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Scripture Reading: Gen. 1:1, 26-27; 2:7-9, 10-14, 18-24
God’s economy is the main topic of the entire Bible, yet it is very mysterious. It was hidden in God in eternity past and continued to be hidden in God for the first four thousand years of human history. From the time of Adam to the time of the apostles, God’s economy was not revealed to man. One day the Lord called a man named Saul (later called Paul). He regenerated him and showed him God’s economy. The apostle Paul tells us that God’s economy had been hidden in God from the ages (that is, from eternity) and through all past ages (Eph. 3:9). Paul was the one who began to see something hidden in God, something in God’s heart that had never been revealed to the sons of men. Paul received a revelation of this mystery, and in his fourteen Epistles, God’s economy is stressed, emphasized, and developed to the uttermost.
In 1 Timothy 1:3-4 Paul tells us that the New Testament ministers and teachers should only teach one thing — God’s economy. To teach anything else is to teach differently. Christianity has been divided mainly by different teachings, yet in the Bible there is only one main teaching — the teaching of God’s economy. In this chapter we want to see the divine economy in God’s creation.
Genesis 1 and 2 tell us about God’s creation. These chapters unveil the almighty and eternal God as our Creator. God created the universe and He created man. Genesis 1:26 tells us that God created man in His image and according to His likeness. Man was a copy of God. Genesis 2:7 gives us a particular account of God’s creation of man: “Jehovah God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” God created a body for man, and this body was created by God of the dust. Our body is earthly. Medical students can tell us that the elements in our body are the same as the elements in dust. What is in the dust is also in our bodies because our bodies are bodies of dust. Then God breathed the breath of life into this body of dust. This means that God created man with two elements. The first element was dust, and the second element was the breath of life. One element was physical, and the other was spiritual. The physical body can be touched and can be seen, but the breath of life is invisible and untouchable. When God breathed the breath of life into this body of dust, something came out — a living soul. The breath of life entering into the body of dust produced a man as a living soul. This breath of life is the human spirit. Proverbs 20:27 tells us that the spirit of man is the lamp of Jehovah. The Hebrew word in this verse for spirit is the same word in Genesis 2:7 for breath. This tells us that the breath breathed into man’s body became the spirit of man. Thus, in the first two chapters of Genesis we have a clear picture that man was made according to God, that he was a copy of God, and that man was created with a human spirit.
Now we need to ask why God created man in His own image, making man a copy of Himself, and why God created man with a spirit. God’s economy is the answer to these questions. John 4:24 tells us that God is Spirit and that we must worship Him in spirit. Only the spirit can worship the Spirit. God created man in His own image, according to His own likeness, with a spirit to worship Him and contact Him because of His divine economy. The divine economy is to carry out the divine dispensing of God into man. God created man in His own image so that He could dispense Himself into man, and God created man with a spirit so that He could dispense Himself into man.
A container is always made according to its contents. A round box was meant to contain something round, whereas a square box was meant to contain something square. God made man as a copy of Himself with the intention that man would be His container. In Romans 9 Paul tells us that God created man as a vessel (vv. 21, 23), a container to contain God. From the time that I was twenty years old, for seven and a half years, I was with some very knowledgeable teachers of the Bible. They taught me the dispensations, the prophecies, and the typologies. This was all very good. But they never told me that God made man as His container. We all need to see that we were made to contain God. When I was a little boy, I attended Sunday school. I was told the story of God’s creation and many stories of Jesus, but I was never told that I was made to be God’s container. Christian teachers teach many things. They may teach us that we have to love our neighbors, that the wives should be submissive to the husbands, that the husbands should love the wives, that the children should honor their parents, that the parents should not provoke their children, that the servants should be faithful, and that the masters need to be kind. Many of us were taught these things in the past, but we were never told that we were made to contain God. This is wonderful! We all need to have the realization to declare, “I am a container of God!” God wants to be our contents. The God who is love, light, holiness, and righteousness is our contents! We have to be filled with Him.
We must realize that God is a Spirit. God is invisible in the same way that electricity is invisible. Edison invented the light bulb to express electricity. In like manner, radio waves are invisible, and in those waves there may be some Japanese music or some Italian singing. Within a radio there is a receiver to receive these waves that contain the music and the singing. Man is just like a radio with a receiver to receive the invisible God. One day God “tuned our spirit” to receive Him, the invisible Spirit. Our human spirit is the receiver for us to receive “the heavenly music,” the invisible God. We can exercise our spirit, our inner receiver, to receive the heavenly divine transmission of the wonderful Triune God. When we sing to the Lord, when we pray and call upon the name of the Lord, the “heavenly electricity” gets into us to make us “crazy” with the enjoyment of Christ. We were made as copies of God to contain Him, and we were created with a spirit, which is the receiver for us to receive God the Spirit as the “heavenly radio waves.”
