We all need such a vision, such a revelation. If we see this vision, our being will be changed. If we are filled with this vision and then go forth to speak for God, we shall surely be God’s sent ones and His spokesmen. We shall be today’s apostles and prophets.
This vision unfolds the unique way for the Lord to build up His church. Only when we see this vision will the Lord have a way to accomplish on earth the building up of the church. After more than nineteen centuries of Christian history, what has been accomplished for the Lord? Consider today’s situation. Hardly any have seen the vision in chapter three of Ephesians. May the Lord burden us to pray, “Lord, have mercy on me. I need to see this vision. I need to see the fullness of God and how it comes into existence. Lord, show me the constitution of the Body. Show me how the church can be constituted in a practical way.” Once you have seen this vision, you will become a different person. You will be an apostle and a prophet. Wherever you go, you will be a sent one, and whenever you speak this vision, you will be God’s spokesman speaking Christ for God’s economy.
I can testify that I came to this country with this vision and with a unique burden. Those who have been with me over the years can testify that I have not changed my concept nor my speaking. In various aspects and from various angles, I have spoken just one thing—that God’s economy is to dispense Himself into His chosen people to make them the expression of Christ. As we have seen in this message, this expression is the fullness of God.
In these verses in chapter three of Ephesians concerning the economy of God resulting in the fullness of God, we see the Triune God. The Father (v. 14) answers and fulfills the apostle’s prayer through the Spirit (v. 16) so that Christ, the Son (v. 17), may make His home in our hearts. Thus, we are filled unto the fullness of the Triune God. This is the dispensing of the Triune God into our entire being that we may become His expression.
According to Ephesians 3, the Triune God is not to be the object of doctrinal debate; He is for the dispensing of Himself into the believers so that they may be filled unto the fullness, not only of the Father, nor only of the Son, nor only of the Spirit, but of God. Paul prayed that the Father would strengthen us through His Spirit so that Christ might make His home in our hearts and thereby fully occupy our inward being with the result that we might be filled unto the expression of the Triune God. How glorious and how marvelous! This is God’s economy, God’s dispensation. This is also God’s New Testament revelation, our ministry, and the Lord’s recovery.
We have seen that the fullness of God is the expression of God. According to John 1:16, the fullness of God came with Christ who is the embodiment of God’s fullness (Col. 2:9; 1:19). With Christ, the expression was an individual matter. This expression, therefore, needed to be enlarged, to be expanded, from an individual matter to a corporate matter. The church today is to be the fullness of God in a corporate way. In the church God is not expressed through an individual; He is expressed corporately through the Body, through the believers who have together been filled to the brim with the riches of Christ. Therefore, the fullness of God is embodied in the church. The church as the embodiment of the fullness of God is the expression of the Triune God. This is the church in the Lord’s recovery today