In this lesson we will continue from the previous lesson to see other aspects of the believers’ being profited by all things in their circumstances by their experience of the dispensing of the Divine Trinity.
Once a person turns to God, Satan will instigate others to persecute him. Since Satan opposes God continually in every possible way, and since the entire world lies in him (1 John 5:19), Paul says that the believers in Christ are appointed to suffer persecution (Phil. 1:29). When James speaks of the practical Christian perfection in his Epistle, there is an aspect concerning the enduring of trials (1:2-3).
Persecutions are a suffering. However, trials are not merely a suffering, for trials are a suffering that serves the purpose of trying and proving. Just as examinations are good for students, so the various trials that we face as Christians profit us. Our heavenly Father allows such trials for the purpose of trying, testing, and proving us. Trials not only help us in the matters of our spiritual education and the experience of life; they also help us with our character and our behavior in our daily living. It is only through trials that God can perfect us in a practical way in our Christian life. If we realize this, we will thank God for perfecting us through trials.
James encourages us, saying, “Count it all joy, my brothers, whenever you fall into various trials” (v. 2). We can count it a joy when we fall into trials, because we see that the trials will perfect us. James speaks of various trials, indicating that we should not count just certain trials a joy but should count all trials a joy. Perhaps we do not like trials, opposition, and persecution, but we should count it all joy when we experience them, because God, through the divine dispensing, uses them to perfect us.
In 2 Corinthians 4:8-18 Paul speaks of how the ministers of the new covenant lived and how they experienced the dispensing of the Divine Trinity in their living. By such a dispensing they were capable of living a crucified life in resurrection and of living out the resurrection life under the killing of the cross for the carrying out of their ministry. Paul says, “We are pressed on every side but not constricted; unable to find a way out but not utterly without a way out; persecuted but not abandoned; cast down but not destroyed; always bearing about in the body the putting to death of Jesus that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body” (vv. 8-10). For us to experience the putting to death is to experience the working of the cross, which the Lord Jesus suffered and endured. When the Lord was on earth, He was daily under the killing. We also should experience this. As we experience this killing work, the life of Jesus will be manifested in our body. This daily killing is to release the divine life in resurrection, and it results in the manifestation of the resurrection life.
“Therefore we do not lose heart; but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day” (v. 16). The outer man is our body and our soul, with the body as its organ and the soul as its life and person. The inner man is our regenerated spirit with our renewed soul. The regenerated spirit is the life and person of the inner man, and the renewed soul is its organ. As our mortal body, our outer man, is being consumed by the killing work of death, our inner man, that is, our regenerated spirit with the inward parts of our being (Jer. 31:33; Heb. 8:10; Rom. 7:22, 25), is being metabolically renewed day by day with the supply of resurrection life. We are able to live a life of not losing heart, because we believe that our momentary lightness of affliction will work out for us, more and more surpassingly, an eternal weight of glory (2 Cor. 4:17).