We need to See that we are God-men, Born of God, Possessing God’s Life and Nature

We praise the Lord for the gospel, which is the power of God unto salvation for all those who believe. The gospel is not merely the story of Jesus who came to save us from our sins; the gospel the New Testament preaches is high, deep, and powerful, and it has a highest point.

The highest point of the gospel is that God became a man so that man may become God in life and nature but not in the Godhead so that God would obtain a new kind, the God-man kind, to express Him as the one new man in the universe. God became a man: Jesus Christ was born of the divine essence mingling with the human essence, and He lived a life in the mingling of God and man by rejecting Himself and living by the life of God within Him.

Through His death and resurrection, Christ brought His humanity – which had nothing to do with God but was involved with sin, Satan, and death – into God, divinizing it by uplifting it into His divinity. Furthermore, in His resurrection Christ reproduced Himself into millions of His believers to produce them as the many children of God, the many God-men.

When we heard the gospel and believed into the Lord, Jesus was born again into our heart, and we became a God-man, having God’s life in us besides our human life. The most wonderful thing about all the genuine believers in Christ is that they are not just men – they are God-men, human beings who have God’s life growing, spreading, and filling them until they fully express God.

Hallelujah, God Himself became a man so that He may have a mass reproduction of Himself and thereby produce a new kind – this new kind is not just “man” or just “God” but a God-man kind! Wow! We are human beings, but through believing into Christ and receiving Him into our being we are given the authority to become children of God, men who are born of God (John 1:12-13).

I for one believe what the Bible says and not what “good-hearted” and “God-fearing” people say – We are not merely “adopted by God” but we are born of God, we are children of God, and the Spirit Himself witnesses with our spirit that we are children of God, growing to be sons of God, and in the process of becoming a corporate God-man to express God!

Christ Reproduced Himself in His Many Believers who Look Like Him and Live like Him

One day when Jesus was on earth, when some were looking for Him and wanted to speak with Him, He said, now is the time for the Son of Man to be glorified…unless the grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit (John 12:24).

Jesus likened Himself to a grain of wheat: His divine life was concealed within the shell of His humanity, and through His death and resurrection this shell was broken, so His divine life was released to be propagated and reproduced in many believers as the many grains of wheat.

Jesus was the first God-man to be reproduced in the many God-men; He is the prototype, and we as the many believers in Christ are produced through His death and resurrection to be His mass reproduction.

Now we as the many believers in Christ make God happy because we look like Christ, we speak like Christ, and we live like Christ; God’s hobby is to have Christ reproduced and lived out in many of His believers, and He is happy when He sees Christ in us!

We as the many grains of wheat are the many God-men, the reproduction of God in humanity; such a reproduction makes God happy because they look like Him, speak like Him, and live like Him (see 1 John 3:2; 4:17; 2:6). As the reproduction of Christ, we have God in us; we have His life, His nature, and His constitution.

Our daily living should be like Christ: He was sent by the Father to do His purpose, which is to live by the Father so that He may express the Father; now we need to live by Christ to express Christ (John 6:57). God sent His Son to be a man and to live a God-man life by the divine life; this kind of living issues in a universal great man who is exactly the same as He is – a corporate man living a God-man life by the divine life!

What kind of life did Jesus live? He lived as a man on earth, eating, drinking, walking, speaking, being tired, sleeping, etc just like us; but at the same time, He didn’t live by His own life but by the divine life, speaking not His words but the Father’s words, and doing not His works but the Father’s works (John 5:19; 8:28).

As the reproduction of God in humanity, we believers in Christ need to live the same kind of God-man life not by our human life but by the divine life in us, learning to deny ourselves and live by God’s life so that Christ may be expressed through us for the Father’s glory.

This kind of living issues in a universal great man that is exactly the same as Christ is – a corporate God-man living a God-man life by the divine life.

Lord Jesus, thank You for dying as a grain of wheat so that we as the many grains may be produced to be Your reproduction! Hallelujah, we as believers in Christ are the many God-men as the corporate reproduction of God in humanity for God’s glorification and expression! Lord, we want to live the God-man life by denying ourselves, not living our natural life, but living the divine life for God’s expression. Oh Lord, make us the same as You are in every possible way so that we may look like You, speak like You, and live like You for the fulfillment of God’s hobby, His dream!

