Have you noticed that today in the entire realm of Christianity, including Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, the word economy is not being used? The worldly people use this word to refer to the monetary economy, but this is not the way the holy Scriptures use this word. The word economy is anglicized from the Greek word oikonomia. Oikos means house or household and nomos means law. Thus economy means a kind of household law, or administration. Only the apostle Paul used this word. It is used in Ephesians 1:10; 3:2, and 9; 1 Corinthians 9:17; Colossians 1:25; and 1 Timothy 1:4. The word oikonomia in these places is translated into either “economy” or “stewardship.” With God His economy is His eternal administration, His eternal plan. But with Paul it became a kind of stewardship, a dispensing service. God’s economy is His house law, His household administration. This household administration refers to God’s divine plan with a certain arrangement for His administration. Now we have to ask what God’s plan is for. For soul-winning? For people to be spiritual? This is far off.
I began to speak for the Lord in 1932, and the next year I got caught by the Lord to give up my job and serve Him full-time. I have spent much time, over half a century, with much labor and energy to study the Bible. The notes in the old Bibles I have show how much I have labored in the Word throughout the years. Many of these notes have been incorporated into our Recovery Version of the New Testament and our Life-study of the New Testament. One of the notes in the first English Bible I used when I came to the United States says, “The central thought of God is to have Christ as His expression through the church. Christ as God’s expression through the church which is His Body is the central thought of the whole Scripture. The record of the first two chapters of the Scriptures is the blueprint of God’s plan, and that of the last two chapters is a picture of God’s work through all the generations according to His plan.” Another note in this Bible in the first chapter of the book of John says, “The Lamb is for delivering us from sin, for separation from sin on the negative side. The dove is for joining us to God for union with God on the positive side. A dove on the Lamb is a spiritual picture comprehending the full interpretation of the whole Scriptures.” My point is this—the accumulation of the knowledge of this divine book with me has been lasting for sixty-eight years, and this is the source of today’s Life-study. Our Life-study of the Bible has still not been exhausted. Eventually, our study has brought us to the revelation of God’s economy.
We need to see that God’s economy as God’s plan, His administration, is to create, to constitute, and to produce a Body for His Son. This is the major purpose of God’s economy. Christ gained this Body, which is a part of Himself, His counterpart. Adam living alone typifies Christ being alone before He had gained His counterpart, His Body, the church. God said it was not good for Adam to be alone. So God made him fall into a deep sleep, opened his side, and took out a rib. Genesis 2 says that God built a woman with that rib (v. 22). This indicates that Eve came out of Adam. After being built up, Eve was brought back to Adam, and God made these two into one flesh. Ephesians 5 tells us that this is a type of the great mystery of Christ and the church (vv. 31-32). This type will be fulfilled in the New Jerusalem, which is the wife of the Lamb (Rev. 21:2). This is the goal of God’s economy.
The sixty-six books of the Bible all consummate in one city. Every book has its conclusion, and the conclusion of the entire Scriptures is a city, the New Jerusalem. Every crucial point concerning the New Jerusalem was mentioned already in the Bible. At the end of Ezekiel, there is the city of Jerusalem with a river flowing out of the house of God. Thus, the river we see flowing in the New Jerusalem is not something new. The golden lampstands are mentioned in Revelation 1 and 2, and the New Jerusalem is the consummate lampstand. The lampstand is first mentioned in Exodus 25 and again in Zechariah 4. All the positive things in the Old Testament and the New Testament will eventually be collected and condensed together in one entity, the New Jerusalem. This is what God wants. The Triune God is embodied and crystallized in the New Jerusalem, and this is the consummation of the Body of Christ, the counterpart of Christ, the wife of Christ, the organism of the Triune God.
The New Jerusalem is constituted with the Triune God, so we can see the Triune God there. God the Father is there as the shining One (Rev. 22:5), Christ is there as the tree of life (v. 2), and the Spirit is there as the river of water of life (v. 1). God is the shining One, Christ is the growing One, and the Spirit is the flowing One. This is the Triune God flowing to saturate, to soak, the entire New Jerusalem. This soaking, this saturating, carries out the divine constitution with the redeemed humanity, and this divine-human constitution is the Body of Christ. This is the purpose of God’s economy, positively speaking.
God’s economy does have another aspect on the negative side, and that aspect is the destruction of God’s enemy. God has a unique enemy which He could destroy by Himself, but He would not do it. He desires to do it through His redeemed people. Therefore, the redeemed humanity should cooperate with God to destroy Satan. The book of Revelation shows that on the one hand, the overcomers will become the consummated New Jerusalem, and on the other hand, all the overcomers will be used to destroy Satan. These are the two aspects concerning the Body of Christ in the fulfilling of God’s desire for His expression and the destruction of Satan.