In these days I have been considering the divine dispensing of the divine Trinity to carry out the divine economy for the fulfillment of the divine purpose. These four divine items—the divine dispensing, the divine Trinity, the divine economy, and the divine purpose—can be seen in the Gospel of John. They are not explicitly mentioned in John, but the reality and fact of these items are there.
Our God is One but Three. He is one God, yet He is the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. If the thought and the structure of the divine Trinity were taken away from the New Testament—especially from John, Romans, 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, and Colossians—it would become an empty book. Just as a building has a steel frame, the divine Trinity is the intrinsic frame of the divine revelation in the Scriptures.
The Gospel of John is probably the top book that speaks of the divine Trinity—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. John 1:1 says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Then verse 14 says, "The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us." This shows that the Word, who was God, became flesh. In 1 Timothy 3:16, Paul said that God was manifested in the flesh. No doubt, this refers to the incarnation. Paul said that the incarnation was God's incarnation. But in Romans 8:3 Paul said that God sent His Son in the likeness of the flesh of sin. On the one hand, Paul told us that God was incarnated, manifested in the flesh. On the other hand, he said that the incarnation was God sending His own Son. John 3:16 is a definite verse telling us that God gave His only begotten Son to us.
In John 14 Philip asked Jesus, the Son, to show them the Father. The Son responded, "Am I so long a time with you, and you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father...The words which I speak to you, I do not speak from Myself; but the Father who abides in Me, He does His works" (vv. 9-10). In the same chapter, the Son told His disciples that He would pray to the Father, and the Father would send them another Comforter, the Spirit of reality (vv. 16-17). The Son is one with the Father, but He said that He would pray to the Father, asking the Father to send a third one, the Spirit of reality. The Spirit of reality is one with the Son, because the Son said that the Spirit's being in the disciples would be His being in them (vv. 17, 20). John 14 unveils a very clear structure of the divine Trinity—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. This portion of the Word reveals that the Son is the embodiment of the Father, so the Father and the Son are one. Then the Comforter, the Spirit of reality sent by the Father, is the reality of the Son. Thus, the Father is embodied in the Son, and the Son is realized as the Spirit.