In God’s New Testament economy there’s a desperate need for the stewardship of God; we all are given this stewardship and we need to remain under the divine dispensing to be constituted and filled with God and minister Him to others.
We may never connect the matter of the stewardship of God in Eph. 3 with the one new man in Eph. 4, but praise the Lord for the ministry of the age opening this matter up to us.
Paul received the stewardship of God; he mentioned this right after the creation of the new man and before the bringing forth of the new man.
What comes next is the wonderful prayer in Eph. 3, the prayer for the reality and practicality of the one new man.
Paul may have not mentioned the new man in his prayer, just as the Lord didn’t mention the new man in John 17, but actually both of these prayers are for the one new man.
Then, after this prayer, what comes is the stewards; at the beginning of ch. 4 of Ephesians we have the stewards and the stewardship.
So what we see is both the prayer and the stewardship, and then again we see the prayer; then we see the gifts given by Christ to perfect the members of the Body – the apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers.
These are the stewards who perfect us in life and in function with the goal of a full-grown man, a fully developed one new man who is both mature and is fully functioning.
The full-grown new man is the result of the perfecting of the stewards; the stewards perfect us to do the same thing that they do, and all the perfected ones function to build up the Body of Christ, and that built up Body of Christ is the one new man. Amen!
For God to carry out His economy, He must have some stewards who would serve, minister, manage, and execute His economy.
When He wants to do something, He needs man to cooperate with Him; when He wants to carry out His economy, He needs stewards who would carry out their stewardship to dispense God into man for the fulfilment of God’s economy.
How do the riches of God, which are unsearchable, get into us? It is by means of His divine dispensing.
How does God’s dispensing reach us and fill us, so that we may fulfil God’s purpose? It is by means of the stewards which God has gained, those who dispense God into man.
The apostles were appointed by the Lord to be His stewards, and all believers in Christ can be such ones.
We all are called and equipped to minister God to man, and we need to minister the mysteries of God into man for God to carry out His economy.
There’s a Desperate Need for the Stewardship of God to Carry out the Economy of God
In the New Testament economy of God, there is the desperate need for the stewardship of God (1 Tim. 1:4; Col. 1:25). Why is there such a desperate need? It is because God’s entire economy depends on the stewards!
God has an intention, and all His riches are in Himself; but until there are some stewards, some who dispense the riches of God into man, these riches can’t be dispensed!
Whether God’s economy goes forward or is at a standstill depends on the stewards. This is why the need for stewards is desperate, and in all the local churches there needs to be stewards who carry out the stewardship of God for the fulfilment of God’s economy.
If in a locality there’s no steward, that locality has no way to go on, and God’s economy has no way to advance in that place. Our greatest lack today is not merely the lack of spiritual education but the lack of stewards; this is a limitation to God in His economy.
The limitation of God’s move is man’s cooperation through prayer; the limitation for God’s dispensing is the lack of proper stewards.
There is a great lack of people whom God can entrust with His riches. The stewardship of God is God’s divine arrangement to carry out His New Testament economy (Eph. 3:2; 1 Cor. 9:17).
God has set up an arrangement, just as the Lord did when He was on earth and fed the five thousand; the Lord could have just walked among the groups of people and feed them Himself, but He didn’t do that – He sent the disciples.
This is God’s arrangement, and this is how He wants to carry out His economy, the only way He will do it.
The economy of God has become the stewardship of God given to all the believers (Eph. 3:2, 9). This stewardship was given not only to Paul or Peter; yes, Paul was a steward, and all the early apostles were stewards, but praise the Lord that it didn’t stop there!
Praise the Lord, in God’s view every single member of His Body should participate in this stewardship of God.
Paul said that he, as a steward of God, dispensed the unsearchable riches of Christ as the gospel; we may say that this is so high, and we can’t do this, but Paul continues by saying that He is the least of all the saints.
If Paul could do it, so could we. Maybe we can’t do it right now, but we can be perfected by the stewards of God so that we can participate in the stewardship of God.
In Eph. 3 the same Greek word “oikonomia” is used with two denotations: in relation to God, oikonomia denotes God’s economy (v. 9), and in relation to us, oikonomia denotes the stewardship (v. 2).
The stewardship of God is according to the economy of God; with God it is a matter of economy, and with us it is a matter of stewardship.
There is only one economy, one stewardship, one dispensing, and one ministry, but there are many stewards; all the stewards need to carry out their stewardship according to the economy of God.
