The meaning of business
- This page is part of an ERW course, Principles of economic restoration.
- By John Eagles, February 2, 1986
In the English language, business originally would mean: to be busy. Because fallen people are all the time busy with doing only one thing, to make money, business came to mean: to acquire money.
Money represents God’s creation. Therefore, business concerns man’s relationship to creation.
Originally, all creation belongs to God. God is invisible and doesn’t have a body to directly deal with creation. Yet, in a sense, this is not true, because God does have a body. That body is man. Man is God’s body, and deals with creation directly. In the original ideal, business means the relationship of man with creation, whereby man is in the position of God’s body.
Because of the fall of man, man lost the position of being God’s body and became Satan’s body instead. Therefore, through the fall, God lost His dominion over creation and Satan falsely stole that dominion.
In the course of restoration, business has many aspects. One of these aspects is that through business, man can restore his position of being God’s body having dominion over creation.
How did man lose his position of having direct dominion over all of creation? It happened because of the fall of man, the spiritual fall between Lucifer and Eve and the physical fall between Eve and Adam.
For man, to restore his dominion over creation, he or she must therefore first of all indemnify the fall. Man, working to get dominion for God over creation, simultaneously must restore his or her fallen relationship into original relationships. Then Satan will lose the right to use man as his body, and Satan must give up his false dominion over creation.
By restoring creation, bringing creation from under Satan’s dominion back under God’s dominion, man is restoring himself. Satan will only give up his dominion when man proves that his love is not Satan’s love, but God’s love.
Because of self-centeredness, man gave up his original relationship to God and his true dominion over creation. Now man must restore the relation to God by being God-centered, laboring hard to restore, that is to re-create creation, and by having true relations with other man instead of self-centered, false relations. Then Satan must give up his false claim over man and over creation.
