Actually, 4:6 is an explanation of verse 5, where Paul says, “For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake.” The apostles preached Christ as Lord and themselves as the believers’ slaves because the very God who commanded light to shine out of darkness had shined in their hearts. His shining in the universe produced the old creation. Now His shining in their hearts has made them a new creation. Therefore, they are able to exalt Christ as the Lord in their preaching and conduct themselves as slaves to the believers in their service. What they do for Christ and what they are to the believers are the issue of God’s shining. God’s shining produces the new covenant ministers and their ministry.
God’s shining into our hearts is His dispensing of Himself into us. As an illustration, we may use the example of an iron bar that glows after it has been placed in fire. We may say that the fire dispenses itself into the iron so that the iron becomes permeated by and with the fire. As the result of this dispensing and permeating, the iron bar shines.
The illumination in 4:6 may be compared to fire. I believe that Paul’s thought here is that God’s shining, His illuminating, was like a fire burning. As God shines in our heart, we are saturated with the divine essence. Just as we could say that fire “saturates” an iron bar, we are saturated with the essence of God through His illuminating, through His shining in our hearts.
I can testify of this from my own experience with the Lord. When I stay with the Lord in prayer, often I sense an inner burning, an inner illumination. Using today’s term, I would call this an experience of the divine dispensing. The burning and illuminating I experience when I stay with the Lord is actually the illumination of the glory of God. This illumination is His dispensing.
Through such a dispensing, we are filled, saturated, and permeated with the Triune God. As a result, we have the intense desire to minister the word of God to others so that they also may experience the divine dispensing.
As we have pointed out, Paul uses other metaphors in chapters two and three to describe the divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity. In 3:3 he says, “Being manifested that you are a letter of Christ ministered by us, inscribed not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tablets of stone, but in fleshy tablets of the heart.” A letter of Christ is one composed of Christ as the content to convey Christ and express Him. As Paul was writing a living letter of Christ, Christ was every letter, word, phrase, sentence, and paragraph. The “ink” used in this writing was the Spirit of the living God. While Paul was teaching the Word or preaching the gospel, he was inscribing Christ into others.
Today we all should be those who compose living letters of Christ by inscribing Christ into others. As we speak, we should inscribe Christ into others with the “ink” of the Spirit. As ink saturates paper, so we need to cause others to be saturated with the Spirit. This saturation is, once again, a matter of the divine dispensing.
In 2:14-16a Paul uses the metaphor of incense-bearers: “But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in the Christ, and manifests through us the savor of the knowledge of Him in every place; for we are a fragrance of Christ to God in those who are being saved and in those who are perishing: to the one a savor from death unto death, to the other a savor from life unto life.” Because the apostles were permeated with Christ, they became a fragrance of Christ to God. We may say that they were permeated with Christ as the divine perfume. Wherever they went, God could manifest through them a sweet fragrance of Christ.
In chapter two we have the fragrance; in chapter three, the divine ink; and in chapter four, the light. We need to have the fragrance permeating us, the Spirit saturating us, and the light burning in us. This light dispenses God as a divine fire into our being. As the result of this dispensing, we become permeated and saturated with incense, the Spirit, and light. Then what issues out from us in our speaking becomes our ministry, a ministry of dispensing the Triune God. Whenever we speak in preaching the gospel or teaching the Word, we dispense the Triune God into others.
We need to be deeply impressed with what is revealed in the books of 1 and 2 Corinthians. In these Epistles we have a revelation of the Triune God. Here we have the Triune God as our enjoyment; the Triune God as our power; the Triune God as our wisdom; the Triune God as our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption; the Triune God as the gifts for our functioning; and the Triune God as the ointment to anoint us, as the fragrance to permeate us, as the Spirit to saturate us, and as the light to burn in us.
This experience of the Triune God in His dispensing is altogether different from religion. It is also different from mere doctrine and teaching and from efforts to improve ourselves or adjust ourselves. What is revealed in these books is the transfusing, the dispensing, the permeating, the saturating, of the Triune God in our being. This is the real enjoyment of the Triune God. As we shall see in the next message, the last word uttered by Paul in 2 Corinthians concerns this divine dispensing, the dispensing of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.