After the church is produced, it needs to be built up (Eph. 2:11-22). The church as a man needs only to be born. But this man has a body, and the body needs to be built up. A mother needs only to give birth to a baby. The baby as a person does not need any building up. But this baby has a body, and the body needs building up because when the baby is born, his body is too small. According to the Bible, the growth of the Body is its building up (Eph. 4:16). The way to build up a baby's body is by feeding it through drinking. After we baptize a person, we need to go back to that person to build him up by feeding him with spiritual milk (1 Thes. 2:7; 1 Cor. 3:2a; 1 Pet. 2:2).
All mothers know that the feeding of a child cannot be done too quickly. If we feed a baby too much at one time, we will harm him. We should feed him gradually, little by little. A child needs to be fed under his mother's care for many years before he can grow up fully. The mother's feeding is her dispensing. Every day she dispenses milk, beef, apples, eggs, chicken, and many other kinds of food into her child. In this way, the child's body is built up.
From the day we were saved, the Lord has been feeding us. Every time we come to a meeting, we are fed. When we have our morning watch, we contact Him by reading and pray-reading His Word. This also is a feeding. This feeding is the Lord's dispensing. The Christian life is a life of dispensing day by day. Whether or not we realize it, this dispensing is going on all the time in a mysterious way. We may say that we do not know what is going on, but all the time much dispensing and spiritual feeding is taking place within us. Every day and every hour, our Christian life is a life under God's divine dispensing. We may have no sensation regarding this, but we should not trust in our feelings; we should trust in our dispensing God.
God has begotten us and has become our very life. Any kind of life is a matter of dispensing. With the vegetable life, the animal life, and even the human life, dispensing produces growth. A little tree grows by the dispensing of its life. As long as it has life within, there will be a dispensing, and this dispensing is the growth.
The church is both the new man and the Body of Christ. As a man it does not need to be built up. The Bible does not say that the new man needs to be built up; but it tells us repeatedly that the Body of Christ needs to be built up (Eph. 4:12, 16). All the saints need to be perfected and to learn to build up the Body of Christ. The way to be built up is by the dispensing of life through feeding.