The third item of God's positive intention in His economy is to be received by man as man's life for his inward constitution that man may become the counterpart of the Triune God (Gen. 2:8-9, 22-24). Adam was created in God's image and after God's likeness. God formed man with a body of clay and with the breath of life out from God. This breath became man's spirit as a receiver and container of God. God made man in this way and put him in front of the tree of life (v. 9) because He intended to be received by man. He then told man that he could eat of all the trees in the garden, including the tree of life (v. 16). He also warned man not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (v. 17). The tree of life signifies God as life to man. If man would have eaten of the tree of life, he would have taken God Himself into him. Without the life signified by the tree of life, man is an empty container, a vessel without any content. Today, we as God's containers have the Triune God as our life and content. Every day this life constitutes us.
Today, God is within us as our life and life supply. As our life supply, He constitutes us with Himself, making Himself our constituent. Whenever we eat food, a dispensing takes place. Once food is eaten, after about eight hours, it becomes our constitution. When the children of Israel were brought out of Egypt and journeyed in the wilderness, they had nothing to eat. They had no farms to produce their food, so every morning God dropped manna from heaven for them to eat. The children of Israel lived on manna for forty years. Wherever they went for those forty years, the manna was there. Before entering the wilderness, the children of Israel were Egyptian in their constitution because all they had eaten were the things of the Egyptian diet, including fish, cucumbers, green onions, leaks, and garlic. Such eating produced an Egyptian constitution within them. But God changed their constitution by giving them manna to eat. By eating manna for forty years, the Israelites became a constitution of manna. Their constitution was changed by their eating.
God's intention in His economy is that He would be man's life for man's inward constitution that man may become the counterpart of God. What a wonder that we can be the counterpart of God! This is fully typified as a divine revelation in Genesis 2. God created Adam (v. 7), built a wife from one of his ribs (vv. 21-22), and brought the wife back to Adam, and the two of them became one flesh (vv. 22-24). Eve became the counterpart of Adam. Today we have become the counterpart of God, a part of God that matches God. Initially, God was alone; but it was not good for Him to be alone (v. 18). God needed a counterpart. After receiving God as his life for his inward constitution, man has become the counterpart of the Triune God.
According to Ephesians 4:4-6 the Father, the Son, the Spirit, and the Body are all one. This is the oneness of the Body. It is altogether proper to say that the Father, the Son, the Spirit, and the Body are four in one. The Triune God is three, yet He now has a fourth part, a counterpart. However, only the first three are worthy of our worship. The Triune God with His counterpart are now four in one.