Message Three

God's Economy—
the Central Line of the Divine Revelation

1. God's economy is His household administration—1 Tim. 1:4:
   1. The Greek word for economy means "household law," implying distribution; it denotes a household management, a household administration, a household government, and, derivatively, a dispensation, a plan, or an economy for ad-ministration (distribution); hence, it is also a household economy.
   2. God's economy is His household economy, His household administration, which is to dispense Himself in Christ into His chosen people that He may have a house to express Himself, which house is the church, the Body of Christ.
2. We need to see a vision of God's economy—Eph. 1:10:
   1. God's economy is His plan to dispense Himself into His chosen, predestinated, and redeemed people as their life, their life supply, and their everything to produce, constitute, and build up the organic Body of Christ.
   2. God's economy is to gain a group of people and work Himself into them as life and mingle Himself with them as one so that they may live Him as the members of the Body of Christ.
   3. God's economy is to make His redeemed people God in life, in nature, and in appearance but not in the Godhead so that for eternity He might have a universal, corporate expression of Himself.
   4. God's economy is to make man the same as He is in life and nature but not in His Godhead and to make Himself one with man and man one with Him, thus to be enlarged and expanded in His expression, that all His divine attributes may be expressed in human virtues.
3. God's economy is related to His good pleasure, will, counsel, and purpose—Eph. 1:5, 9, 11; 3:11; Rev. 4:11:
   1. God's good pleasure is what God likes, what pleases Him.
   2. God's will is God's wish, God's desire; it is what He wants to do.
   3. God's counsel is His resolution consummated in the council of the Divine Trinity.
   4. God's purpose is His intent beforehand.
   5. God's will is according to His good pleasure; God's purpose is based on His will with its counsel; and God's economy is His planned administration to carry out His purpose.
4. God's economy is in faith—1 Tim. 1:4:
   1. God's economy is initiated and developed in the sphere and element of faith.
   2. God's economy is not in the natural realm nor in the work of law but in the spiritual sphere of the new creation through regeneration by faith in Christ—Gal. 3:23-26:
      1. By faith we are born of God to be His sons, partaking of His life and nature to express Him.
      2. By faith we are put into Christ to become the members of His Body, sharing all that He is for His expression.
5. Galatians, the most basic book with respect to God's economy, is unique in its revelation of God's economy:
   1. God's economy is God Himself in His Divine Trinity becoming the life-giving Spirit to be life and everything to us for our enjoyment, so that He and we may be one to express Him for eternity—3:14, 28.
   2. A basic item of God's New Testament economy is that "I" be crucified in Christ's death and that Christ live in us in His resurrection—2:20.
   3. God's New Testament economy is for the processed Triune God to be wrought into us to become our life and our very being—1:16; 4:19.
   4. God's intention in His economy is to put us into Him and to come into us and live in us—3:27; 2:20.
   5. God's economy is the dispensing of Himself into His chosen people to make them His sons for His corporate expression—3:26; 4:6-7.
6. God's economy is carried out by God's dispensing:
   1. God's dispensing is the imparting of Himself to us according to His plan and arrangement.
   2. God desires to dispense Himself into His chosen, redeemed, and regenerated people as their life, their life supply, and their everything, making Himself one with them.
   3. God's dispensing is carried out through the Divine Trinity—Eph. 1:4-5, 7-10, 13:
      1. The divine nature is dispensed into the believers in Christ through God the Father's choosing, and the divine life is dispensed through God the Father's predestination.
      2. The divine element, of which the believers in Christ are made God's excellent inheritance, is dispensed into the believers through God the Son's redemption unto God's economy of the fullness of the times, to head up all things in Christ.
      3. The divine essence, in which the believers enjoy the processed Triune God, is dispensed into the believers through God the Spirit's sealing and pledging.
7. God's intention in His economy is to build Himself in Christ into His chosen people—Eph. 3:16-17a:
   1. The most crucial and mysterious matter revealed in the Bible is that God's ultimate intention is to work Himself into His chosen people.
   2. The central work of God is to work Himself in Christ into His chosen people, making Himself one with them:
      1. Everything that Christ is and everything that Christ has accomplished are for this one thing.
      2. All the steps that God takes in our daily life are to fulfill His intention of building Himself in Christ into our being.
   3. God's economy and goal according to His heart's desire are to build Himself into our being and to build us into His being in order to mingle His divinity with our humanity into one entity—the Body of Christ, which consummates the New Jerusalem.
8. God's economy is like a great wheel, having Christ as its center—Ezek. 1:15-21:
   1. The hub of this wheel signifies Christ as the center of God's economy.
   2. The rim signifies Christ's counterpart, the church, the Body of Christ.
   3. The believers as the many members of Christ are the spokes of the hub spreading to the rim, to the Body of Christ, which consummates the New Jerusalem.
   4. This great wheel is not only the economy of God but also the moving of the economy of God:
      1. From Genesis 1 until the present, the move of God's economy has never stopped, and today this great wheel has reached us.
      2. In every age and in every generation, this wheel has been moving, and now we are a part of the move of the great wheel of God's economy.