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Scripture Reading: Eph. 1:4-5, 9-11; 3:2, 8-9, 11; Col. 1:25; 1 Cor. 9:17; 1 Pet. 1:1-2; Rom. 8:30; Gen. 1:26a, 27; 2:7; Zech. 12:1
The divine revelation in the sixty-six books of the Bible is exceedingly profound. There are seven basic points to this profound revelation. The first three points are God’s plan, Christ’s redemption, and the Spirit’s application. These three points involve the Divine Trinity — God, Christ, and the Spirit. What God planned, He has accomplished through Christ’s redemption. What He has accomplished in Christ, He applies to us by the Spirit. The last four points are the believers, the church, the kingdom, and the ultimate consummation — the New Jerusalem. In this chapter we will cover the first item of the basic revelation in the Bible — God’s plan.
The Bible clearly reveals God’s plan. Most Christians treasure two books among Paul’s writings — Romans and Ephesians. Romans begins with our condition as sinners, fallen mankind, but Ephesians opens by bringing us into God’s heart. In Romans 1 we can see our condition as sinners, but in Ephesians 1 we can see that there is something in the heart of God. The phrase good pleasure is used twice in this chapter (vv. 5, 9). God has a good pleasure, and this good pleasure is His heart’s desire. In eternity past God was alone. We cannot imagine what it was like in that past eternity, but Ephesians 1 tells us that before the creation of the universe God had a heart’s desire. He had a good pleasure. What He wanted can be expressed by the single word sonship (v. 5). Sonship is God’s heart’s desire.
After God made Adam, He said that it was not good for man to be alone (Gen. 2:18). This word can also be applied to God in eternity past. It was not good for God to be alone. He had a desire to bring forth many sons. Ephesians 1 tells us that God predestinated us unto sonship. Many Christians may think that God’s predestination is unto salvation, but according to Ephesians, in eternity past the first thought in God’s heart was not salvation. His foremost thought was sonship. God foreknew that His creation would fall. Because of the fall, there was the plan of salvation, so salvation was purposed for sonship. God’s desire is to bring forth many sons.
Recently, at a prayer meeting in Irving, Texas, I saw three young men. By looking at their faces, I could see that they were the sons of a certain brother. The three of them bear a strong resemblance to their father; they are his very expression.
The more sons a father has, the more expression he has. Romans 8:29 tells us that the only begotten Son of God became the Firstborn among many brothers. God’s only begotten Son in John 1:18 and 3:16 became through resurrection (Acts 13:33) the firstborn Son. Firstborn implies that other sons followed. Now God has not only one Son but many. The firstborn Son of God, Christ, has millions of brothers. Throughout these twenty centuries many have been regenerated and thus have become God’s sons. All these sons are the brothers of the firstborn Son of God (John 20:17; Heb. 2:10-12). What a great, vast sonship!
When I was a young man, I was with some saints who knew the Bible very well. They stressed God’s predestination, but I never heard them say what the goal of God’s predestination is. After many years of studying the Bible, I saw that we were predestinated unto sonship. Subconsciously, I thought that we were predestinated unto salvation. Some would say that we were predestinated unto heaven. It is neither salvation nor heaven that is the goal of God’s predestination; it is sonship (Eph. 1:5).
The King James Version translates this word as “the adoption of children,” but the word in the original language means “sonship.” It does not mean children adopted by a father but rather sons born directly of a begetting father. God’s heart’s desire, then, is to have a vast multitude of sons who express Him, not only in this age but for eternity.
Based upon His heart’s desire, God made a purpose (3:11). God’s purpose was made according to His good pleasure. Ephesians 1:9 says that God purposed His good pleasure. This means that according to what He desired, He made a plan. Since God had such a good pleasure, He made a plan. In Ephesians 3:11 Paul tells us again that God made a plan in Christ, a plan of the ages, an eternal plan, an eternal purpose.
Economy is an anglicized word from the Greek oikonomia. It means “the law of a household,” or “household administration.” In 1 Timothy 1:4 this word is used for “arrangement,” “plan,” “administration,” or “management.” In the Old Testament Pharaoh’s house was in need of some household management or arrangement, and Joseph was put into a position to take care of that management. What he did was mainly to distribute the rich food to the hungry (Gen. 41:33-41, 54-57), and that distribution was a dispensing. The management of Pharaoh’s house was an economy carried out to dispense the riches to the people. In the New Testament this word is mainly used by Paul. But the same word was used by the Lord Jesus in Luke 16:2-4, referring to the stewardship of a steward. Joseph might be considered as Pharaoh’s steward, and his responsibility was his stewardship. That duty, his stewardship, was to dispense the rich food that Pharaoh possessed to feed the starving.