We need to See that we are God-men, Born of God, Possessing God’s Life and Nature

When we believe into the Lord Jesus, we receive His divine life in us; from then on we start our Christian life, a life in which we are mingled with God and we live together with God. No longer do we live alone after our regeneration: we now have God living in us, with us, and even through us.

But in order for us to really live the same way that Jesus lived we need to have the realization that we are God-men, men born of God who possess the life and nature of God. We need to see that we are God-men belonging to the species of God, children of God having God’s life and nature (John 1:12-13).

The following quote from the ministry of brother Lee really helped me to realize what this means:

As believers in Christ and children of God, we are not mankind—we are God-man kind. To realize this is to be changed, even revolutionized. When we realize that we are God-men, we will say, “Lord, You are the first God-man, and we are the many God-men following You. You lived a human life, not by Your human life but by God’s divine life to express Him. His attributes became Your virtues. You were here on this earth dying every day. You were crucified to live. Lord, You are my life today and You are my person. You are just me. I therefore must die. I need to be conformed to Your death. I have to be crucified to die every day to live a God-man’s life, a human life yet not by my human life but by the divine life, with Your life and Your nature as my constitution to express You in Your divine attributes, which become my human virtues.” This makes us not just a Christian or a believer in Christ but a God-man, one kind with God. This is the highest point of God’s gospel. (Witness Lee, Life-study of 1 & 2 Chronicles, pp. 27-28)

Just as prince William in the UK has the full realization that he is a prince and therefore he has an uplifted living, a proper attitude, and a higher level of speaking and interaction with others, so we need to realize that we are God-men and should therefore live a God-man life by living a crucified life so that Christ may live in us.

In ourselves we cannot express God; His attributes need to saturate our human virtues, and our natural human life needs to be put to death so that God’s divine life may fill us, saturate us, and be expressed through us. The highest point of the gospel is that we are not merely Christians and believers in Christ but that we are God-men, God-man kind, the reproduction of Christ (see John 12:24; Rom. 8:16, 29; Heb. 2:10-11).

The way we live our Christian life should not be under rules and regulations such as “we should not smoke or drink alcohol or watch movies” but we should live a God-man life, realizing that we are God-men! To think of ourselves as God-men, knowing and realizing who we are, revolutionizes us in our daily experience! Hallelujah!

Having such a realization causes us to inwardly turn to the Lord again and again and be one with Him, taking Him as our life and person, and deny ourselves with our natural life so that we may allow the divine life to live in us. It is good to honestly converse with the Lord concerning these matters and tell Him,

Lord, thank You for making us God-men, the same as You are in life, nature, and expression. You were the first God-men, and today we are Your reproduction. Lord, You lived a crucified life on earth so that God may be expressed in You – now we want to live a crucified life day by day so that God may be expressed in us. Lord, You are our life and our person. May You be expressed through us today. Cause us to realize that we are God-men, men born of God having His divine life and nature, so that we may choose to live a God-man life!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message for this week, and The High Peak of the Vision and the Reality of the Body of Christ, ch. 4 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Gospel (2016 International Chinese-speaking Conference), week 5 / msg. 5, The Highest Point of God’s Gospel.
• All Bible verses are taken from, Holy Bible Recovery Version.
• Hymns on this topic:
  # Once Thou wast the only grain, Lord, / Falling to the earth to die, / That thru death and resurrection / Thou in life may multiply. / We were brought forth in Thy nature / And the many grains became; / As one loaf we all are blended, / All Thy fulness to proclaim. (Hymns #203)
  # No longer I alone that live, / But God together lives with me. / Built with the saints in the Triune God, / His universal house we’ll be, / And His organic Body we / For His expression corp’rately. (Song on Living Christ)
  # Oh, what a joy! Oh, what a rest! / Christ now is being formed in me. / His very nature and life divine / In my whole being inwrought shall be. / All that I am came to an end, / And all of Christ is all to me. (Hymns #499)