I. GOD’S ETERNAL PURPOSE
A. A People to Express God
[According to Ephesians 3, in eternity past God planned to work Himself into His chosen people. His eternal purpose is to have a people with Him as life. God will be within them and they will be one with Him. This people will be the Body of Christ to express God Himself in Christ. First they are the church and eventually the New Jerusalem.]
B. Man Being Made in God’s Image
[The Bible tells us that in eternity past there was only God. Then He purposed to have a Body for Christ. For this He created the universe and then man, the center of the universe. Man, Genesis 1:26 tells us, was made in a specific way. He was made in God’s image and according to His likeness. Why was it that God made man in His own form? It was because God intended that one day He would enter man to make man His container, with Himself as the content. From the very beginning, then, from the time of man’s creation, the preparation was made for man to contain God.]
II. THE WAY GOD FULFILLS HIS ETERNAL PURPOSE
A. God’s Economy (Oikonomia)
The way in which God fulfills His eternal purpose is His "economy." [The economy of God is to dispense Himself into His chosen, predestinated, and redeemed people as their life, their life supply, and their everything. We have spent much time to study the Greek word for economy or dispensation used in Ephesians 1:10; 3:9 and 1 Timothy 1:4—oikonomia. This Greek word is a compound word made up of oikos, meaning house, and nomos, meaning law. If you trace the root of this word, it goes back to a word that refers to the parceling out of food, the distributing of food as in parcels. This root word also means to distribute food to the cattle for grazing. It is God’s economy to parcel Himself out to us as our life and as our life supply.]
B. God’s Dispensing of Himself to Produce the Body
[In God’s economy He dispenses Himself into His people as life, as life supply, and as everything to them. He dispenses Himself as their strength, their power, their wisdom, their righteousness, their holiness, their love, their kindness, and even as their attributes and virtues. This is God’s economy. Out of this economy many believers are being produced to be the components of the Body of God’s Son for a full expression of the Triune God. This is our vision concerning God’s economy.]
III. GOD AS THE SPIRIT REACHING MAN
A. The Way God Can Enter into the Believers
In what way could the infinite God be dispensed into man? [The Father by Himself cannot reach us, nor can the Son by Himself enter into us. The Father is unapproachable (1 Tim. 6:16), but the Son came to tabernacle among us (John 1:14). But still He was not able to enter into us because He was blood and flesh. As a man with a physical body He was able to be among His disciples, but not within them. So He told His disciples that He had to die and to be raised up. By His death and resurrection His form was changed from a physical form into a spiritual form. He became the pneumatic Christ who was able to enter into His disciples (John 20:22). This is the reaching of the Triune God. When the Triune God reaches His redeemed people, He is the Spirit.]
(Lesson Book, Level 3: Two Spirits—Two Spirits - the Divine Spirit and the Human Spirit, Chapter 1, by Witness Lee)