In Ephesians Paul tells us that he was appointed by God as a steward and that God gave him the responsibility, the duty, that is called the stewardship (3:2). The Greek word for stewardship is the same as the word for dispensation. Whether it is translated into “stewardship” or into “dispensation” depends upon the context. In Ephesians 3:2 Paul says that God gave him the stewardship of the grace of God. Then the same Greek word, oikonomia, is found in 1:10 and 3:9, where it seems better to translate it as “dispensation.” This word economy mainly denotes a plan, an administration, a management, to dispense one’s riches to others.
Paul considered that God had a big family to supply with His riches. In Ephesians 3:8 he says that God appointed him to preach, to minister, to distribute, or to dispense the unsearchable riches of Christ. These riches are for God’s household. There is a store of the unsearchable riches of Christ, and God appointed the apostles (Peter, John, James, and Paul) to be stewards to dispense these riches to all God’s chosen people.
Stewardship is the same as dispensing. Joseph carried out his stewardship by dispensing food. His responsibility, his office, his duty, was to distribute the rich food to the needy ones. That distribution was a dispensing.
Some Bible teachers have taught that there are seven dispensations in the Bible. In the Old Testament there are the dispensations of innocence, conscience, human government, promise, and law. Then in the New Testament there is the dispensation of grace in this age and the dispensation of the kingdom in the coming age. In these seven dispensations, they say, God deals with man in seven different ways.
This may be correct, but do not forget that the dispensations are God’s household administration. God has a great family, and within this household He needs some administration, some plan, some management, for dispensing Himself into His household. God’s main thought, even from eternity past, was to have an arrangement throughout the ages to dispense Himself into His chosen and predestinated people. He would make them His sons by imparting Himself into them so that they might have the divine life by being born again.
In Paul’s fourteen Epistles we can see that God had a good pleasure, according to which He made a plan, a purpose. He created man in His own image, and in the fullness of time He imparted Himself into all these created and chosen ones that they might become His sons, expressing Him. This is God’s plan, and this is God’s dispensation for His dispensing.
In English the words dispensation and dispensing are both forms of the verb to dispense. When I use the word dispensation, I mean economy, arrangement, or management. But when I use the word dispensing, I mean the distributing of the divine riches into God’s people. Dispensation denotes the arrangement, the management, the plan, the economy. Dispensing refers to the distribution of God Himself as life and the life supply into His chosen people in Christ.
In Ephesians 1:10 and 3:9 the word oikonomia is used for “household administration,” which is God’s plan to dispense Himself into His chosen people. In Ephesians 3:2, Colossians 1:25, and 1 Corinthians 9:17, the same word refers to Paul’s stewardship. The word stewardship is used in the sense of dispensing. Paul’s stewardship was the dispensing of the unsearchable riches of Christ into God’s chosen people. With Paul the word stewardship refers to the divine dispensing.
The word steward is used in 1 Peter 4:10, which says that we all need to be good stewards, dispensing the varied grace of God. The varied grace of the rich God needs many stewards to dispense it; this dispensing is their stewardship.
What I am doing in the ministry is dispensing the riches of Christ. If you tell me that I am a good Bible teacher, I appreciate your word, but I do not like to hear it. Do not consider me a teacher. I am a dispenser. I am not merely teaching the Bible; I am dispensing. I once went to get a flu shot. There was a long line of people, and all of us had to offer our arm so that we could get the shot. In my ministry I want to give people a shot, an injection, of the riches of Christ. I have the full assurance that whoever comes to this ministry will get such an injection.
Our stewardship today is the same as Paul’s. Paul’s stewardship was simply to give people an injection: that is, to distribute, to dispense, the unsearchable riches of Christ into God’s chosen people. This is God’s economy, His plan, His administration.
God had a good pleasure, and according to His good pleasure, He made a plan. Following this, He arranged a universal administration of His household to dispense His riches into His chosen people. Then He selected us, not only before we were created but also before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4; 1 Pet. 1:1-2). Nothing of His creation had yet come into existence when He selected us.
