Christ expresses God. No one has ever seen God, but Christ, who declared God, also expressed God (John 1:18; 14:9b-11a). When you see Him you see God. God is love, God is light, God is holy, and God is righteous. All these attributes of God can be seen in the Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus is love and light and holiness and righteousness because He is the expression of God for us to participate in God and so that God can dispense Himself into our being.
The Lord Jesus was born, and for the first thirty years He did not have any disciples. But during His last three and a half years He collected some disciples who were with Him. They had Him with them, but they did not have Him within them. This means that God still had not been dispensed into them. But He had collected them, and He had prepared them. Then He went to die and resurrected and came back to them as the Spirit. He breathed into them, and they all received the Spirit out of Him (John 20:22). At that time God began to be dispensed into all the disciples. The Lord Jesus had spent three and a half years to prepare the disciples to receive God into them as grace and reality. After that, God was infused and dispensed into them.
Many of us were like those disciples. I was in Christianity from my youth, but I never had gotten God dispensed into me. Until one day when I was nineteen the very God dispensed Himself into me. That made me different, and from that day onward I began to enjoy God as my grace and my reality. I did have something so sweet and so real. I enjoyed Him. I found He was so trustworthy and everlasting. He never disappeared. He was my grace, and He was my reality. This is God’s dispensing Himself into us.
The Lord Jesus prepared His disciples for three and one-half years, and then one day He went to the cross and died on the cross. His death on the cross was a complete preparation. By His death He paved the way and opened the door that His disciples might enter into God. How did He do this? First of all, on the cross through His death, He took away their sin (John 1:29). Sin is the main obstacle between man and God. If man would enter into God and God would dispense Himself into man, surely this obstacle of sin must be removed.
A second obstacle that the Lord dealt with on the cross is the world (John 12:31a). The entire world is a satanic system that distracts people and takes them away from God. For man to enter into God so that God may enter into man, the world has to be judged. Christ judged the world, Satan’s satanic system, on the cross through His death.
A third obstacle that the Lord dealt with on the cross is God’s enemy, the Devil or Satan (John 12:31b; 16:11). Through His death on the cross the Lord Jesus destroyed Satan.
Furthermore, our serpentine nature, that is, our sinful nature, the indwelling sin, was dealt with on the cross (Rom. 8:3; 2 Cor. 5:21). Because we are fallen, we have a sinful nature which is serpentine. It is full of the poison of the old serpent, Satan. Every human being has the poison of the old serpent, so in the eyes of God every human being is serpentine. So, the Lord Jesus died on the cross as a brass serpent, that is, in the likeness of the flesh of sin (John 3:14), to deal with our serpentine nature.
So by the cross sin was taken away, the world was judged, Satan was destroyed, and our serpentine nature was dealt with. This means all the obstacles have been cleared away and the way has been paved. The veil has been opened (Matt. 27:51; Heb. 10:19-20). Now every disciple of Jesus is ready to enter into God.
Furthermore, the Lord Jesus’ death on the cross released His divine life (John 12:24). The divine life was in the Lord Jesus just like life is in a small seed. Every seed has life concealed within it. The seed must die in the earth in order for the life to be released. The divine life was concealed within the Lord Jesus. When He died on the cross, the divine life within Him was released. All the obstacles have been removed, and the divine life has been released, so everything is ready for us to enter into God and for God to enter into us that we might have the divine life dispensed into us. This is not only God’s salvation, but also His dispensing. God has not only saved us, but also dispensed Himself into our being to make us the children of God, even to make us divine.