God's economy is the main topic of the entire Bible, yet it is very mysterious. It was hidden in God in eternity past and continued to be hidden in God for the first four thousand years of human history. From the time of Adam to the time of the apostles, God's economy was not revealed to man. One day the Lord called a man named Saul (later called Paul). He regenerated him and showed him God's economy. The Apostle Paul told us that God's economy had been hidden in God from the ages (that is, from eternity) and through all past ages (Eph. 3:9). Paul was the one who began to see something hidden in God, something in God's heart that had never been revealed to the sons of men. Paul received a revelation of this mystery, and in his fourteen Epistles, God's economy is stressed, emphasized, and developed to the uttermost.
In 1 Timothy 1:3-4 Paul tells us that the New Testament ministers and teachers should only teach one thing—God's economy. To teach anything else is to teach differently. Christianity has been divided mainly by different teachings, yet in the Bible there is only one main teaching—the teaching of God's economy. In this chapter we want to see the divine economy in God's creation.
Genesis 1 and 2 tell us about God's creation. These chapters unveil the almighty and eternal God as our Creator. God created the universe and He created man. Genesis 1:26 tells us that God created man in His image and after His likeness. Man was a copy of God. Genesis 2:7 gives us a particular account of God's creation of man: "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." God created a body for man, and this body was created by God of the dust. Our body is earthly. Medical students can tell us that the elements in our body are the same as the elements in dust. What is in the dust is also in our bodies, because our bodies are bodies of dust. Then God breathed the breath of life into this body of dust. This means that God created man with two elements. The first element was dust, and the second element was the breath of life. One element was physical, and the other was spiritual. The physical body can be touched and can be seen, but the breath of life is invisible and untouchable. When God breathed the breath of life into this body of dust, something came out—a living soul. The breath of life entering into the body of dust produced a man as a living soul. This breath of life is the human spirit. Proverbs 20:27 tells us that the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord. The Hebrew word in this verse for spirit is the same word in Genesis 2:7 for breath. This tells us that the breath breathed into our body is our human spirit. Thus, in the first two chapters of Genesis we have a clear picture that man was made according to God, that he was a copy of God, and that man was created with a human spirit.