Message One

God’s Economy in Faith versus Differing Teachings

Scripture Reading: 1 Tim. 1:3-4, 18; 6:3, 12

1. God’s economy is God’s household administration, which is to dispense Himself in Christ into His chosen and redeemed people that He may have a house to express Himself, which house is the church, the Body of Christ—1:4; 3:15:
   1. God’s economy, as His household administration, is to produce and constitute a Body for His Son—Eph. 1:22-23; 2:16; 3:6; 4:4, 16; 5:30.
   2. The central subject of the Bible is the economy of God, and the entire Bible is concerned with the economy of God—1 Tim. 1:4; Eph. 1:10:
      1. The governing and controlling vision in the Bible is the divine economy—Prov. 29:18a.
      2. In our reading of the Bible, we need to focus our attention on the divine economy for the divine dispensing—Eph. 3:9.
      3. Unless we know God’s economy, we will not understand the Bible—Luke 24:45.
   3. Christ is the element, sphere, means, goal, and aim of God’s eternal economy; He is everything in God’s economy—Matt. 17:5; Luke 24:44.
   4. God’s economy is to dispense Himself into our being that our being may be constituted with His being; this can be accomplished only by God dispensing Himself into us as the divine life—Eph. 3:16-17a; Rom. 8:2, 6, 10-11.
   5. The economy of God is that God became flesh, passed through human living, died, resurrected, and became the life-giving Spirit to enter into us as life and to dispense God into us that we may be transformed for the producing of the church, which is the Body of Christ, the house of God, the kingdom of God, and the counterpart of Christ, the ultimate aggregate of which is the New Jerusalem—John 1:14, 29; 12:24; 20:22; 14:2; 3:3, 5, 29-30; Rev. 21:2.
   6. God’s economy is God becoming man that man may become God in life and nature but not in the Godhead to produce the organic Body of Christ, which will consummate in the New Jerusalem—Rom. 8:3; 1:3-4; 12:4-5; Rev. 21:10.
   7. According to the desire of His heart, God’s eternal economy is to make man the same as He is in life and nature but not in the 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—John 1:12-14; 1 John 3:1a, 2; 2 Pet. 1:4.
   8. The divine economy is to produce the new creation out of the chaotic old creation—Gal. 6:15; 2 Cor. 5:17:
      1. The history of the universe is a history of God’s economy and Satan’s chaos—Gen. 1:1-2, 26; Rev. 20:10—21:4.
      2. Both in the Bible and in our experience, the satanic chaos always goes along with the divine economy—Eph. 3:8-10; 4:14-16; 6:24.
      3. The Lord needs the overcomers, who will be one with Him to conquer the destructive satanic chaos and to triumph in the constructive divine economy—Rev. 2:7b, 11b, 17b, 26-28; 3:5, 12, 21.
   9. The Lord’s recovery is for the carrying out of God’s economy—Eph. 3:2.
2. God’s economy is initiated and developed in the sphere of faith—1 Tim. 1:4:
   1. On the negative side, to exercise faith is to stop our work, our doing; on the positive side, to exercise faith is to trust in the Lord—Heb. 11:6.
   2. Faith is a proclamation that we are unable to fulfill God’s requirements but that God has done everything for us and that we receive all God has planned for us, all God has done for us, and all God has given to us—John 1:16.
   3. God’s economy is carried out not by our doing in ourselves but by our believing into Christ, the embodiment of the Triune God—3:15-16.
   4. Faith is a matter of seeing a view of the contents of God’s economy—Heb. 12:2:
      1. Because we have seen a revelation regarding the contents of God’s economy, we spontaneously believe in what we see—Eph. 3:9.
      2. The ability within us to believe is a product, a result, of having a proper view of God’s economy—Heb. 11:6, 9, 23-26; 12:2.
   5. The Christian life is a life of faith, a life of believing—Gal. 3:2, 14:
      1. We do not live according to what we see; we live according to what we believe—John 20:25-29.
      2. Our walk is by faith, not by sight—2 Cor. 5:7.
3. God’s economy in faith is versus differing teachings—1 Tim. 1:3-4:
   1. Differing teachings refer to teachings that are not in line with the economy of God—6:3.
   2. The differing teachings in 1:3-4, 6-7; 6:3-5, 20-21 and the heresies in 4:1-3 are the seed, the source, of the church’s decline, degradation, and deterioration.
   3. Teaching differently tears down God’s building and annuls God’s economy; even a small amount of teaching in a different way destroys the recovery.
   4. For the administration and shepherding of a local church, the first thing needed is to terminate the differing teachings of the dissenting ones, which distract the saints from the central line of God’s economy—Titus 1:9.
   5. Paul charged Timothy, his faithful co-worker, to fight against the differing teachings and to fight for God’s economy—1 Tim. 6:12; 2 Tim. 2:3-4.
   6. To war the good warfare is to war against the differing teachings and to carry out God’s economy according to the apostle’s ministry concerning the gospel of grace and eternal life for the glory of the blessed God—1 Tim. 1:18; 6:12.
   7. We must avoid differing teachings and concentrate on God’s economy concerning Christ and the church—1:3-4; Eph. 3:9; 5:32.
   8. The crucial point of the healthy teaching of the apostolic ministry concerns the Triune God processed to dispense Himself as the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit into His chosen ones so that they may be brought into an organic union to receive the divine transfusion and thereby become sons of God and members of Christ; as a result, they can become the Body of Christ to express Christ, the One in whom the fullness of God dwells—1 Cor. 15:45b; 6:17; 12:12-13, 27.