It is difficult to buy things in a shopping center because there are so many things to choose from. People do not buy blindly; they consider and choose carefully what they will buy. In eternity past, before His creation, God saw you and said, “I like that one.” Without being selected, I do not believe I could have become a Christian. Even though I was born into Christianity, I was not a Christian until I was nineteen years of age. I was educated within Christianity, but I still did not believe. However, one day God touched me and said, “I want you.” That day I was caught. How about you? Behind the scenes there is an eternal and almighty hand directing everything. Our selection is a wonderful thing.
Our heavenly Father is happy when He sees us. We are His heart’s desire, His good pleasure. God’s pleasure is not with the moon, the sun, the heavens, or the earth. He tells us clearly in His Word that He is not satisfied merely with the earth and the heavens. What satisfies Him is His chosen people. We are His good pleasure, and His plan was made for us.
Following His selection, God predestinated us (Eph. 1:5; Rom. 8:30). Darby’s New Translation of the Bible translates this word predestinated in Ephesians 1:5 as “marked out beforehand.” Have you ever realized that before the foundation of the world you were marked out? You cannot escape God’s hand. I have tried a number of times, but I never made it! The more I tried, the stronger He grasped me. Where will you go to escape God? Wherever you go, He is there (Psa. 139:7-10). Sometimes you may have been bored with coming to the church meetings and decided to go somewhere else. When you got there, the Lord Jesus was waiting for you! This shows that you have been marked out.
After God’s good pleasure, after His plan (arrangement, administration, economy), after His selection, and after His predestination, He came to His creation. The record of God’s creation of man is very brief. There are only two verses. Genesis 1:26 is God’s own word, and the following verse is Moses’ record. In these two verses are three crucial points.
First, verse 26 indicates the Divine Trinity. The word Elohim (God) is plural, and in God’s own conversation He used the pronouns Us and Our: “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” The pronouns referring to God are plural. It is easy to realize that this implies the Divine Trinity.
Some teachers have pointed out that when God said, “Let Us make man...,” it was a conversation in a council. The Divine Trinity had a council to consider the creation of man. In creating other things there was no such conversation recorded. The making of man, then, must have been crucial. To create the heavens and the earth was not as important as the making of man. Man is the focus of God’s purpose in creation.
Second, only man was made in the image of God and according to God’s likeness. The tiger was not made in God’s image; nor was the elephant made according to His likeness. Genesis 1:26 says, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.”
Image refers to the inward being; likeness refers to the outward expression. You may refer to Colossians 1:15, which speaks of Christ as “the image of the invisible God.” How can an invisible God have an outward likeness? I cannot explain this. It is a mystery. It is like John 1:14, which says that God as the Word became flesh. In Genesis 18, however, He appeared to Abraham as a man. Abraham prepared water for Him to wash His feet and prepared a meal for Him (vv. 4-8). He appeared again in Judges 13, this time to Samson’s mother. She saw this man, who, after talking to her and her husband, ascended (v. 20). Here is an ascension before Acts 1. How can we reconcile these portions of the Old Testament with the New Testament? We cannot.
In the same way it is a wonder, a mystery, that God created man in His image. Second Corinthians 3:18 says that we are being transformed into His image. Romans 12:2 says that we are “transformed by the renewing of the mind.” These verses indicate that the image is something inward, made up of the mind, emotion, and will. The thinking organ, the loving organ, and the deciding organ compose the inward being. Man is wonderfully made. Even after the fall, man is still marvelous (Psa. 139:14). We are marvelous beings because we were created by God in this way.
Third, man was made to express God. Image and likeness both denote expression. When God created man in His image and according to His likeness, He did not put the divine life into him. The divine life was not imparted into the created man until Jesus came and died and was resurrected for us. Now everyone who believes into Him has eternal life (John 3:16). If we have the Son, we have this divine life. If we do not have the Son, we do not have this life (1 John 5:12). God’s life did not enter into the created man until the accomplishment of Christ’s full redemption.
God created man with the intention that one day He would enter into man and that man would be able to receive Him. Romans 9 reveals that the man created by God is a vessel, intended to contain something. Just as a cup is a vessel to hold water, so man was made as a vessel to contain God.
