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The great answer to this great question is the mystery hidden in God throughout the ages, the eternal economy of God, which is God’s eternal intention with His heart’s desire to dispense Himself in His Divine Trinity as the Father in the Son by the Spirit into His chosen people to be their life and nature so that they may become an organism, the Body of Christ as the new man, for God’s fullness, God’s expression, which will consummate in the New Jerusalem—1 Tim. 1:3-4; Eph. 1:22-23; 3:9, 19; Gen. 1:26; Isa. 43:7; Rom. 8:29; 1 John 3:2:
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Job and his friends thought that what he was suffering was a matter of God’s judgment; however, Job’s sufferings were not God’s judgment but God’s stripping and consuming that God might gain Job so that he might gain God more.
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Although God was stripping Job, He surely was not angry with him; neither did God consider Job to be His adversary but His intimate friend—Job 19:11; cf. 10:13.
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God knew that after Job had passed through a time of suffering, he would be rebuilt with the Divine Trinity so that he could become another person—a new man, a new creation (Gal. 6:15), to fulfill God’s eternal economy for God’s expression (2 Cor. 5:17); this is the great answer to the great question in the book of Job.
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In our reading of the Bible, we need to focus our attention on God’s eternal economy for the divine dispensing; unless we know God’s economy, we will not understand the Bible; God’s intention with Job was to make Job a man of God, who was constituted with God according to His divine economy:
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The Bible of sixty-six books is for only one thing: for God in Christ by the Spirit to dispense Himself into us to be our life, our nature, and our everything so that we may live Christ and express Christ; this should be the principle that governs our life—John 10:10b; 1 Cor. 15:45b; Rom. 8:2, 10, 6, 11; Phil. 1:19-21a; 2 Cor. 3:6.
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God’s dealing with Job was to bring him out of the sphere of ethics and into the sphere of God-gaining so that he would be turned from seeking perfection in ethics to seeking and gaining God instead of anything else; man’s standing before God is based on how much of God he has gained—Psa. 27:8; 105:4; Phil. 3:8; Matt. 25:3-4, 9; Prov. 23:23; Rev. 3:18; 2 Cor. 3:18; 4:17; 1 Pet. 2:7; Dan. 5:27; 9:23; 10:11, 19.
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God’s purpose in dealing with His holy people is that they would be emptied of everything and receive only God as their gain; He wants His people to gain Him, to partake of Him, to possess Him, and to enjoy Him more and more, rather than all other things, until their enjoyment reaches the fullest extent for them to become the New Jerusalem—Matt. 5:3; Psa. 43:4; 73:25-26; Phil. 3:8-9; Rev. 21:2.
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This is the intrinsic significance of the entire New Testament as the great answer to the great question in the book of Job concerning God’s purpose in His creation of man and in His dealing with His chosen people.
Morning Nourishment
John 10:10 …I have come that they may have life and may have it abundantly.1 Cor. 15:45 …The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit.
Rom. 8 6 For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the spirit is life and peace.
The Bible of sixty-six books is for only one thing: for God in Christ by the Spirit to dispense Himself into us to be our life, our nature, and our everything that we may live Christ and express Christ. This should be the principle that governs our life. In a practical way, it should be today’s tree of life for our enjoyment.
The Bible is not mainly a book of prophecy, teaching, or types. The Bible is a book of God’s economy. To say merely that the Bible is a book consistently on Christ is not adequate. The Bible is on Christ in God’s economy. God’s economy is to dispense Himself in His Divine Trinity in Christ by the Spirit into us that we may have Him as our life, nature, and everything. When we experience this, it is no longer we who live, but it is Christ who lives in us (Gal. 2:20). This is the tree of life. (Life-study of Job, p. 51)
Today’s Reading
The regenerated ones, who are divinely human and humanly divine, spontaneously become an organism, the Body of Christ, which is the church of God as the new man in God’s new creation to carry out God’s new “career,” that is, to build up the Body of Christ for the fullness, the expression, of the Triune God. This fullness as the organism of the Triune God will consummate in the New Jerusalem. The Bible begins with God in His creation as the initiation and ends with the New Jerusalem, which is the mingling of the Triune God and all His chosen, redeemed, regenerated, transformed, conformed, and glorified tripartite people. The New Jerusalem is thus a constitution of God with man to express God for eternity.To see this is to have an overview of the entire Bible. In our reading of the Bible, we need to focus our attention on God’s eternal economy for the divine dispensing. Unless we know God’s economy we will not understand the Bible.
Christ is not only the center of the Bible but also the centrality and universality of God’s economy. It was in this economy that Christ became incarnated, that He went to the cross to pass through crucifixion, that He came out from death and entered into resurrection, and that in resurrection He was begotten of God to be God’s firstborn Son and as the last Adam became the life-giving Spirit to regenerate all His believers to make them the same as He is in life and nature that they might become His brothers and the sons of God. These sons plus the Firstborn all become a new man, with Him as the Head and with the church as His Body, to carry out God’s eternal purpose to consummate in the New Jerusalem.
If we see this revelation concerning God’s economy, then we will be able to understand the book of Job. Job suffered God’s stripping and consuming, but he did not understand what was happening to him. Job could say, “You have hidden these things in Your heart; / I know that this is with You” (Job 10:13). He knew that God had a purpose, but he did not know what God’s purpose was.
Job and his three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, were in the realm of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Even though Job was on a somewhat higher level than his friends, he and they were still in the same realm. God was trying to rescue them from that realm and put them into the realm of the tree of life. The first thing God had to do was to strip Job, consume him, and tear him down so that he would become nothing as a person under suffering. This became the base for God to rebuild Job with the Divine Trinity, that Job could be a new man, a part of God’s new creation, to fulfill God’s eternal economy for God’s expression. (Life-study of Job, pp. 58-59)
Further Reading: Life-study of Job, msgs. 9, 31