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Scripture Reading: Eph. 1:9-10; 3:9-11; 1 Tim. 1:3-4; Eph. 3:19b; 1:4-5, 7, 11, 13b; 4:30; 1:19-23
God’s economy is His household administration to dispense Himself in Christ into His chosen people that He may have a house, a household, to express Himself, which household is the church, the Body of Christ (1 Tim. 3:15). The Greek word oikonomia is used in the book of Ephesians three times. In 1:10 and 3:9 it is translated as “economy,” whereas in 3:2 it is translated as “stewardship.” God’s economy is His arrangement, which is His plan or purpose, His household administration. Ephesians 3:2 speaks of the stewardship which was given to Paul. As God’s servant, Paul was a steward of God, and God gave him a ministry, a service, which is called the stewardship. On God’s side oikonomia refers to God’s arrangement, God’s plan, but on Paul’s side oikonomia refers to Paul’s stewardship, Paul’s ministry, Paul’s service. God’s plan, God’s arrangement, eventually became Paul’s ministry, Paul’s stewardship. In 1 Timothy 1:3-4 Paul told Timothy to charge certain ones not to teach differently but to teach the economy, the dispensation, of God. Here it means to teach the arrangement, the plan, of God.
Dispensation and dispensing refer to two different things. Dispensing means “giving,” “distributing,” or “imparting.” God has an economy, and His dispensing is for His economy. God fulfills His divine economy by His divine dispensing. The economy of God is the plan and arrangement out of God’s desire and purpose. The dispensing of God is the dispensing and distributing according to God’s plan and arrangement.
One of the items of God’s economy was His creation of the heavens and the earth. In His creation three categories of life were produced: plant life, animal life, and human life. These three lives beautify the earth. The trees of the garden were not only good for food but also pleasant to the sight (Gen. 2:9). Animal life adds to the beauty of the earth. But without human life the earth would lack meaning. Human life adds meaning to the entire earth. If man is without God, however, the universe becomes meaningless, because God is the meaning of human life. Without God’s life the universe is meaningless, without a goal, and without a purpose. God has an eternal purpose. While it is certainly true that the unbelievers do not know what God’s purpose is, it is also true that many who have been Christians for many years do not know what God’s eternal purpose is. They do not know why God created the heavens, the earth, or man. Furthermore, they do not know why God saved them. In order to know the purpose of God, we must get into the depths of the Bible.
The Bible is the divine revelation. Hence, it is not a simple book. It is a profound book. After I was saved, as a young Christian, I began to love the Bible. The more I read it, the more I realized that I could not fully understand it. After many years of studying it, I have discovered that the Bible has at least three layers. The first layer is that God loves us. Because He loves us, God gives us blessings, happiness, peace, and especially His salvation. In response to His love we love God and His Word. This causes us to touch the second layer. The second layer is morality, proper behavior, good character, and spirituality. Most Christians stop here, but this is not the intrinsic or deepest part of the Bible. There is still another layer. God’s dispensation is the deepest layer within the Bible.
We may read a verse such as Ephesians 1:10 but have very little understanding of the word economy in this verse. Verses such as John 3:16 are easily understood by many Christians but only in a superficial and shallow way. Many appreciate the first part of John 3:16, which says that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” But when asked what eternal life is in the latter part of this verse, few have a very accurate understanding. Some would say that eternal life is going to heaven, living in a heavenly mansion, and walking on a golden street within pearly gates to enjoy peace and blessings for eternity. This is mostly a wrong concept of what eternal life is. The salvation of God preached in Christianity is true but very shallow. God’s salvation also has layers. These layers include the forgiveness of sins, washing from sin, being redeemed by the blood, being justified through Jesus Christ, and being regenerated. But the deepest layer of God’s salvation is God’s plan to work Himself into His created, chosen, redeemed, and regenerated people. God’s eternal plan is to work Himself into His chosen people so that He becomes their very constituent.
