanting God, the faithful God, who will keep His new covenant to impart the newness of life into His chosen ones to make them the New Jerusalem while executing His judgment upon the earth—Gen. 9:13; Rev. 4:3; 21:2; Rom. 6:4; Ezek. 1:26-28; 36:26-27.
      2. The spiritual reality of this rainbow should be manifest in the church today; we need to allow God to fill us with His righteous presence by giving Him the full opportunity to work in us as the sanctifying fire for His radiant expression of glory through our coordination as the corporate Christ—1:5-14, 26-28.
      3. Christ Himself, signified by the rainbow of righteousness, holiness, and glory, is the covenant of God given to His people for their “Christification,” which is to make them exactly the same as He is in life, nature, and expression but not in the Godhead—Isa. 42:6; Heb. 8:10-12.
   3. Christ is wisdom to us from God, transmitting Himself into us as righteousness (that we might be reborn in our spirit), sanctification (that we might be transformed in our soul), and redemption (that we might be glorified in our body)—1 Cor. 1:30; Rom. 8:10; 12:2; 8:23; Phil. 3:21.
   4. The transmission of Christ, as the multifarious wisdom of God, into our being makes us the masterpiece of the Triune God as the wise exhibition of all that He is, a poem expressing His infinite wisdom and divine design—1 Cor. 1:30; Eph. 2:10; 3:9-11.
   5. In eternity as the New Jerusalem (a city whose foundations have the appearance of a rainbow—Rev. 21:19-20), we will be a rainbow to testify of God’s faithfulness to carry out His new covenant in making us exactly the same as He is as righteousness, holiness, and glory—vv. 10-11.
3. Romans reveals that in every church there must be the base of God’s righteousness (God’s procedure), the process of God’s holiness (God’s nature), and the goal of God’s glory (God’s expression) to bring us into the heart of God to have the reality of the Body of Christ through the local churches—1:17; 8:10; 6:19, 22; 8:18, 21; 9:23; 11:36—12:5; 16:27:
   1. Romans reveals the tabernacle of God as the Body life realized in the church life (chs. 12—16) with the basic structure of righteousness (3:21—5:11), holiness (v. 12—8:13), and glory (vv. 14-39):
      1. Justification through Christ’s redemption is in the outer court, sanctification is in the Holy Place, and glorification is in the Holy of Holies.
      2. The church life is the Triune God mingled with His chosen people, who are justified, sanctified, glorified, and built together to be the tabernacle, the reality of the Body of Christ in the local churches to consummate in the New Jerusalem, the ultimate tabernacle of God—Rev. 21:3.
      3. The dispensing of the Triune God is according to His righteousness, through His holiness, and unto His glory; the ultimate goal of the dispensing of the Triune God as life is glory, the expression of God in and through the church as the Body of Christ—Rom. 5:17; 6:19-23; 8:18, 21; 16:27; Eph. 3:16-21.
   2. Christ’s death is for God’s righteousness, Christ’s resurrection is for God’s holiness, and Christ’s ascension is for God’s glory; when Christ comes back, the glorification of His saints will be consummated.
   3. As our Substitute, Christ died on the cross for us in order to fulfill God’s righteous requirements for our justification so that He could dispense Himself as life into us—John 19:34; Rom. 1:17; 3:23-25; 5:18; Rev. 22:14:
      1. A proper Christian is one who has died with Christ and who conducts himself daily according to this fact; if a believer lives in a natural way, he will be unrighteous, but if he experiences the death of the cross, he will be righteous in everything, with everyone, and in every way—Gal. 2:20; 2 Cor. 3:9.
      2. Only the death of Christ and our death with Christ fulfill the requirements of God’s righteousness and give God the ground to righteously dispense Himself as the divine life into our entire being so that we may be swallowed up by life to be the city of life—Rom. 8:10, 6, 11; 2 Cor. 5:4.
      3. To live and serve as a minister of the new covenant is to take the way of righteousness, the living out and genuine expression of Christ, by recognizing that we do not have any qualification to be a servant of God, that as a man in the flesh we are good for nothing except death and burial—Matt. 3:13-17; 21:32.
   4. Sanctification is the subjective activity of holiness; it is holiness in action:
      1. Sanctification is the resurrected Christ as “the Spirit the Holy,” the sanctifying Spirit in our spirit, working Himself as God’s holy nature into our being to make us the holy city—1 Thes. 5:23; Rom. 6:19, 22; 15:16; 8:4.
      2. The divine sanctification is the holding line in the carrying out of the divine economy, the process of God’s organic salvation as God’s move to deify man, making man God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead—Heb. 2:10-11; Eph. 1:4-5; Rev. 21:2.
      3. To live and serve as a minister of the new covenant is to walk in newness of life and serve in newness of spirit as a laboring priest of the gospel of God in order to present the saved sinners to God as an acceptable offering sanctified in the Holy Spirit—Rom. 6:4; 7:6; 15:16.
   5. The ultimate goal of the dispensing of the Triune God is that God would be expressed through the Body of Christ for His glory in the church—Eph. 3:20-21; Rom. 8:19, 21, 28-30; 16:27:
      1. The oneness in John 17 is the church; when the oneness is realized in a thorough way, by the full denial of the self, the Son glorifies the Father in the church—vv. 1, 21-23.
      2. This indicates that wherever there is the proper church life, there is the glorification of the Father, for the church life expresses the Father.
      3. To live and serve as a minister of the new covenant is to do all to the glory of God for the exaltation of Christ—Rom. 11:36; 1 Cor. 10:31; Phil. 1:20; 2 Cor. 4:5.
   6. The dispensing of the Triune God as life according to His righteousness, through His holiness, and unto His glory is for us to become the New Jerusalem with Christ as our solid foundation of righteousness, our pure constituent of holiness, and our radiant expression of glory—Rev. 21:2, 9-11.
   7. Thus, the Spirit, as the processed and consummated God, and the bride, as the processed and consummated church, are joined to become a loving pair of one entity in life for eternity—22:17a; cf. 1 Cor. 6:17.