Ephesians 1 discloses to us God's good pleasure in His heart's desire. God desires to have a Body prepared for Christ to be the full expression of the Triune God. He carries this out by dispensing His divine Trinity into His chosen people. Ephesians 2 shows us that God remade, re-created, regenerated, us by Christ passing through death and resurrection and entering into ascension. We were dead persons, but in His death, resurrection, and ascension we have been remade, re-created. Through this re-creation, we have been transferred out of our old realm and into a new one. We have been made a new man in God's new creation. This new man is God's family and God's kingdom, growing into God's temple and built up into a dwelling place for God in our spirit.
In Ephesians 3 Paul unveils God's heart's desire from another angle. Ephesians 3 shows us that God, according to His heart's desire, made a plan, and this plan is His economy. God's plan, or economy, is also His arrangement, His dispensation. This dispensation was hidden in God, who created all things, as a mystery until the New Testament age. This hidden plan, this mystery, was revealed to the apostles and prophets in spirit (v. 5). They received a revelation of this mystery, and they spoke concerning it. The Apostle Paul saw God's plan. He came to know this mystery, which is called the mystery of Christ because it is altogether concerning Christ (v. 4). The New Testament is a record of the New Testament ministry that has released what was hidden in God's heart to unveil the mystery of Christ. When we read the book of Ephesians, however, we may pick up outward matters such as husbands loving their wives and wives submitting to their husbands. We do not focus on "the dispensation of the mystery, which from the ages has been hidden in God" (v. 9). Our fellowship in this chapter may be considered as a master key to open the doors in Ephesians 3.
God desires to dispense His divine Trinity into His chosen people. He wants to distribute the untraceable or unsearchable riches of Christ into us (v. 8). We can enjoy the riches of Christ by eating Him. The first time I released a message on eating Jesus was in Taipei in 1958. A brother who was a professor came to me after the meeting and told me that the expression eating Jesus was too wild and rough. I pointed this brother to the Lord's word in John 6:57—"He who eats Me shall also live because of Me." I told him that since the Lord Jesus said that we should eat Him, we must say the same thing. To eat the Lord Jesus is to receive Him into us to be assimilated by the regenerated new man in the way of life. Then we live by Him whom we receive. As our spiritual food, He is unsearchably rich.