When I was a young man, I did everything quickly. I spoke quickly, and I walked quickly. When you are a quick person, it is easy for you to lose your temper. When I wanted to do something quickly and another person was going slowly, I became irritated. Then I got saved when I was nineteen. My sister returned home from a seminary where she was studying. She loved the Lord and wanted to go on with the Lord. She told me that she saw many “spiritual” Christians in her seminary. She related to me that these Christians did everything slowly. They walked slowly, they opened up the Bible slowly, and they talked slowly. After hearing that testimony, I desired to be a slow person, and I began to hate my quickness. Then I began to imitate the persons who were so slow. I tried to pick up my Bible slowly, walk slowly, and even read the Bible slowly. But eventually, my quickness came out again. I found out that I was not a slow person. For me to try to be a slow person was like a monkey trying to imitate a man. Eventually, the monkey will return to being a monkey.
Then I was taught by many Christian teachers that I should be patient, humble, and kind. I was taught that I should be very virtuous. Eventually, I discovered that I could not love, I could not be humble, and I could not be patient, kind, holy, or righteous. I became very disappointed and struggled for a long time. One day I saw that man can never be holy. Only God can be holy. There is no possibility for a piece of black iron to be gold. I saw that what God wanted was to enter into me to be my contents, to be my holiness, to be my “gold.” When I saw and realized this, I became greatly excited. I wanted to tell everyone that I had God in me, that God was my contents. God is my life, my holiness, my love, my slowness, and my everything. I am a vessel, a container, to contain God and to be filled with God.
I used to tell people that I wanted to be a good man, but I could not make it. But today I can testify that I am not a good man. Do not be a good man, but be a God-man. If you want to be a good man, be sure that you will be a bad man. Do not try in yourself to love others. The more you try to love others, the more you will eventually hate others. If you try to be humble, you will be proud. You may even have the inward attitude — “Don’t you know that I am so humble?” This is pride. You are proud of your humility. You have to forget about being a good man.
In the garden of Eden there were two trees — the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:9). Evil always goes with good. Hatred goes with love. Pride goes with humility. This is not what God wants. God wants life. God does not want you to be a good man, but God wants you to be a God-man. You may be a “good man,” but you can never be an expression of God if you are merely a good man. God made man in His own image for the purpose of expressing God. When we become a God-man who is filled with God, we express God. A God-man is an expression of God.
Such a God-man, expressing God, is God’s representative. He represents God, and he has God’s authority over all things. God created man in His own image to express Him, and God gave His dominion to man that man may reign for Him (1:26). It is not a good man but a God-man who expresses God and represents God. God’s image is for us to express God, and God’s dominion is for us to represent God. We have God Himself in our spirit, and we can be filled with God and full of God to express Him and represent Him as a God-man. This is the dispensing of God Himself into us according to the divine economy.
After God created man in His image with a spirit to contain Him, God put this man in front of the tree of life and charged him to be careful not to eat the wrong tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (2:16-17). God wanted man to eat of the tree of life. In the Gospel of John we see that the Lord is the vine tree (15:1) and that He is the life (14:6). When we put these two matters together, we see that Jesus is the tree of life. He is the tree and He is the life, so He is the tree of life. We have to receive Him by our spirit, and we can receive Him by eating Him and drinking Him. He told us that He is the bread of life for us to eat. By eating Him we can live because of Him (6:57). Also, He is the living water for us to drink (4:14; 7:37-38).
What is it to eat Jesus and to drink of Jesus? This is God’s dispensing of Himself into our being. God created man in His own image with a spirit so that man might receive Him. At the time of creation, man did not have God within him. Man was just an empty container. Adam was empty without God in him, so God put him in front of the tree of life. Adam was an empty container made to contain God as life. He needed to receive God into him so that God would be his life, his life supply, and his contents. In the same way God needs to be our contents, our life, and our life supply. We should not receive the wrong tree. The Lord warned Adam that if he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he would surely die. We need to receive the right item into us, and the right thing for us to receive is the tree of life. The tree of life indicates that God wants to be our life. We have to receive Him by eating Him. If we eat of Christ as the tree of life, we will receive Him into our being to be our life supply, and we will no longer be empty. God will be our contents.
Genesis 1 and 2 give us a picture in God’s creation, showing us the divine economy. Even in God’s creation there is a picture of God’s desire to dispense Himself into His created man. I must testify that my only burden and my unique interest is God’s economy. God wants to dispense Himself into us to make us God-men, not good men. A Christian is not merely a good man but a God-man. We were made in God’s image with a spirit to receive God into us as our life, our life supply, and our everything to be our very contents for us to be God-men.
