There are three main aspects in God's eternal plan for the church. First, it is the church that must have the sonship to express God; second, it is the church through which Satan will be defeated and put to shame; and finally, it is the church through which Christ will head up all things. God's plan is for the church to gain His life in full! The sonship is not just the birth of life, but the growth of life unto maturity. This means that God has to work Himself into us and make us not only His sons, but His heirs to inherit all that He is and all that He has, that He might be expressed. Then through this life all things will be headed up under the headship of Christ.
First of all, there is the matter of life; then there is the building. The purpose of the building is to bring us all into the proper order in life under the headship of Christ. It is through our being built up in life that God can put His enemy to shame. Then God has the ground to make His multifarious wisdom known to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenlies.
It is for this purpose that God created the universe with the heavens and the earth. In the center of His creation, God created man as the vessel to contain Himself. God's intention was to put Himself as life and everything into this man in order to have many sons. We all know that the son is one who inherits everything from the father. Whatever the Father is and has will be imparted into His sons. First, God created us, and then He begot us through regeneration. By creation He brought us into existence, and by begetting us He imparted Himself into us as our life.
For this purpose God created us with a human spirit. The human spirit is just like the element of a light bulb. Without the element in the bulb, the bulb cannot receive electricity. The bulb must have the element within to be the recipient or the receiver of the electricity, and it is also that same element which enables the bulb to express the electricity. The bulb also has an outward form just as the body is our outward form. Within our body there is the spirit, just as within the outward form of the bulb, there is the element for the bulb to receive, to contain, and to express the electricity.
We are the containers made by God; therefore, He purposely created a spirit within us in order to receive Him, to keep Him, and to express Him. God in Christ as the Holy Spirit spreads Himself outward from our spirit to all the parts of our being. God does not work from the outside, in an inward direction into man, but from man's spirit He spreads Himself outward in order to permeate and saturate all of man's inward parts. He will saturate the conscience, the mind, the emotion, the will, and eventually our whole being. When God came into our spirit, we received the birth of life; and by His spreading from our spirit through our whole being, we will obtain the growth of life to full maturity. Even the body will be transfigured at the time of the full sonship. It is through this that we all will be brought into order as a corporate man under the headship of Christ. Within this corporate man, God in Christ is the Head and, as sons, we are the Body brought into order under His headship. Then, through this Body, Christ as the Head will head up all things.
However, we must see the subtlety of the enemy in distracting man away from God's eternal purpose. Upon the earth today there are three classes of people —the Gentiles, who are the unbelievers; God's chosen people, the Jews; and the Christians, the members of the church. All three classes have been distracted from God's economy by the enemy, Satan.
In order for man to exist, God prepared many material things, including food, water, clothing, housing, and many other things. But today, all the unbelievers have been distracted by these material things. They pay their full attention to food, shelter, and clothing, along with their material way of life. All the Gentiles are distracted from God's central mark by the material things; they are fully drawn to the material things. Whether they are poor or rich, high or low, all of them have been distracted to material things which God prepared for their existence only that they might fulfill His purpose. All of these material things should be simply a means for man to fulfill God's purpose, but Satan has utilized them to distract the unbelievers from God's purpose.