God not only desires that man be His vessel to contain Him (Rom. 9:21, 23; 2 Cor. 4:7) but also wants man to eat, digest, and assimilate Him (John 6:57). When we eat, digest, and assimilate physical food, we are energized and strengthened. The food that we eat is dispensed into our blood and, through the blood, into every part of our body. Eventually, the food that we have eaten becomes the fiber, tissue, and cells of our being. In the same way, God’s eternal plan is to dispense Himself into us so that He becomes every fiber of our inward being. He wants to be digested and assimilated by us so that He can become the constituent of our inward being.
God created man in His image so that man could contain Him. A container is always in the image or shape of the content it is destined to contain. If the content is round, the container must also be round. The creation of man in God’s image is for the dispensing of God into man. After man was created, God placed him in front of the tree of life (Gen. 2:8-9). Then immediately, God warned man about his eating (vv. 16-17). If man ate of the tree of life, he would live, but if he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he would die. The tree of life signifies God Himself. Today God is our food; He is edible. In John 6 Jesus said that He is the bread of life (vv. 35, 48), and in verse 57 He said, “As the living Father has sent Me and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me.” We need to eat Jesus.
To be a Christian is more than just repenting of our sins, receiving the forgiveness of sins, being washed by the blood, being justified, and being regenerated. The Christian life also includes growth and maturity. In order to go on from regeneration to maturity, we must eat. Regeneration is the beginning of our spiritual life, but we need to eat after our regeneration. No one can grow without eating. We must eat, digest, and assimilate food daily. Assimilation is the final step of food being dispensed into our being. We need to eat, digest, and assimilate Jesus as our spiritual food day by day.
According to God’s economy, God is not only our Savior objectively but also our food subjectively. This is shown by the type of the passover in Exodus 12. The blood of the passover lamb was sprinkled on the doorposts and on the lintel of the houses of the Israelites (v. 7). This signifies the redemption of Christ in its objective aspect. God also charged the children of Israel to eat the meat of the lamb that they had killed (v. 8). Under the covering of the blood of the passover lamb, they were to eat the flesh of the passover lamb, not leaving anything for the next day (v. 10). This was one of God’s ordinances concerning their eating. In nearly every culture there are so-called “table manners” that govern the way of eating. According to Exodus 12, one of God’s “table manners” was to finish the entire lamb. God would be insulted if there was anything left over until the morning. If there was more lamb than one household could eat, the Israelites were to share the lamb with their neighbor next door (vv. 3-4). This signifies the preaching of the gospel. We should lead our neighboring families to share in God’s rich and boundless salvation, which our family cannot exhaust. After the Israelites were filled with the lamb through eating, they were strengthened in order to make their exodus out of Egypt. The Israelites marched out of Egypt, and while they were marching, they were digesting and assimilating the lamb. This digestion and assimilation was the dispensing of the lamb into their being. Through their digestion and assimilation of the passover lamb, the dispensing of the passover lamb took place. This dispensed lamb became their strength.
The divine economy is the arrangement of the eternal plan of God’s household administration (Eph. 1:9-10; 3:9-11; 1 Tim. 1:3-4). The divine economy is the mystery of God’s will, a mystery which from the ages has been hidden in God, who created all things (Eph. 1:9; 3:9). It was a mystery because it was not unveiled to any human being in past ages. Adam and Abraham were never told about God’s economy. It was hidden in God; therefore, it was a hidden mystery. Men could see the creation, but they could not understand the purpose of the creation. Today this mystery has been unveiled to us.
The divine economy is according to God’s eternal purpose (v. 11), which He made in Christ to head up all things in Christ (1:10). Today we still cannot see all things headed up in Christ, but we do see this heading up on a small scale. God is heading up the believers of Christ. God’s intention is to head up all Christians in Christ to be one. Satan’s intention, however, is to divide. Any division, regardless of the reason, must be condemned because division is against God’s heading up of all things in Christ.
God desires to have a church to be the Body of Christ as His fullness for a corporate expression of the processed Triune God (v. 23; 3:19b). This is not just a congregation composed of a number of believers. The Body of Christ is an organic Body of a great person — Christ. In order for Christ to have such a Body, He must dispense Himself into His chosen and redeemed people.
