«　WEEK 5　DAY 3　»

　　John 1:14 And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us (and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only Begotten from the Father), full of grace and reality.

　　1 Cor. 15:45 ….the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit.

　　1 John 3:2 Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not yet been manifested what we will be. We know that if He is manifested, we will be like Him because we will see Him even as He is.

　　God's economy.... is God's goal (Eph. 1:10; 3:9). God's dispensing…. is His means. In order to accomplish the economy of working Himself into man, God has to pass through the means of dispensing. Hence, God's dispensing is for God's economy.

　　In order to dispense Himself to man, the first step God took was to become flesh and be a man (John 1:14). When He was in the flesh, on the one hand, He was the Lamb of God who took away man's sin (John 1:29). On the other hand, He was the brass serpent, which shows that He became flesh, that is, He was sent in the likeness of the flesh of sin (Rom. 8:3). As the brass serpent, He had only the form of a serpent; He did not have a serpent's poison. While the Lord was in the flesh, He was lifted up on the cross and destroyed Satan, the old serpent (John 3:14; 12:31). Furthermore, He was also a grain of wheat that fell into the ground and died. Through His death He released God's life (John 12:24).

　　The second step God took in order to dispense Himself to man was to become the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b)…. As the life-giving Spirit, Christ first regenerated our spirit (John 3:5-6) so that, in addition to our natural life, we might receive the eternal life of God as the new source and the new element of the new man. After this, Christ as the life-giving Spirit spreads out from our spirit to transform our soul. If we set our mind, the main part of our soul, on the spirit and cooperate with the operation and work of the Lord Spirit within us, our mind will be renewed (Rom. 12:2). When our mind is renewed, our will and our emotion as the other parts of our soul will spontaneously be renewed also…. Finally, He will transfigure our bodies so that our bodies may be redeemed to enter into His glory, and our entire being may be like Him in every way (Rom. 8:17, 23; Phil. 3:21; 1 John 3:2). This is the ultimate consummation of God's salvation. (The Economy and Dispensing of God, pp19-21)

　　The entire Bible is a book that deals exclusively with the economy of God, and that in particular the New Testament is focused on the consummation of the economy of God. Hence, Paul wrote to Timothy, asking him to charge and exhort certain dissenting ones not to teach different things any longer. What are the “different things”? They are things that have nothing to do with the economy of God (1 Tim. 1:3-4). (A General Outline of God's Economy and the Proper Living of a God-Man, p2)

　　 “God became man that man may become God”.… are the essence of the entire Bible. The entire Bible is an explanation of the eternal economy of God…. God is God, and He Himself has begotten us as His children…. Since God has begotten us, we are the children of God. Furthermore…. God will work on us to such an extent that we will be like Him completely (1 John 3:2)…. Adam was created with God's image and likeness. Then God set man before the tree of life, meaning that He wanted man, who had God's image, to receive God as his life…. But the Lord also shows us clearly that we are God in life and nature (but not in Godhead)…. Suppose the father is an emperor. We cannot say that all his children are emperors…. God did this that He might produce a Body for Christ, that is, that He might produce an organism for the Triune God, the ultimate manifestation of which is the New Jerusalem. (The High Peak of the Vision and the Reality of the Body of Christ, pp 14-15, 11-12)