The stewardship of grace is the dispensing of the riches of God into our being so that we may grow and become the church (v. 8). Hallelujah!
Lord, show us the desperate need for the stewardship of God in all the local churches for the carrying out of God’s economy! May we realize that God’s economy depends on the stewardship of God, and may we give ourselves to the Lord to be those who are perfected to be the stewards that God needs and can trust today! Amen, Lord, we do not want to limit You anymore; we want to carry out our stewardship for the fulfilment of God’s economy! Have Your way, Lord, to perfect us to be the faithful stewards who dispense God into man today!
Continually Receiving God’s Dispensing to Participate in the Stewardship of God
The reason that the stewardship of God is a desperate need today and it is an ultimate and central matter to God is that the desire of God’s heart is to dispense Himself into man.
The central point of the whole Bible is the desire of God’s heart to dispense Himself into man (Phil. 2:13; Eph. 1:5, 9; 3:17). If we understand that God wants to dispense Himself into man, we will realize that the need for the stewardship is so urgent.
God wants to dispense Himself into us so that He may gain a corporate person, the one new man, to express Him and represent Him. God’s economy is to carry out the dispensing of Himself into man.
The one new man – the man who can fulfill God’s eternal purpose – constantly receives God’s dispensing (Eph. 2:15; 4:24).
On His side, God is continually and eternally dispensing; on our side, we constantly receive God’s dispensing.
Before we can participate in the stewardship of God to dispense the riches of God into others, we first need to receive these riches. There should be a constant receiving of God’s riches into us, otherwise there’s no corresponding dispensing!
So God, like a steady stream, dispenses Himself little by little into us, into all the parts of the one new man (Rev. 22:1).
The one new man is a receiver of God’s dispensing; the new man receives the dispensing constantly, and the way that He dispenses His supply is that He never stops – it is a steady supply, little by little.
He doesn’t flow out like a mighty flow but little by little; we don’t have the capacity to receive a lot of the divine dispensing, but we do have the capacity to receive His dispensing little by little.
On our side, we should never stop receiving the divine dispensing; on His side, He flows like a steady stream. We need to daily keep ourselves under the divine dispensing; there’s a river of water of life, bright as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb (Rev. 22:1).
The stream of life that supplies the one new man today also supplies the New Jerusalem; the new man is a corporate person consummating in the New Jerusalem.
God’s continual, steady, and eternal dispensing constitutes us, coordinates us, and builds us up together; it is by receiving the divine dispensing constantly that we can participate in the stewardship of God.
The way we are constituted with God is by receiving the divine dispensing. The way we are coordinated and built up together is by receiving God’s continual, steady, and eternal dispensing.
Merely coming together without being under the divine dispensing does not carry out His economy.
Being in the constant receiving of the divine stream will cause us to be coordinated and built together, for this flow will reconstitute us and make us the same.
Lord Jesus, keep us receiving God’s continual, steady, and eternal dispensing into our being little by little, day by day. May our being be fully open to Your dispensing so that we may be constituted with God, coordinated with the saints, and built up in the Body of Christ. Lord, it is Your heart’s desire to dispense Yourself into man; we open to You and we welcome Your divine dispensing. Keep us under Your dispensing to be filled with Your riches and be equipped to carry out the stewardship of God for the dispensing of God into man!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by bro. Mark Raabe for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1990, vol. 3, “A Deeper Study of the Divine Dispensing,” ch. 13, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The One New Man Fulfilling God’s Purpose in Creating Man (2019 fall ITERO), week 8, Carrying Out the Stewardship of God for the One New Man.
- Hymns on this topic:
– The faith is the economy, the economy of God / The household administration, the dispensing of our God / The truth is the contents, the reality of the faith, / According to God’s economy. (Song on, The faith is the economy)
– For God’s dispensing, we have been, / Made into vessels open to Him; / His element is wrought in us, / Making us living stones, corporately; / Being saved from self, the flesh and its will, / It’s no longer I, but Christ lives in me; / Members of the Body, built up in love, / Joined to be one, for Him corporately. (Song on, God’s heart’s desire, a house on earth)
– Not a dead religion serving, / But in Christ as life to live; / Not theology dispensing, / But a living Christ to give. / Not the knowledge of mere doctrine, / But the message Christ should be; / Not the gifts, the forms, the teachings, / But God’s Christ-reality. (Hymns #908)
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