The Spirit’s dispensing is His sealing “unto the redemption of the acquired possession to the praise of His glory” (vv. 13-14). The seal of the Holy Spirit is living, and it works within us to permeate and transform us with God’s element until we are matured in God’s life and eventually fully redeemed even in our body.
God seals us with the Spirit. We may illustrate this sealing with a rubber stamp and a piece of blank paper. By stamping the blank piece of paper, we dispense the ink onto the paper. If we stamp the paper again and again, eventually it will be saturated and soaked with the ink.
Not only is sonship a matter of life-dispensing, but the sealing of the Spirit also involves life-dispensing. Day after day, the Spirit is sealing us. When you were a sinner, you were like an unclean sheet of paper. But one day you repented to God and called on the Lord’s name. His blood washed you, cleansed you, and made you like a piece of clean blank paper. At that time the Spirit sealed you.
We need to know who the Spirit is who sealed us. When the Son came, He came with the Father, and when the Spirit came, He came with the Son and the Father. Therefore, the Spirit is the consummation of the Triune God. The Spirit is actually the application of the Son and the Father to us. The rubber stamp is the application of the ink to the paper. When you put the stamp on the paper, the ink is added to the paper. The Spirit is the consummation and the reaching of the Triune God to us. When He seals us, the entire Triune God reaches us. The Spirit not only reaches us; He is also attached to us (2 Cor. 1:21). The reaching is His attaching, and the attaching is also His dispensing. The Triune God has been dispensed into us. He has reached us, and He has been attached to us. The divine sealing, the life-dispensing of the Triune God, is taking place within us all the time.
The sealing of the Spirit is unto the redemption of the acquired possession (1:13b, 14b). Some versions say “until”, but “unto” is more meaningful because it means resulting in. We were acquired by God as His possession. From the day He acquired us, He began the sealing in order to saturate us with the Triune God. It is too objective simply to say that we have God’s seal upon us as a mark. We not only have a seal but also have a sealing to saturate our entire being with God’s element. Our body has not yet been redeemed; it still is a natural being. But we have a sealing, the saturating, of the Holy Spirit, within us, and this sealing will continue until the day our body is fully saturated. That will be the redemption of our body, the redemption of God’s acquired possession. Now, as God’s acquired possession, we are still under the sealing.
The Spirit is also a pledge, a foretaste, of our divine inheritance, guaranteeing the full taste of God as our eternal inheritance (v. 14a). This word “pledge” is very meaningful. It means earnest, security, guarantee, and also foretaste. According to an ancient practice, when someone bought a piece of land, the seller would give him a bag of soil as a sample for a pledge. That soil was a guarantee that the purchaser would get the land with the same soil. This is an illustration of the fact that the sealing Spirit, after sealing us, remains within us to be our foretaste of God as our inheritance.
When we believed in the Lord Jesus, two things happened. First, we became God’s inheritance, God’s possession, with His seal upon us. God sealed us with the Spirit as a sign that we belong to Him as His possession. At the same time God became our possession. He became our portion and enjoyment. The sealing Spirit is a sign that we are His possession, and the sealing Spirit also becomes a pledge, a foretaste, of the very God who is our inheritance. This foretaste is a guarantee, security, that one day we shall enjoy the full taste.
Both the sealing and the pledging are life-dispensing. Every day the Spirit is sealing us and pledging Himself into our being as our foretaste. This foretaste of the pledging is a guarantee of the full taste. The Triune God is sealing us and pledging Himself into our being. This is the dispensing of the Spirit.
At the end of verse 14 we have once again the phrase, “To the praise of His glory.” This phrase is used three times: first, for the Father’s dispensing in verse 6; second, for the Son’s dispensing in verse 12; and third, for the Spirit’s dispensing in verse 14. This threefold mentioning of the praise of God’s glory signifies the threefold dispensing of the Triune God.