God desires to gain a God-man, a Man Mingled with God, to Express and Represent Him

The whole Bible and the book of Ezekiel in particular reveals that God’s central thought and arrangement are related to man, for God needs man – He wants to gain a God-man – for His corporate expression and representation.

From the very beginning in the book of Genesis God created man according to His image and likeness for the purpose of having man to express Him and represent Him.

But man fell, so God’s expression was marred and His dominion was no longer with man. However, God was not deterred in His intention to obtain a corporate man to express Him and represent Him, so He Himself became a man to be Jesus Christ, a God-man.

Jesus Christ was a unique man – He was not merely man but He was a God-man, a man mingled with God, a man who had the divine nature even from His conception and birth. This Man, Jesus Christ, expressed God in His living and represented Him with His authority in His work.

This Man, Jesus Christ, is the Son of God and the Son of Man; as the Son of God He expressed God, lived God, and manifested God, and as the Son of Man, He lived like a normal man, expressing the bountiful God in His rich attributes through His aromatic human virtues.

God desires to have a building, a corporate expression; the unique material for God’s building is God mingled with man, that is, Jesus Christ. Christ builds up the church (Matt. 18:16) with Himself as the unique building material.

We need to receive Christ, enjoy Christ, experience Christ, be constituted with Christ, and allow Christ to work Himself into us so that we may become the suitable material for God’s building. We are destined to be on the throne with God and to be part of God’s building.

But our humanity is fallen, damaged, and ruined, so we need a new humanity – the humanity of Jesus, the God-man. We need to eat the Lord’s humanity, experience His humanity, and let Him live in us a life for the building up of the church and for the subduing of His enemy.

The book of Ezekiel mentions “son of man” more than ninety time, indicating how much God desires to have a man to cooperate with Him for His purpose.

He gained Christ as the God-man, as He went through a process, and now He wants to gain many duplications of Christ, reproductions of Christ, who live the divine life in the human life for God’s expression and His representation.

God desires to gain a God-man, a Man Mingled with God, to Express and Represent Him

The Bible is a book like no other, for in it we see God who not only created all things and arranges all things in His sovereignty, but He is also intimately related to man.

There’s a mysterious and wonderful thought in the Bible concerning the relationship between God and man. God made man in His image, and God’s desire is to become the same as man and to make man the same as God for God’s corporate expression on earth.

Throughout the Bible we can see that God wants to mingle Himself with man and make Himself man, and He wants to take man through the process of regeneration, renewing, transformation, and glorification to make man the same as God.

God’s purpose is to bring God into man and man into God. For this, God Himself became a man – He became a God-man, a complete God and a perfect man.

This One, Jesus Christ, lived a perfect human life, died an all-inclusive and all-terminating death on the cross, and resurrected to be a life-giving Spirit. In His resurrection, Christ is still a Man; He is now on the throne of God, enthroned far above all.

Because the Lord Jesus obeyed God the Father to the uttermost and submitted to His authority in an absolute way, God gave Him all the authority in heaven and on earth (Matt. 28:18) and exalted Him to the throne.

This Man, Jesus Christ, is God mingled with man – He is a God-man; He passed through the process of incarnation, human living, death, resurrection, and ascension, and now He is the Man in the glory, the God-man on the throne of God!

In Ezek. 1:26-28 we see that the One on the throne has the appearance of a man, and with Him there’s the glory of God. Hallelujah!

Since the ascension of the Lord Jesus there has been a MAN on the throne, and in the millennium and in the new heaven and new earth there will still be a man on the throne (see Matt. 19:28; Rev. 22:1, 3).

Our kind – the God-man kind – is on the throne. Lucifer wanted to get on the throne, and he rebelled against God; it was not his portion to be on the throne, so now he’s banished to the darkest parts.

But we, men created in God’s image, have as our portion and destiny to be on the throne reigning with God and to express God as His building! Even though we have been ruined by Satan, we are now being recovered, restored, saved in Christ’s life, and reconstituted with the divine life!

Our fallen humanity has been crucified with Christ and terminated by Him, and our God-created humanity is being worked on God to be resurrected and uplifted to be made suitable for God’s building.

