God designed man to be His duplication and His expression, but due to man’s fall the first man Adam failed God in His purpose and ruined God’s design for man. When God created man, what He had in mind is to have man as His duplication and expression on earth by man receiving His life and living by His life so that God’s attributes would fill and be expressed through man’s virtues.
But due to the serpent’s seduction, man fell and now humanity is damaged and corrupted, and God’s purpose is not fulfilled in full in man. Instead of God creating another man, He Himself became a man in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, the second man (1 Cor. 15:47).
Christ’s incarnation and God-man living on earth fulfilled God’s intention in His creation of man (see Gen. 1:26-27 and the entire Gospel of Luke). Throughout the Gospels we see how Christ lived a God-man life, expressing God in His humanity and representing Him on earth in a proper way.
In Christ the divine attributes enriched and uplifted His human virtues, and Christ lived the highest life of morality and ethics according to God’s standard. God declared several times about Him, This is My Son, the Beloved, in whom I find all My delight (Matt. 3:17; 17:5).
Today this Christ is the life-giving Spirit coming to us to enter into us and fill our human virtues with God’s divine attributes so that He would live a God-man life in millions of His believers on the earth today, thus fulfilling God’s purpose in creating man.
Christ comes into us to save us from within to without; He doesn’t come to correct and adjust us but to uplift our human virtues and fill our being with His life so that He may live in us a life that pleases God.
Christ’s Incarnation and Human Living Fulfilled God’s Intention in His Creation of Man
After God created man, He was satisfied: He had a man in His image and likeness who could express Him and represent Him as His duplication. He even put this man in front of the tree of life, telling him not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil but take in the tree of life, indicating clearly that, even though human life is the highest created life and everything on earth is for man, man still needs to take God in as life.
However, if you read the first chapters of Genesis you will realize that man did not take of the tree of life, but rather was seduced by the serpent to disobey God and take in the wrong fruit. The first man, Adam, failed God in His purpose and ruined God’s design for man.
Therefore, God Himself became a man, the second man, and in His God-man living, Christ fulfilled God’s intention in creating man! The Lord Jesus was born of the human essence (His mother was Mary, a human being) mingled with the divine essence (God as the Spirit).
In His incarnation, Christ uplifted the human virtues to such a standard that they can match God’s attributes for His expression (see Luke 1:35). In Christ, the empty human virtues were filled and saturated with the divine attributes, and He expressed God in a rich way through His virtues.
It was not just human love that Christ expressed when He raised the only begotten son of a widow and gave him back to his mother, and it wasn’t merely the divine love that was expressed. What we see in Christ is the divine love filling the human love, strengthening human love, enriching it, and sanctifying it to have God expressed in man in a wonderful way.
Time and time again, we see how in Christ the divine attributes filled, strengthened, enriched, and sanctified the human virtues for the purpose of expressing God in His human virtues! Christ lived not merely the life of a man but the life of a God-man, a God-man life, and if you read the Gospels (especially the gospel of Luke) you will see how God was being expressed through His humanity.
Jesus Christ was a proper man, a perfect man, a God-man, the First One who ever fulfilled God’s purpose in His creation of man (see John 1:1, 14; Luke 1:31-32, 35; 2:40, 52). It wasn’t only what He did or what He spoke, but His whole being and living and working were one, and He expressed God in His rich attributes through His aromatic human virtues, by which He attracted and captivated people both in His time and throughout the centuries. What a God-man!
Christ is in Us to Live in us a Life for God’s Purpose
Many people – believers and unbelievers alike – want to be “like the angels”, to live a perfect life, doing good, helping others, being “serene”, bringing peace wherever they go, and basically….not live this human life with its problems, complications, issues, and situations. God however doesn’t want man to be like angels – He has enough angels, and He has ordained that angels would serve Him and man.
God desires proper God-men, those who express God in their humanity on earth, who live an uplifted human life that allows the attributes of God to fill the human virtues. Christ was the first God-man, and through His death and resurrection, He became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45; 2 Cor. 3:17) to regenerate many men who would live the life God intended them to live when He created man.
When the Lord Jesus saves us, He comes into us as the One with the human virtues filled with the divine attributes (see Luke 2:10-11, 25-32; 19:9-10). At the time of our regeneration, Christ as the life-giving Spirit enters into us to bring God into our being and mingle God with us, filling our human virtues with God’s divine attributes.
Instead of “repairing us” or “fixing our ruined humanity” by outwardly correcting us, adjusting us, perfecting us, and training us, God in Christ as the Spirit comes into our spirit and from there He saves us from within to without. God is not in the correction or adjusting business but in the reconstituting business – He comes into us as our life and saves us from within to uplift our human virtues, sanctifying and transforming us (Rom. 5:10; 12:2).
When Christ went to visit Zaccheus’ house (see Luke 19), He didn’t correct him or expose him outwardly – He simply saved him inwardly. The result was not only repentance and restitution but an uplifting of his virtues and a transformation from within.
When Christ comes in us and as He lives in us, our humanity is uplifted, enriched, and restored by the divine attributes filling our human virtues and being expressed in our being. What an amazing God we have, so rich in His attributes and so wise in His way of saving us from within to without!
In closing this sharing, I really enjoyed a prayer by Witness Lee in the Life-study of 1 and 2 Chronicles (pp. 27-28), which sums up my reaction before the Lord as I dive into this matter of aspiring to be not merely a good man but a God-man, one in whom Christ would live for the fulfillment of God’s purpose in creating man! Here’s the prayer,
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, 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.
References and Further Reading
- Inspiration: bro. James Lee’s sharing in the message and portions in, Life-study of Luke (msgs. 56-59), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on the Crystallization Study of Genesis (1), week / msg 4, God Creating Man in His Own Image for His Expression.
- Hymns on this topic:
# Flesh He became, the first God-man, / His pleasure that I God may be: / In life and nature I’m God’s kind, / Though Godhead’s His exclusively. / His attributes my virtues are; / His glorious image shines through me.
# As the center, as the kernel, / Of God’s plan our spirit is; / Calling on the name of Jesus / Makes our spirit one with His. / From the center to circumference / God would saturate each part; / Feeling, mind, and will renewing, / Making home in all our heart.
# God’s eternal economy / Is to make man the same as He is / In life and nature, / But not in the Godhead / And to make Himself one with man / And man one with Him / Thus to be enlarged and expanded in His expression / That all His divine, that all His divine / Attributes may be expressed in human virtues.
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