The Gospel of John is particular in the divine dispensation. In it we cannot find that the Lord had any intention merely to teach us what to do or what not to do. Rather, the Lord discloses that the Trinity of the Godhead wants to dispense Himself into our being. Humanly speaking, we don’t have such a concept. We have the concept of culture, religion, ethics, or good character. Even we have the concept of how to worship God and please Him. But this book shows us that all these concepts are obstacles to the divine revelation.
The story of the Samaritan woman in chapter four shows that even our worship to God may veil us from knowing and seeing the real God. In her conversation with the Lord Jesus, she turned the subject to the worship of God. Then He showed her that the genuine worship is in our spirit and by the reality (4:24). Reality is just Christ Himself as the very means by which we worship God. If in our worship to God, there is no element of Christ, that worship is vanity and even becomes a veil to keep us from seeing the real worship. How we need the Lord’s mercy to drop all the things we have picked up in our past! All those items have become veils to us, keeping us from seeing God, from seeing Christ, from seeing the Spirit, and from seeing the divine reality.
On the positive side, this book shows us the divine revelation concerning the Triune God being dispensed into our being. On the negative side, it shows us the veils—religion, human thought, natural concepts, and even concepts concerning the worship of God. Surely the revelation of such a book demands that we drop everything. Don’t leave any veils on your eyes or in your mentality. You have to say, “Lord, unload me and rescue me. I want to drop all the old things.” We need an empty spirit to receive something new, something fresh, something up-to-date, something that is the genuine revelation in the holy Word.
According to the Gospel of John at least three things frustrate the dispensing of the Son. First is religion. We have been born into religion, and religion is in our blood. We cannot stay away from religion because religion is within us. The second frustration is ethics. We cannot stay away from the thought of being a good person. The husbands want to be the best husbands. The wives want to be the best wives. The mothers want to be the best mothers. Third, we cannot stay away from our natural thinking. We all have our natural thinking. Philosophy is just the development of our natural thinking. Some people are small in their natural thinking, and others are great. The philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Confucius were great in their natural thinking. The development of their natural thinking produced a philosophy. Not one person is without philosophy. Philosophy is just a kind of logic. Even a small child has his logic. That is his philosophy. Why do the little children sometimes reason and argue? It is because they have their philosophy. It is really hard for us to stay away from these three things: religion, ethics, and natural thinking. Yet we must realize these are hindrances, coverings, veils, to us.
All three of these matters are covered in the Gospel of John. In chapter eleven Martha was full of natural thinking. Natural thinking is just the expression of yourself. She expressed a lot of herself. That was a big hindrance to the resurrection life. In this chapter religion and the expression of self in the natural thinking were a strong frustration to the vitality of the resurrection life. She told the Lord, “If you were here, my brother would not have died” (John 11:21). In verse 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me, even if he should die, shall live.” The Lord Jesus Himself is the resurrection and the life. It is not a matter of time and space. But Martha expounded the Lord’s word from the present time to the resurrection in the last day. Martha’s problem was her natural concept. This was Martha. What about yourself? If you would not prepare yourself by dropping your religion, ethics, and natural thinking, you will be unable to get much from this message. Rather, your situation will still be a thick veil upon you.
The revelation of God’s divine economy is this: the Divine Trinity wants to work Himself into your being. For this reason, God created us as vessels (Rom. 9:21, 23). We were made in the image of God so that we might contain God. The form of a container is always according to what is to be contained. If something is square, its container also needs to be in the form of a square. If something is round, its container needs to be round. For God to create us in His image means that He created us in His form. This was a preparation so that God could be contained in His created man.
God’s image is the expression of what He is. God is love, God is light, God is holy, and God is righteous. Although the Ten Commandments are ten laws, actually they are a testimony of God. They testify what kind of God He is. God gave the Ten Commandments according to what He is. He is love, He is light, He is holy, and He is righteous.
Man was made according to God, in the image of God, so in man’s created nature there is the element of love, light, holiness, and righteousness. Even after we have fallen, these elements are still within us as the very constituent of our ethical thinking. Just as a glove is made in the form of a hand to contain a hand, so our human ethical elements, such as love, holiness, and righteousness, are containers to contain the divine love, holiness, and righteousness.
Because of the fall, however, man became independent of God. Ethical teachings help you to develop your human virtues without God. Whenever you try to be ethical, this is independence from God. When you, by yourself, try to be a good husband or wife, that means you are being independent from God. You try to be a good wife or husband without God. We must admit we are still very ethical.
In the past few years, though, my confession to the Lord has not been concerning the matter of ethics. My confession was because I didn’t live Christ. I may not have made any mistake for the whole day; I may not have offended anyone; I may not have had any trespass. But for the whole day I lived Christ very little. We must see that what the Lord wants in us is not merely ethics. What the Lord wants is for Him to live in us and for us to live Him.
The Gospel of John has a particular character and touches a particular thing: the Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—is endeavoring to work Himself into the very being of His chosen people, that all of His chosen people may live a life, not of religion, nor of ethics, but of the Triune God. Of course, the Triune God is much higher than any kind of ethics. The highest ethics is God Himself. He wants us to have a life that lives the Triune God as life. We must be able to say that our life and living is the Triune God. If you still hold on to a religious concept, an ethical concept, or some concept of your natural thinking, you cannot fully enter into the Gospel of John. You must pray, “Lord, have mercy on me! Take away my religious concepts, my ethical concepts, my natural thinking. Remove all the coverings.” Then you are ready to see something. Now let us come to the dispensing of the Son.