In the divine dispensing we simultaneously experience and enjoy grace, love, and fellowship. While we are enjoying the fellowship of the Spirit, we also have the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God. The more we live in the fellowship of the Spirit, the more we receive the grace of Christ; the more we receive the grace of Christ, the more we enjoy the love of God. The fellowship of the Holy Spirit issues in the grace of Christ, and in the grace of Christ we receive the love of God. Hence, the love of the Father, the grace of the Son, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit are simultaneously experienced and enjoyed by the believers in the divine dispensing.
First, we want to see the experience and enjoyment of God as the Father in the love of God. What the Father does in His dispensing and in His operating in us is in love and based on love. Love is the source of the Father's dispensing. Hence, when we experience and enjoy the Triune God, we experience and enjoy Him as the Father in the love of God.
The New Testament clearly tells us that "God is love" (1 John 4:8, 16). Such an expression and similar expressions such as "God is light" (1 John 1:5) and "God is Spirit" (John 4:24) are used not in a metaphoric sense but in a predicative sense. They denote and describe the nature of God. Spirit denotes the nature of God's person; love, the nature of God's essence; and light, the nature of God's expression. Both love and light are related to God as life, which is of the Spirit (Rom. 8:2). God, the Spirit, and life are actually one. God is Spirit and the Spirit is life. Within this life are love and light. When the divine love appears to us, it becomes grace, and when the divine light shines on us, it becomes truth.
In the enjoyment of the Father we enjoy Him mainly in love, which is the nature of His essence. This love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us (Rom. 5:5). The love of God is God Himself (1 John 4:8, 16). God has poured out this love in our hearts with the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. This means that deep in our hearts we have the divine essence, that is, God the Father, who is love. Hence, the pouring out of God's love in our hearts is a matter of God's essence. Because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts, we have love as the essence of God in us, and it is in this love that we experience and enjoy God as the Father.
God regenerated us through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (1 Pet. 1:3). This means that God has enlivened us with His life, bringing us into a relationship of life, an organic union, with Him. Hence, in the resurrection of the Lord we have the Father's life and God's nature, just as He has. His Father becomes our Father, and His God becomes our God (John 20:17). Thus we are brought into His position—the position of the Son—before God the Father.
Galatians 4:6 says, "And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father!" God's Son is the embodiment of the divine life (1 John 5:12). Hence, the Spirit of God's Son is the Spirit of life (Rom. 8:2). God gives us His Spirit of life because we are His sons. We have the position with the full right to participate in the Spirit of God, who has the bountiful supply of life. Such a Spirit, the Spirit of the Son of God, is the focus of the blessing of God's promise to Abraham (Gal. 3:14).
Romans 8:15 says that we who have received a spirit of sonship cry in this spirit, "Abba, Father!" whereas Galatians 4:6 says that the Spirit of God's Son is crying in our hearts, "Abba, Father!" This indicates that our regenerated spirit and the Spirit of God are mingled as one, and that the sonship of God is realized by us through our subjective experience in the depth of our being. Abba is an Aramaic word, and Father is the translation of the Greek word Pater. The putting together of these two terms, Abba and Father, gives a deep, sweet, and very intimate sense. Such a term was first used by the Lord Jesus in Gethsemane while He was praying to the Father (Mark 14:36). The combining of the Aramaic title with the Greek title expresses a strong affection in crying to the Father. Such an affectionate cry implies an intimate relationship in life between a genuine son and a begetting father.
The sense we have when we call "Abba, Father" is sweet and intimate. Such a calling involves our emotion as well as our spirit. The Spirit of sonship in our spirit cries "Abba, Father" from our heart. This proves that we have a genuine, bona fide relationship in life with our loving Father. He is our Father and we are His real sons.