What is God's Economy?

[JJ]

Aron, your posts re God’s economy have stirred a reaction and response from me for a number of reasons. One is that God first came to make his presence known to me while I was reading God’s Economy by Witness Lee. And at the time He made clear to me that He wanted me to read that book. The experience was so moving that even to this day it is clear that my calling as a Christian is related to this term “God’s Economy”. So, imagine my questioning what that was all about years later when the same God clearly leads me to see big problems with Witness Lee’s teachings (including that very book) and out of “the local churches”.

I have spent hours and hours researching in the Bible the use of the word and of its roots that Bible translators (including LSM) inconsistently translate as economy, stewardship, and other words. I have posted elsewhere on these boards a synthesis of my conclusions. So, I won’t fully repeat that.

What I would like to do is suggest that the definition and explanation you give for God’s economy is what maturity as a steward in God’s house rightfully (which is the assembly or ekklesia of God, commonly called “the church”) rightfully includes: a life of serving others, even dying and “pouring out” so that others may live in Christ. Eating Christ’s flesh and drinking His blood is part of that stewardship (probably a better English word to use), and one never graduates from that (witness “communion”... “the Lord Jesus, on the night He was betrayed, took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, ‘this is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.’ In the same way, after supper He took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.”)

Paul clearly said to Timothy that God’s stewardship “is in faith”. The writer of Hebrews says faith is “the assurance of what we hope for and the certainty of what we do not see.” (Hebrews 11) He also goes on to show us many examples of how men and women of God first believed God, were counted righteous by God, then lived out that faith out in righteous acts of service that rendered blessings to God’s people, at great cost to themselves during their lifetimes. And, Paul in Romans (10:17) says “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ”.

So, I conclude that God’s stewardship (or economy) involves faith (hearing and believing the word of Christ, and doing what Christ’s word calls us to do; that includes eating his body and drinking his blood (matters He said are of the words He speaks to us which are spirit and life https://biblehub.com/text/john/6-63.htm) and that he who does that will live by Him). What does living by Him look like? Paul said “through the law I died to the law so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me (Gal. 2:19-20). We know from reading Acts and the epistles that the life Paul lived in the body was one of being a steward of God. That stewardship included preaching the gospel of Christ (which he laid before the apostles who were in Christ before him plus “remembering the poor, which very thing I was eager to do” {Gal. 2}). We also know that Paul remembered the poor by helping to bring them material aid as documented in Acts and his epistles. Serving others through preaching the gospel and aiding the poor are therefore the end result of God’s stewardship. Eating and drinking Christ through his word in spirit together with other believers sustains it and neither that nor serving others selflessly should be dismissed.