This is the central work of God: to bring His divinity into our humanity and bring our humanity into His divinity, so that the two would be one, so that God would gain a God-man who expresses and represents Him.

Now God has Christ as a God-man and man-God, and we are also men-God and God-men, men mingled with God, men who are human yet divine. We see this in picture in Ezek. 1:5 where the four living creatures, who move and do everything as one, are the corporate expression of the man on the throne.

This shows that God’s central thought and arrangement are related to man, and for Him to accomplish His purpose, man is central and crucial (see Gen. 1:26; Psa. 8:4-8).

We as believers in Christ are the reality of the four living creatures who are God’s unique expression and His complete expression.

By being mingled with God and having Christ’s humanity wrought into us, we express Christ in every direction, toward every side, and all over the earth for Him to have an adequate and complete expression. Hallelujah!

Thank You Lord for setting Your heart on man, on us. Thank You for creating us in Your image so that we may express You and represent You. Thank You for coming into us to mingle Yourself with us. Lord, may Your divinity be wrought into us and may we be built into You for Your corporate expression. It is Your heart’s desire and intention to gain a God-man – so we say, Amen, Lord, gain us as the God-men You need for Your corporate expression! Gain us as Your unique and complete expression on earth!

Christ is the Son of Man to Carry out God’s Purpose and Build the House of God

The expression “son of man” seen many times in the book of Ezekiel points to the real Son of Man, who is Jesus Christ. When Christ came, He was God incarnated to be a man; on the one hand, He is the Son of God with divinity and divine life, and on the other, He is the Son of man with humanity and the human life.

The Son of Man, mentioned in John 1:51, is directly related to the building of the house of God; the Son of Man is for the building up of the house of God.

In His incarnation the Lord Jesus is the Son of Man (Matt. 16:13), and even though others tried to call Him “Son of God” and even Satan wanted Him to take the standing of the Son of God, He always remained on the ground of being the Son of Man.

On the divine side, of course, Jesus is the Son of God; on the human side, He is the Son of Man (John 1:18, 51).

For God to gain a corporate expression there’s the need for many children of God; for God to be declared there’s the need of the unique only begotten Son of God; and for the house of God there’s the need of the Son of Man.

In order to accomplish God’s purpose, it was necessary for Christ to be a man; without man, God’s purpose can’t be carried out on earth.

We may think that, since God is almighty, He can do everything and He can accomplish all he wants; but His purpose cannot be carried out on earth without man, without man’s cooperation. This is how God willed and planned it.

There must be a man, there must be humanity, that cooperates with God for the fulfilment of His purpose. And since our humanity is fallen, there must be a new humanity – there must be a corporate God-man – who expresses and represents God.

Only man can execute God’s purpose to be His expression and representation; only Christ being reproduced in us and living in us can be the One fulfilling God’s purpose in us and through us.

Thank You Lord for becoming the Son of Man to build up the house of God. You are not only the Son of God expressing God and manifesting God to declare God to man, but You are also the Son of Man to become the material for God’s building. Thank You for coming into us as the Son of God and the Son of Man. Lord, we want to experience You as the Son of Man for the building of the house of God. May You as a Man be our all for the building up of the church. We open to You, Lord, and we want to experience You as the Son of Man for God’s building!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Minoru Chen for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Ezekiel, msg. 5 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-study of Ezekiel (2), msg. 6 (week 18 in the HWMR), The Son of Man and the Humanity of Jesus for God’s Building.
• Hymns on this topic:
• # God’s intention in this universe is with humanity, / So the Lord became the Spirit just with man to mingled be. / We rejoice that we can all partake of His economy. / Yes, mingling is the way. (Hymns #1199)
  # By our passing through this cycle, / Living creatures we become / To express the life of Jesus; / He with whom we’ve been made one. / We express Him as a human, / As a man so good and fine; / Balanced, normal, never striving; / Fully human, yet divine. (Hymns #1201)
  # In glory Thou wilt come again, / Still as a man appearing then; / As King of kings, with pow’r divine, / With human nature seen by men. (Hymns #61)