It will make a great difference in our Christian life and work when we realize that the humanity we should have – the humanity of Jesus – can be ours only by eating and drinking the humanity of Jesus in the Spirit.
Too many Christians have endeavoured to “imitate Jesus” and to “live like Jesus” with the result of failure after failure, and if they can somehow make it to a certain standard, they create division in the Body of Christ.
What we need is not to “try harder to be like Jesus” nor to do our best to fulfil what the Bible tells us to; we simply need to eat the Lord in His word so that His humanity would be constituted into us.
The Lord today is the Spirit; as the Spirit, He has a perfect, uplifted, divinely enriched humanity, which humanity is mingled with divinity, salted by the cross, with the aroma of resurrection, and with no natural affection, goodness, or ambition.
The humanity of Jesus is in the Spirit, and the Spirit is in the word of God; whenever we exercise our spirit to pray-read the word of God, we are not only nourished by the life-supply in the word but we are also infused with the Lord’s humanity.
If we practice eating Christ as the meal-offering, that is, if we eat the Lord in His word through praying over the word with the exercise of our spirit, we will become what we eat and we will live by what we eat.
When we exercise our spirit to touch the Spirit consolidated in the Word of God, we eat the human life and living of Jesus; we are then constituted with Jesus, and His human living becomes our human living without any self-effort but spontaneously and effortlessly. Eating Jesus is the way!
Just as today we live because of what we eat, so when we eat Jesus, taking Him in as our life supply by breathing Him and eating Him in His word, we will live because of Him and He will be expressed through us, and His human living becomes our human living.
Don’t try to outwardly imitate Christ or live the way He lived: simply eat Christ, be constituted with Christ, and His human living will become your human living!
Drinking the Spirit with the Humanity of Jesus and Flowing Him out as Living Water
In John 7:37-39, the Lord Jesus calls all those who are thirsty (WE are thirsty) to come to Him and drink; this water we drink flows out from the Lord and is the Spirit – the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the life-giving Spirit who is the consummation of the processed Triune God.
The Spirit – who was not yet because Jesus had not yet been glorified in resurrection – is the Spirit with the humanity of Jesus; the Spirit today has been constituted with the glorified humanity of Jesus (see Luke 24:26; John 7:37-39; Acts 16:7).
Our drinking and flowing has everything to do with the glorified humanity of Jesus. This Spirit, whom the Lord Jesus became after passing through incarnation, human living, death, and resurrection, is now the living water that we drink and that is flowing out from us; this Spirit is constituted with the humanity of Jesus, and without the humanity of Jesus, there could never be such a Spirit.
God put on human nature to become a man, went through the process of human living, death, and resurrection, and He was glorified as a Man; by this necessary process now the Spirit of God is compounded and mingled with humanity (just as oil was mingled with olive oil) to come into us as a river of water of life.
Whenever we call on the name of the Lord and pray to Him with the exercise of our spirit, we drink the drinkable, flowable, and dispensable Spirit of Jesus Christ which contains the uplifted, elevated, transfigured, and transformed humanity of Jesus.
Without the human essence, the Spirit of God could not be the flowing water of life; God cannot flow into man unless He has humanity – if God would be a flowing river of life to reach us and flow in and out of us, He must be constituted with the human nature of Jesus.
In his book, The Spirit of Christ, ch. 5, Andrew Murray said,
Christ had entered with our human nature, in our flesh, into the Holiest of all…In our place, and on our behalf, as man and the Head of man, He was admitted into the full glory of the Divine, and His human nature constituted the receptacle and the dispenser of the Divine Spirit. And the Holy Spirit could come down as the Spirit of the God-man—most really the Spirit of God, and yet as truly the spirit of man. He could come down as the Spirit of the glorified Jesus to be in each one who believes in Jesus, the Spirit of His personal life and His personal presence, and at the same time the spirit of the personal life of the believer. Just as in Jesus the perfect union of God and man had been effected and finally completed when He sat down upon the throne, and He so entered on a new stage of existence, a glory hitherto unknown, so too, now, a new era has commenced in the life and work of the Spirit. He can now come down to witness of the perfect union of the Divine and the human, and in becoming our life, to make us partakers of it. There is now the Spirit of the glorified Jesus: He hath poured Him forth; we have received Him to stream into us, to stream through us, and to stream forth from us in rivers of blessing. (A. Murray, The Spirit of Christ, ch. 5)
Today we as believers in Christ should simply open to the Lord, pray, and call on His name to drink the Spirit with the humanity of Jesus, and we will drink Him and flow Him out as rivers of living water!
