WEEK 1— DAY 4

Morning Nourishment

Eph. 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ.

Rom. 15:16 That I might be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, a laboring priest of the gospel of God, in order that the offering of the Gentiles might be acceptable, having been sanctified in the Holy Spirit.

   In Ephesians 1 the dispensing is crucial.... [In verse 3] the blessings we enjoy are spiritual blessings. No doubt, these blessings are carried out by the Spirit. Otherwise, they would not be called spiritual blessings. These spiritual blessings are in the heavenlies and in Christ.

   God dispenses Himself in a sanctifying way. God's chosen ones are made His sons by His sanctifying Spirit. God sanctified us to become His sons. He chose us to be holy for sonship. (The Issue of the Dispensing of the Processed Trinity and the Transmitting of the Transcending Christ, pp. 12-13)

Today's Reading

   Sanctification is to separate God's people unto God for God to work on them and to work in them to make them His sons. God had an intention and made an economy to get many sons. Then the Spirit came to separate the chosen ones unto God so that God could beget them. First, they were sanctified unto God; then through this sanctification they became the object of God's begetting....Ephesians 1:4 says that God chose us to be holy. Then verse 5 says that He did this by predestinating us unto sonship.Thus, sanctification is unto sonship, for sonship. First, the Spirit comes to sanctify God's chosen people. Then they are ready to be begotten by God into His sonship.

  For us to be holy and for us to be sons both require God's dispensing.Without God dispensing His holy nature into our being, how could we be holy? God is the only One who is holy. For us to be holy we need a holy element dispensed into us. When the Holy Spirit comes into us, He brings God's holy nature into us, and that holy nature becomes the holy element with which the Holy Spirit sanctifies us. Stanza 1 of Hymns, #841 says,"By Thy holy nature / I am sanctified, / By Thy resurrection, / Vict'ry is supplied." His holy nature makes us holy, and His resurrection power makes us victorious.... God the Spirit is sanctifying us for God to impart more of His holy nature and holy life into our being to cause us to grow. We all have to grow in the divine life.... After our birth, we need to grow in the life of Christ, in the divine life, in the eternal life, with the proper nourishment in the Spirit.

  Both sanctification and the sonship are always carried out by the Spirit. This is why Ephesians 1:3 calls this a spiritual blessing, a blessing by the Spirit. Today we must learn to live by the Spirit, to act according to the Spirit,to have our being altogether by the Spirit, with the Spirit, and according to the Spirit (Rom. 8:4). As long as we have our being by the Spirit and act according to the Spirit, we are ready to grow in the divine life. Then we need some nourishment. We can be nourished in these three ways: by reading the holy Word, by listening to the spiritual speaking, and by coming to the meetings. This nourishment causes us to grow.

  Sanctification for sonship is still going on. Day by day, however, we do not live in our sonship, because we do not care for the sanctifying Spirit speaking and working in our spirit. We must turn to our spirit, realizing that we have been sanctified and regenerated by the Spirit. This sanctifying and regenerating Spirit has much to say to us. He still wants to sanctify us more and more that we may participate in the sonship more and more. Then we will grow, and the Father will have a pleasant household....The blessings in Ephesians 1 start from God's choosing for us to be sanctified that we might be more and more in the sonship of God. This should be a daily matter. (The Issue of the Dispensing of the Processed Trinity and the Transmitting of the Transcending Christ, pp. 14-15, 17-18)

Further Reading: The Issue of the Dispensing of the Processed Trinity and the Transmitting of the Transcending Christ, ch. 1