In this lesson we will cover more aspects regarding the believers’ corporate experience of the dispensing of the Divine Trinity through their living in the church.
We live in the church, loving all the brothers and loving one another. Romans 12:9-21 speaks of living a life according to the highest virtues of the divine life and love. In the beginning of verse 9 Paul says, “Let love be without hypocrisy.” Then in the beginning of verse 10 he continues, “Love one another warmly in brotherly love.” This matches what Peter says in 1 Peter 1:22: “Love one another from a pure heart fervently.”
In John 13:34-35 the Lord Jesus said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this shall all men know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” This commandment is the message that John speaks of in 1 John 3:11: “This is the message which you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.” We should not love others in a natural, religious, and moral way by trying to imitate God’s love. In our human nature we have a tendency to love people; however, this kind of love is moral, natural, and even cultural. In contrast, real love is the result of enjoying the processed Triune God in the dispensing of the Divine Trinity. When we are in the fellowship of the divine life, that is, in the enjoyment of the Triune God, this enjoyment has a result, or an issue, which is the divine love. By means of this love, we spontaneously love others, especially those organically related to our Father who has begotten us (5:1). We have been begotten of the Father, and many other persons have also been begotten of Him. The result of our enjoying Him is that we love all His children. Therefore, loving the brothers is an issue of enjoying the Triune God. We do not need to imitate the Lord’s love; rather, we need to be constituted with the Triune God, who is love. This One dwells within us and desires to dispense Himself into our being, to saturate us with Himself so that we may enjoy Him inwardly as love. This love needs to saturate us until it becomes the love with which we love the brothers.
The revelation concerning love in the New Testament is different from our natural concept. Love is the God of love dwelling in us and us dwelling in Him. First John 3:24 says, “In this we know that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He gave to us.” The Spirit keeps us in an organic union with the Triune God, who is love, and causes God to be our life and even our person. Not only so, the Spirit is saturating us with the element of God, who is love. Ultimately, we will be constituted with the essence of God’s love. This is to say that the divine love will become us, and as a result, we spontaneously love others. However, we do not love them according to our own love; rather, we love them with God as our love. There is a great difference between this kind of love and the love that people have through trying to imitate the love of God.
According to the New Testament, all mutual love among the believers is triangular; it includes love from three sides. We are children born of God, and as such, we surely love our Father, the One who has begotten us. Since we love the Father who has begotten us, we also love those begotten of Him. Consequently, we experience a triangular love, involving God, us, and all those begotten of God. This triangular love is realized in our organic union with the Triune God, who is love.
The reason we as believers are able to love God and one another is that we have experienced a divine birth (John 1:12; 1 John 5:1; 2:29; 3:9; 4:7; 5:4, 18). We have been born of God. Because of our divine birth, we are able to love one another. This triangular love is related to the divine birth. We not only love the Father who has begotten us; we also love those begotten of Him. This is the love with which the believers love one another in the church life.