EXCERPTS FROM THE MINISTRY

CHAPTER ONE

AN INTRODUCTORY WORD

Scripture Reading: Eph. 1:9-10; 3:9-11, 2; Col. 1:25-27

The entire revelation of the entire Bible shows God’s dispensing. The Bible shows that God wants to dispense Himself into His chosen people. No other point is so crucial or so central as this one. God chose us, predestinated us, redeemed us, saved us, and regenerated us for the purpose of dispensing and working Himself into us. God’s intention is shown in the Old Testament, but it is not fully revealed there. The full development of the revelation concerning God’s intention to dispense Himself into us is in the New Testament. In the New Testament this matter is the main subject and the focus of God’s economy.

GOD’S ECONOMY

God’s economy is God’s plan, and this plan is a kind of arrangement. This arrangement is His administrative dispensation. God has a plan, a divine arrangement, an administration, to distribute Himself into His chosen people. Ephesians 1:9-10 and 3:9-11 fully reveal this matter. The word economy in these verses refers to God’s plan, God’s arrangement, God’s administrative dispensation. This arrangement, this plan, this dispensation, is for God to dispense Himself as the processed Triune God into His chosen people. The Divine Trinity is for the divine dispensing. The matter of dispensing is revealed in Ephesians 3:2 and Colossians 1:25-27. In these verses the word stewardship means “dispensing.” A stewardship is a dispensing. A waiter in a restaurant has a stewardship to serve food to others. To serve food, to dispense food to people, is the stewardship of the waiter. Paul tells us that God gave him a stewardship. His stewardship was his dispensing duty to dispense Christ as the embodiment of the Triune God into God’s chosen people. Today our preaching the gospel and ministering the word must be a dispensing of the Triune God into people.

The New Testament
Revealing the Triune God for Dispensing

We must realize that the entire New Testament is a dispensing book. It opens the veil to show God’s desire to dispense Himself into His people. Many Christians would say that the Bible is a book of salvation. The Bible, however, is something more than this—it is a book that reveals the dispensing of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, embodied in Christ, consummated in the Spirit, and intensified in the seven Spirits, into His chosen and redeemed people.

The New Testament Unveiling a Wonderful Person

There are twenty-seven books in the New Testament. When I was young, I was taught that the New Testament could be divided into three sections. The first section was the five books from Matthew through Acts, the historical books. The second section was the Epistles, the letters written by the apostles from Romans through Jude. The last section was the book of Revelation, a book of prophecy. I would not say that this interpretation is wrong, but it is superficial.

The New Testament unveils to us a wonderful person. This wonderful person was first the Son of God unveiled in the four Gospels. Then this person became the life-giving Spirit, unveiled in a full and detailed way in the twenty-two books from Acts through Jude. Then in Revelation this life-giving Spirit is intensified to be the seven Spirits. By this we can see that the New Testament shows a person as the Son of God, as the Spirit, and eventually as the seven Spirits.

I have been studying the Bible nearly every day since 1925. The chart in this chapter is the consummation, final reaping, and extract of my fifty-nine years of studying the New Testament. This chart shows that the content of God’s New Testament economy is a person. To say that this person is Jesus Christ is right but not absolutely, perfectly, and completely right. The content of the New Testament economy of God is a person, and this person is the Triune God. God’s oikonomia, God’s household administration, is to distribute Himself as the Triune God—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—into all His chosen people. The twenty-seven books of the New Testament are a full revelation of one great person—the Triune God. No one is greater than the Triune God. His greatness reaches to an extent that is far beyond our apprehension.