The way to live and work the same as Jesus did is not deliberate (through our own efforts and zeal) but spontaneous: we simply need to eat His humanity by pray-reading His word and drink the Spirit with the humanity of Jesus by calling on the name of the Lord!
Lord Jesus, thank You for becoming the life-giving Spirit with the humanity of Jesus; now we can drink You and flow You out as rivers of living water! Oh Lord Jesus, we call on Your name and we open to You to drink You as the Spirit with the humanity of Jesus. Infuse us with Your humanity and constitute Your humanity into us so that we may spontaneously and effortlessly live out the same kind of life that You lived! Hallelujah, now the Lord is the Spirit – the flowing water of life for us to drink and flow!
Daily Drinking the Humanity of Jesus to be Jesusly Human in the World for the Church
The “Me” in Jesus’ words “If anyone thirst, let him come to Me and drink” is not just a divine person, the Spirit of God, but the man Jesus; when we come to Jesus to drink Him, we drink not only the Spirit but we drink of this Man – we drink not only His divinity but also His humanity. Wow, hallelujah!
In order for us to have the flow of life, we must drink of the humanity of Jesus; when we call on the name of the Lord we need to realize that we drink not only of the Spirit of God but also the Spirit of an exalted person, the Spirit of an exalted man (1 Cor. 12:13). Amen!
We need to drink of the resurrected and ascended man, Jesus; the bountiful supply is not merely of the Spirit of God but of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the One who has been processed and consummated (Phil. 1:19).
When we drink of the Spirit with the humanity of Jesus, our Christian living will be brought up to the standard of the humanity of Jesus, and we will be not merely “naturally human” but Jesusly human. If we daily drink of the Spirit of Jesus, whatever we are will be a flow of life that will satisfy not only ourselves but also others; only the drinking and flowing of the Spirit of Jesus can feed, nourish, and satisfy others.
Therefore, we must enjoy the Spirit of the humanity of Jesus for the church service, for our daily walk, and for the Lord’s recovery (see 1 Tim. 2:8-10; 3:2-3, 8, 11, 14-15; 5:1-2; 2 Tim. 3:1-5, 16-17; 2:21-22; 1:7; 4:22; Titus 2:2-6; Gal. 5:22-23; Phil. 2:15; 4:8).
We need to pray, call on the name of the Lord, and drink the Spirit, and what will flow out of us will be goodness, peace, joy, long-suffering, kindness, faithfulness, meekness, and self-control; when we drink the Spirit, we will have the fruits of the Spirit to have the human life of Jesus replicated in us.
When we drink the Spirit with the humanity of Jesus, many rivers of living water will flow out of us as being sober-minded, being subject to one another, having a good demeanor, working with our own hands, loving one another, and being Jesusly human.
When we drink the Spirit with the humanity of Jesus, we will be the salt of the earth, those who kill and eliminate the earth’s germs of corruption and rottenness (see Matt. 5:13; cf. Lev. 2:13).
Everywhere we turn there’s corruption, immorality, and rottenness today, but when we eat Jesus and drink His humanity, we have salt in ourselves, and the killing power for all the corrupting germs is in us; we will sanctify the situation around us, and corruption and rottenness are eliminated.
When we eat the humanity of Jesus, we become the light of the world, those who let their light shine before men to dispel the world’s darkness (Matt. 5:14-15; Eph. 5:8). How dark the situation among men is today!
If you read the news or just look around, people do dark things, there’s a whole dark situation, and all walk in darkness; but when we as believers eat the humanity of Jesus, we can be light in the world, part of the church as the golden lampstand shining bright with the testimony of Jesus!
Lord Jesus, we want to drink You as the resurrected and ascended man so that we may no longer be naturally human but Jesusly human, having the same human living that You did when on earth! Amen! We want to drink of the Spirit of Jesus for the humanity of Jesus so that there would be a flow of life to feed, nourish, and satisfy others. Lord, we want to enjoy the Spirit of the humanity of Jesus for the church service, for our daily walk, and for the Lord’s recovery! Hallelujah, we are the light of the world and the salt of the earth by drinking the Spirit with the humanity of Jesus!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by brother Minoru C. for this week, and Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1971, vol. 2, “Christ as the Reality,” ch. 12, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Service for the Building up of the Church (2016 Spring ITERO), week 5 / msg. 5, The Humanity of One who Serves the Lord.
- All Bible verses are taken from, Holy Bible Recovery Version.