The accomplishment of the divine economy is by the divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity. God is divine, and He is also triune. He is triune in order to complete the steps for the dispensing of Himself into us. To dispense Himself into us, He has taken three steps: the Father’s choosing and predestinating, the Son’s redeeming, and the Spirit’s sealing. These three steps are for God’s divine dispensing.
The first step of the divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity was the Father’s choosing and predestinating (1:4-5). The Father chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world that we should be holy. How can we common human beings be holy? We cannot be made holy by our outward actions. Neither can we be holy by being washed. To be washed makes us clean, but to be clean is not to be holy. The only way that we can be holy is by a holy element being dispensed into our being. Medical doctors know that our physical bodies need many minerals. If our blood is short of iron, the only way that iron can get into our blood is by the food that we eat or drink. In the same way, we become holy by receiving the holy God with His holy nature into our being. His holy element then becomes our element. The Father chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world so that we, the chosen ones, may have the Father’s holy nature and thus may be sanctified through the dispensing of the Father’s holy nature into us, His chosen ones.
The Father’s predestinating through Christ is so that we the predestinated ones may have His life for our sonship through the dispensing of the Father’s divine life into us (v. 5). To have the sonship implies that we must have God’s life. The divine life generates us to be God’s sons. As God’s sons, we have God’s life, so we have God’s sonship. God the Father imparts Himself into our being as our holy nature to make us holy and as our divine life to make us His sons so that we may have the sonship. To be made holy and to receive the sonship are a matter of receiving the divine dispensing. The divine way for us to be made holy and to receive the sonship is by God dispensing Himself into us.
The accomplishment of the divine economy by the divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity is not only through the Father’s choosing and predestinating but also through the Son’s redeeming (v. 7). The Son’s redeeming is not just outward and objective. It is not just a matter of Christ shedding His blood in order to redeem us and to cleanse us from our sins. The Son’s redeeming is much deeper than this. Through the Son’s redeeming, the redeemed are put into Christ. We were put into Christ so that we could be made an inheritance of God with Christ as the element and realm of the divine inheritance (v. 11). We were put into Christ and made an inheritance of God through the dispensing of Christ. It is as if God said, “I have redeemed you and put you into Christ. This Christ will become your element for you to be My inheritance. I do not have any intention to inherit you in your natural being. You are just a sinner. Even though you are redeemed, you are just cleansed. I want to inherit My Son in you. Now you have My Son in you as the element to constitute you into something precious. This will be counted as My inheritance.” In order for God to gain such an inheritance, He had to dispense Himself in Christ into our being.
Ephesians 1 reveals the Father’s choosing and predestinating, the Son’s redeeming, and the Spirit’s sealing (v. 13b). The sealing of the Spirit can be likened to a seal with ink being pressed upon a sheet of paper. The more the ink is applied, the more the paper is saturated and permeated with the ink. Eventually, the entire paper will be sealed, saturated, and permeated with the substance of the ink in the image of the seal. In the same way, the Spirit is saturating and permeating us. The last stanza of Hymns, #501 says,
This sealing, permeating, and saturating is going on constantly in the believers. As you are reading this chapter, the Spirit is permeating you. The Spirit as the sealing ink remains wet forever. It never dries. The Spirit’s sealing saturates the sealed ones through the dispensing of the sealing ink unto, or for, the day of the redemption of their body (4:30). The redemption of our body is the transfiguration of our body (Phil. 3:21). Until the transfiguration of our body, the sealing of the Spirit will go on continually to saturate and permeate our entire being.
The issue of the divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity through the Father’s choosing and predestinating, the Son’s redeeming, and the Spirit’s sealing is the church (Eph. 1:22b).
The church as the issue of the divine dispensing is through the transmission, the dispensing, of the resurrected and ascended Christ (vv. 19-22). God’s power operated in Christ in raising Him from the dead and seating Him at His right hand in the heavenlies. Christ was raised from the dead in Hades to the throne of God in the third heaven. Everything was subjected under His feet, and He was made Head over all things to the church. The word to in verse 22 implies a transmission. Whatever God has caused to operate in Christ is transmitted and is being transmitted to the church.
This transmission is so that the church may be the Body of Christ, the fullness of the One who fills all in all, for the corporate expression of the processed Triune God (v. 23).