Genesis 2:7 tells us how God made man. He made man’s body from the dust of the ground. Then He breathed the breath of life into the nostrils of this body of dust, and man became a living soul. Here in this one verse there is the body, the soul, and the breath of life. The Hebrew word for breath in Genesis 2:7 is translated “spirit” in Proverbs 20:27, which says, “The spirit of man is the lamp of Jehovah.” This indicates that the very breath of life breathed into Adam was the human spirit. Two materials, then, were used to form man: the dust and the breath of life. The dust became the body, and the breath of life became the spirit. When these two things came together, a by-product came out: the soul. Thus, Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians 5:23 that a human being is of three parts: spirit, soul, and body.
Genesis 1 tells us that God created man in His own image, according to His likeness; this was so that he could contain God. A container must be in the shape of the thing it will contain. If something is square, you would not make a round container for it. If something is round, you would not make a square container for it. The shape of the container is made according to the shape of its contents. Man was made in the image and likeness of God.
Genesis 1 tells us that everything created brought forth according to its kind (vv. 11-12, 21, 24-25). The apple tree brings forth according to its kind, and the tiger according to its kind. Man was made according to God’s kind. If two trees are grafted together, they must be of the same kind; otherwise, the grafting will not take. Hallelujah! Man is of the same kind as God! Because we were created according to God’s kind, with the intention that we would be grafted together with God, this “grafting” will take, and we can be made one with God.
God created man with a spirit, although at the time of creation he did not have God’s life. Hence, the Bible says, “There is a spirit in man” (Job 32:8). Twenty-two years ago when I began to minister in this country, I gave message after message on the human spirit. Many saints told me that they had never before heard of this. Andrew Murray and Mrs. Jessie Penn-Lewis both stressed the spirit. God created us not only with a mouth and a stomach to receive physical food; He also created us with a spirit to receive Him.
Inside a radio is a receiver. Without the receiver, none of the radio waves from the air could be received by the radio. Our receiver to receive God is our spirit. The Lord Jesus said in John 4:24, “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truthfulness.” Only spirit can worship Spirit. Because God Himself is Spirit, He created us with a spirit for the definite purpose that we might worship Him. To worship Him includes contacting Him, conversing with Him, and receiving Him. He comes into us by entering into our spirit.
Romans 8:16 says that the Spirit and our spirit witness together. This means that the Spirit of God, upon our believing in the Lord Jesus, comes into our spirit. First Corinthians 6:17 says, “He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” At the beginning of the Bible God prepared a man in His image, according to His likeness, and with a spirit to receive, contain, and express Him. However, at the time of creation man did not receive God, the divine Spirit, into his spirit.
Every human being has God’s image, God’s likeness, and a human spirit. When the gospel reached us, it touched us in our conscience, which is a part of the spirit (cf. Rom. 8:16; 9:1). By that touch our spirit was made alive, and we repented. We opened our inner being to repent, to believe, and to receive the Lord Jesus; He came into us, and we were saved. Many gospel preachers ask, “Will you open up and invite Jesus to come into your heart?” There is nothing wrong with this, but in order to experience Christ as our life after being saved, we must know that He is now in our spirit (2 Tim. 4:22).
God’s purpose is sonship, and sonship is accomplished by the dispensing of what God is into us as our life. This dispensing is in our spirit. John 3:6 says, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” Here again are the two spirits. We were not regenerated in our mentality or in our body. Nicodemus thought that to be reborn was to be reborn in the physical body, but the Lord Jesus corrected him. To be reborn is to be reborn in our spirit of God the Spirit, not of our parents. Even if we could go back into our mother’s womb and be born physically a hundred times, we would still be flesh. We must be born in our spirit of the divine Spirit.
Zechariah 12:1 tells us that there are three crucial things in God’s creation: the heavens, the earth, and the spirit of man. It says that Jehovah is the One who “stretches forth the heavens and lays the foundations of the earth and forms the spirit of man within him.” How great is our spirit! The heavens are for the earth. Without the heavens, the earth could not have anything organic. The earth is for man, and man is for God. For man to be for God, he needs a receiver. This receiver is our human spirit. Praise the Lord that we are here under God’s plan and in His plan; that we have been made by Him in His image and according to His likeness; that we have a spirit to receive Him; and that He, as the divine Spirit, has entered into our human spirit, making us His sons for His expression! This is His plan.