- Hymns on this topic:
# Let us drink Jesus till we see / That we are human, Jesusly! / Till rivers flood the barren ground / And quench the thirst of all around. / Drink, drink more of Jesus! / Drink, drink more of Jesus! / Why should we ever thirsty be / When we have His humanity? (Hymns #1146)
# Deepest springs of life dispensing, / Like the hart I thirst for Thee; / Desp’rate, may I drink Thy fullness, / ’Till Thy river flows through me. / May my self be put to death, Lord, / Under Thy control I’d be, / Transformed to Thy living image, / I’d forever flow out Thee. (Hymns #1360)
# God has chosen you and me out of the world / For His plan, for man to live expressing Him. / Use us! Infuse us! Shine as the light from within. / Saturate us; be manifested through our entire being. (Song on Shining with Christ)
About aGodMan
It was about eighteen or twenty years ago when we began to see this matter in John 7:37-39. At that time we began to minister these things according to what we had seen and experienced. I was always a little hesitant, however, to say that today the Spirit of Jesus contains not only the divine element but also the human essence. To say this is not a small thing. We realized that some might accuse us of teaching heresy when we said that the human essence is in the Holy Spirit. How could the Holy Spirit have any human element? However, according to the light we received from the Lord and the experiences we had had in the past, we saw that this is absolutely the truth. The Spirit of Jesus today contains the human element.
Then one day I was reading again chapter 5 of The Spirit of Christ by Andrew Murray. There I received the strongest confirmation. Chapter 5 has been in this book for years, but in the concept of many, it is entirely new. Listen to what Andrew Murray says:
“We know how the Son, who had from eternity been with the Father, entered upon a new stage of existence when He became flesh. When He returned to Heaven, He was still the same only-begotten Son of God, and yet not altogether the same. For He was now also, as Son of Man, the first-begotten from the dead, clothed with that glorified humanity which He had perfected and sanctified for Himself. And just so the Spirit of God as poured out at Pentecost was indeed something new…When poured out at Pentecost, He came as the Spirit of the glorified Jesus, the Spirit of the Incarnate, crucified, and exalted Christ, the bearer and communicator to us, not of the life of God as such, but of that life as it had been interwoven into human nature in the person of Christ Jesus.
Christ came not only to deliver man from the law and its curse, but to bring human nature itself again into the fellowship of the Divine life, to make us partakers of the Divine nature. He could do this, not by an exercise of Divine Power on man, but only in the path of a free, moral, and most real human development. In His own person, having become flesh, He had to sanctify the flesh…From His nature, as it was glorified in the resurrection and ascension, His Spirit came forth as the Spirit of His human life, glorified into the union with the Divine, to make us partakers of all that He had personally wrought out and acquired, of Himself and His glorified life. In virtue of His atonement, man now had a right and title to the fulness of the Divine Spirit, and to His indwelling, as never before. And in virtue of His having perfected in Himself a new holy human nature on our behalf, He could now communicate what previously had no existence—a life at once human and Divine.
Christ had entered with our human nature, in our flesh, into the Holiest of all…In our place, and on our behalf, as man and the Head of man, He was admitted into the full glory of the Divine, and His human nature constituted the receptacle and the dispenser of the Divine Spirit. And the Holy Spirit could come down as the Spirit of the God-man—most really the Spirit of God, and yet as truly the spirit of man. He could come down as the Spirit of the glorified Jesus to be in each one who believes in Jesus, the Spirit of His personal life and His personal presence, and at the same time the spirit of the personal life of the believer. Just as in Jesus the perfect union of God and man had been effected and finally completed when He sat down upon the throne, and He so entered on a new stage of existence, a glory hitherto unknown, so too, now, a new era has commenced in the life and work of the Spirit. He can now come down to witness of the perfect union of the Divine and the human, and in becoming our life, to make us partakers of it. There is now the Spirit of the glorified Jesus: He hath poured Him forth; we have received Him to stream into us, to stream through us, and to stream forth from us in rivers of blessing.
We must seek to know the New Life, the Life of Glory and Power Divine in human nature, of which the Spirit of the glorified Jesus is meant to be the Witness and the Bearer…We have the most intense personal interest in knowing and understanding what it means that Jesus is glorified, that human nature shares the life and glory of God, that the Spirit was not yet, as long as Jesus was not glorified.
This is it of which Jesus says, that whoso believeth in Him shall never thirst, but shall have rivers of waters flowing out of him. This alone it is that satisfies the soul’s thirst, and makes it a fountain to quicken others; the Personal Indwelling of the Holy Spirit, revealing the Presence of the glorified Jesus.”
Quote from, Christ as the reality, by Witness Lee. Source: http://www.ministrybooks.org/books.cfm?xid=DYV8JT4OI8KNS