The Gospel of John is a divine writing, and because it is divine, it is mysterious. When we read the Gospel of John, it is easy to pick up many shallow things, things on the surface, but it is not easy to get into the depths to reach the divine reality. There is no religion revealed in this book. Rather, religion is condemned. Nor is there any natural thought or even ethics. What then is revealed in this book? It is hard to say because the things revealed are altogether of the Triune God Himself. No other book in the Bible reveals the Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—so clearly and so much in detail as the Gospel of John.
In chapter one, verse 1 God is revealed: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” After chapter one it begins to reveal God the Father. No other book in the Bible uses this term, the Father, so many times as the Gospel of John. First, it reveals the Father, and then it reveals the Son. The Son comes after the Father. Following this it reveals the Spirit. In chapter fourteen the Father is revealed in the Son, and the Son is revealed as one with the Father (vv. 9-10). After this another Comforter is revealed as the Spirit of reality (vv. 16-17).
At the end of the Gospel of John, there is the holy pneuma. After resurrection and in resurrection the Son of God, who went through death and entered into resurrection, came back to His disciples as the pneuma, as the Spirit. He breathed upon His disciples and charged them to receive Him as the pneuma, the Spirit (John 20:22). It is no wonder that some of the great teachers who were studying the Person of Christ picked up a term, the pneumatic Christ, to refer to the very Christ who has become the holy pneuma.
So this Gospel presents us a clear picture of the Triune God—God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. Eventually the holy pneuma, the Holy Spirit, reaches us not objectively, but subjectively by entering into our very being. He enters into us as the Spirit. After He entered into the disciples in John 20, He never left them. This is why there is no official ascension of Christ in the Gospel of John. Both Mark and Luke record the visible ascension of Christ (Mark 16:19; Luke 24:51). In both of these Gospels the disciples saw Christ ascending to the heavens. That was His visible and official ascension. But the Gospel of John does not record such an ascension. Where did the resurrected Christ go? He went into the disciples. Even now He is still in His believers.
This Gospel also does not have a conclusion. There is no ending because the resurrected Christ still lives on this earth in His believers. Today the Gospel of John has many more chapters in it, and the chapters are still going on. This is because the wonderful One who is God and the Father and the Son and the Spirit, and who is now the pneumatic Christ, lives within us. His living from the day of resurrection has never stopped. It is still going on today; He is with us and even within us.
This is too divine! And because it is too divine, it is also too mysterious! Although His living within us is divine and mysterious, it is a reality. The word reality is a translation of the Greek word aletheia. It has been translated by most versions of the Bible into “truth.” Actually, in John it should not be rendered truth because the word truth is ambiguous. It may mean reality, or it may mean a fact, or it may mean true doctrine. But in the Gospel of John it surely does not mean true doctrine. John 1:17 says, “For the law was given through Moses; grace and reality came through Jesus Christ.” If the word truth simply refers to true doctrine, then the verse would read that the law was given through Moses; grace and true doctrine came through Jesus Christ. This rendering, of course, does not give the proper meaning. In the Gospel of John this word means reality.
We were made as vessels to contain God (Rom. 9:21, 23). If we don’t have the Triune God as our content, we are just an empty container, an empty shell. Without God, even the entire universe, including the heavens and the earth, becomes an empty, universal shell. Without God nothing is real; everything is vanity. It is no wonder that the wise King Solomon said that under the sun there was nothing but vanity (Eccl. 1:14). The reality, the real content, and the real meaning of the entire universe is God. God is also the real content and the real meaning of our being. If we do not have God within us as our content, we do not have the reality. According to the Bible, God is reality, the Son of God is reality, the Spirit of God is reality, the Word of God is reality, the entire Bible in its content is reality, and even our belief which we hold is a reality.
Now I would like to call your full attention to this word dispensing. This is not a new word in the dictionary, but it may be a new word to Christian ears. Before you came to the recovery, you probably had never heard a message using this word dispensing concerning the Divine Trinity. But you probably had heard another word, dispensation, which is very similar to dispensing. What is the difference between dispensing and dispensation? First of all, the word dispensation is the noun form of the verb dispense. The first connotation of the word dispensation is that it equals dispensing. But in theology the word dispensation has not been used in this meaning. Second, dispensation means God’s way of dealing with people. Third, dispensation is a kind of plan or arrangement. In this connotation dispensation becomes an equivalent to the Greek word oikonomia, which is anglicized into the English word economy. This refers to God’s plan, arrangement, household administration, and household management. The first part of the word, oikos, means house or household. The last part of the word, nomia, means a law to regulate the house. So it means the household administration, the household management. This is an administration, an arrangement, a plan to work out a certain project. This is the right meaning of the word dispensation used in theological teachings. It is used to denote the different ways by which God deals with mankind.
We may consider that from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22 there are seven ways for God to deal with human beings. The first dispensation is that of innocence, from the creation of man until the fall of man. The second is that of conscience, from the fall of man until the time in Genesis 9. The third is the dispensation of human government which was instituted at Noah’s time. The fourth is the dispensation of promise which was from the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob until the law. Following this is the dispensation of the law, which was from Moses until Christ. After this comes the dispensation of grace, which is during the church age. Eventually there is the dispensation of the kingdom, the thousand years of the millennium. These are the seven ways or the seven aspects of God’s dealing with man. This is the meaning of the word dispensation.
We do not use the word dispensation, because it may be misunderstood. We use the word dispensing. Dispensing means to distribute. God dispenses Himself to you just as you may dispense food to your guests. Many readers of the Bible have realized that in the Gospel of John the Father is revealed, the Son is revealed, and the Spirit is revealed. But not many have realized that in the Gospel of John the Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—is revealed for the dispensing of Himself into us first as life, then as life supply, and then as everything. I did not realize this matter of God dispensing Himself into us until about twenty years ago. From that time onward I have used this word dispense very much. God dispenses Himself into His children. It is not too hard to understand.
Chapter one of John says, “But as many as received Him, to them He gave authority to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: Who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (vv. 12-13). These children of God were born of God. When a child is born of a father, what does it indicate? It indicates that the father has dispensed his life into the child. At the very beginning there was only one man, Adam, yet today there are millions of human beings on the earth. Through all the generations Adam’s life has been dispensed into his descendants. This is a proper understanding of the word dispensing.
In this message we will cover the dispensing of the Father, and in the following messages we will cover the dispensing of the Son, the dispensing of the Spirit, and the consummation of the divine dispensing. I would beg you to dive into all the Scripture reading. Apparently some of the verses are small verses. For example, John 7:29 says, “I know Him, because I am from Him, and He sent Me.” Apparently this verse is not as big as John 3:16, which says that God so loved the world. But actually this kind of expression—I am from Him, and He sent Me—is too great! Just consider, who is the I in this verse? This is Christ, but who is Christ? By going back to chapter one of this Gospel we can find out that Christ is God.
Consider also where Christ came from. He said that He was from the Father (John 6:46) and that the Father sent Him (John 5:36). Not many Christians are clear that Christ, the Son of God, came from the Father. According to people’s natural mentality, Christ came from heaven. Have you ever thought that Christ came from the Father? His source was the Father.