VII. HEZEKIAH MAKING THE POOL AND THE CONDUIT
Hezekiah made the pool and the conduit and brought the water into the city. He slept with his fathers, and Manasseh his son reigned in his place (2 Kings 20:20-21).
Let us now turn to the matter of God’s economy. God’s economy is centered in Christ with His organic Body, the church, which will consummate in the New Jerusalem. Regarding God’s economy, the intrinsic connection between the books of history in the Old Testament and their fulfillment in the New Testament is in Isaiah 7:14 and 9:6. These verses indicate that God would put humanity upon Himself, mingling His divinity with humanity. Through His incarnation Christ became the God-man, a person both divine and human, having His divinity mingled with His humanity. The incarnation was, therefore, a great event in the universe.
The New Testament clearly reveals that Christ’s ministry has two sections. The first section, from His incarnation to His death to accomplish God’s eternal redemption, is in the four Gospels. The second section is presented in Acts through Revelation.
After accomplishing God’s redemption through His death, Christ entered into resurrection. In resurrection Christ’s humanity was uplifted into divinity and Christ was "designated the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness out of the resurrection of the dead" (Rom. 1:4). His humanity was regenerated, and in resurrection He was born as God’s firstborn Son. As the only begotten Son of God in eternity, Christ had only divinity without humanity. But in His economy God intends to join Himself to man and mingle Himself with man. Thus, when Christ was resurrected, He was begotten to be God’s firstborn Son in His humanity (Acts 13:33). At the same time He regenerated all the believers in a single, great corporate birth (1 Pet. 1:3). In His resurrection Christ, as a man in the flesh, became a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). Whereas He redeemed us by His death, He regenerated us by the life-giving Spirit.
God’s economy is to make all the redeemed ones, all the believers in Christ, God-men. God’s desire is not to have good men—God’s desire is to have God-men. Christ, the unique God-man, is the model, the prototype, used by God to have a "mass production" of millions of God-men. Regeneration brings God into us, making us God-men. As God-men we should have a God-man’s living, continually rejecting our natural man and living by the very God who is life in us. As God-men we should deny our natural life and apply the divine life in our daily life.
After regeneration the life-giving Spirit, the consummation and totality of the processed Triune God, first sanctifies us; second, renews us (Titus 3:5); third, transforms us (2 Cor. 3:18); and fourth, conforms us to God’s image (Rom. 8:29), making us the same as God in appearance, element, and essence. Eventually, when the Lord Jesus comes back, He will glorify us, saturating our entire being with His glory. Hence, sanctification, renewing, transformation, conformation, and glorification are the steps of Christ’s ministry in resurrection.
After Christ entered into resurrection, becoming the life-giving Spirit and the Firstborn of many sons, He ascended to the heavens and was assigned by God to be the Lord and Christ (Acts 2:36) and was exalted to be the Leader and the Savior (5:31). He is also our High Priest, interceding for us before God (Heb. 8:1; 7:25-26), the Mediator and Executor of the new covenant (8:6; 9:16-17), and a Minister in the heavens (8:1-2), ministering all the heavenly things into us in the steps mentioned above.
If we would understand the second section of Christ’s ministry and know what Christ is doing now in the heavens, we need all the Epistles from Romans through Revelation. In his fourteen Epistles Paul did a wonderful job of unveiling how Christ as the ascended One in the heavens ministers Himself as the life-giving Spirit, as the pneumatic Christ, as the embodiment of the processed Triune God in His resurrection, to transform us from clay into something precious, making us the same as He, not in the Godhead but in His essence, in His element, in His nature, in His life, and in His appearance. This is the economy of God, which will consummate in the New Jerusalem.
(Life-Study of 1 & 2 Kings, Chapter 20, by Witness Lee)
