Prayer: Lord, how we worship You as the speaking and dispensing God! We thank You that You have been speaking so much to us to dispense Yourself into us. Thank You that in these days we are under Your dispensing. Even in this message we are listening to Your word. We would like to receive Your dispensing. O Lord Jesus! make these days full of dispensing. Dispense Yourself into us during these days that all of us will be filled up with Your dispensing. Thank You, Lord, for Your cleansing blood which opens up the way for You to come in to dispense and saturate us with Yourself. Thank You for Your speaking in this meeting. We trust in You. We have no trust in ourselves. Amen.
In the foregoing message we saw that whatever Christ is, is for the one purpose of dispensing God into us. This is the focus of the entire Bible. But it has not been seen by many Christians today. Christianity has made nearly everything religious, instead of making everything divine. We all have to rise up against anything religious. We should be altogether for something divine. To be regenerated is not something religious; it is something divine. Regeneration is not to have a religious life. It is to have a divine life in addition to our human life. Such a divine life with a divine birth makes us a divine child of God. This is the initial stage of God’s dispensing Himself into us. God first dispenses Himself into us by regeneration. It is our second birth, our spiritual and even divine birth. Birth is just a beginning of life. Without birth there is no life. Hallelujah! we have had the beginning of the divine life. This beginning is just the divine birth, regeneration.
Many Christians seem to have forgotten about their regeneration. Although they are born again and had such a wonderful divine beginning, after their regeneration they were led astray from the divine things to the religious practices. After their regeneration, they made nearly everything religious. For example, they talk about love and holiness apart from the divine life. They talk about being a good husband or a good wife apart from the divine life. They talk about being good children or good parents apart from the divine life. Even they talk about being a good Christian apart from the divine life.
In the Epistles of the New Testament, especially those of Paul, the phrase, “in Christ”, or, “in the Lord” occurs frequently. This is a short and brief, but a very crucial phrase. For example, in Ephesians 6:1 Paul said, “The children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.” Many Christians, however, in their understanding cut off this phrase, “in the Lord.” This crucial phrase means a lot! If we are not in the Lord, there is no Christian life. Honoring the parents, loving the wife, or submitting to the husband must be in the Lord. If these things are not in the Lord, that is not the Christian life, but an ethical life. Ethics teaches good morality, behavior, and character but altogether outside of Christ and apart from Christ. But we Christians are in Christ. We are not apart from Christ; we are part of Christ. We are in an organic union with Christ. He is the vine, and we are the branches (John 15:5). The branches of the vine are not simply joined to the vine; they are organically united to the vine. The branches and the vine have a common life. The branches could not have their being without the vine.