God’s intention with Job was that he would become a God-man, expressing God in His attributes, not that he would be a good man with his own integrity expressing himself.
God’s intention in creating us in His image and according to His likeness is not that we would try to be like God (which was the serpent’s temptation to Eve) but that we would take God in as life, enjoy God as life, and live by God as our life so that we may express God in His attributes.
God’s intention related to man is not that we would be a good or an evil person; He wants man to be like Him by becoming a God-man, that is, by taking God in as life and living by the divine life so that man would be expressing God in His attributes.
When man takes God in as life, when man partakes of God as the tree of life, he becomes a God-man, a man with the element of God, the life of God, the nature of God, and eventually the expression of God.
God desires that all of His divine attributes, all His goodness and righteousness and holiness and love and light, all the positive attributes of God, would be seen and expressed in the life and living of man.
The first man, Adam, failed God, but the second man, Jesus Christ, was the first God-man; He expressed God in His divine attributes through His aromatic human virtues.
In the life and living of this God-man, we can see the expression of God, for He lived not by His life but by the life of God, He spoke not His words but the words of God, He worked not His work but the work of the Father, and He sought not His glory but the glory of the Father.
Christ as the first God-man made it: He expressed God and fulfilled the purpose and intention of God in His creation of man.
And He started a new species called, the God-man kind; through death and resurrection He became the Firstborn Son of God and the life-giving Spirit, and He is dispensing Himself into all those who believe into Him to receive Him, so that they too may become God-men.
All men are in the image and likeness of our Creator, but that is only something outward; inwardly, we need to receive His life, nature, element, and essence.
Without God in us, without God being mingled with us, and without Him being our life and everything, there would be no possibility for us to live God and express God.
But praise the Lord, Jesus Christ cut the way and pioneered the God-man living; He was God coming out of eternity into flesh, being incarnated to become flesh and blood to express God.
Christ was a true man, a real man, and the complete and perfect God was in Him; His life and living was a pattern to us, for He lived not by His own human life – as sinless as it was – but by the divine life, the life of the Father.
The Lord Jesus constantly denied Himself and constantly took the Father with His life as His life, and He lived a God-man life to express God in every respect; no one has ever lived like that.
We as the many believers in Christ are His reproduction and continuation, and we have the divine life and nature into us for us to live by this life and express God; what God desires is not a good man but a God-man who is expressing God in His attributes.
Repenting of our Vain Efforts to Please God and Taking Christ as our Life to Live Him and Express God
Job thought he did everything right, for according to his view, he was an upright, perfect, and righteous man; he was so sure of his integrity that he even wanted to take God to court and argue with Him, asking Him why did He send him so much suffering.
But God knew that Job had a need – he didn’t have God within him, so God wanted Job to gain Him in order to express Him for the fulfilment of His purpose (Job 42:5-6).
How can Job gain God, if he is so full of himself? How can we gain God and live Christ if we are so content and satisfied with what we have, what we have achieved, and what we are?
Our shortage is that we lack God; we may have the divine life in us, but we may not live by this life, and we may not express God.
We may live by our own strength and in our natural life, and we may burnish ourselves, clean ourselves, and attain something of integrity, but it is all without God.
We may try as much as we want, but we can’t express God.
May we realize that all our efforts to please God or improve ourselves are vain, and may we turn to the Lord and take Christ as our life to live Him, for only Christ living in us can express God.
We need to seek God, pursue Him, gain God, and possess God more and more; we need to repent of our vain efforts to please God and simply take Christ as our life so that we may be expressing God in His divine attributes.
Job eventually saw God, and he admitted that he heard of God by the hearing of the ear, but now his eyes have seen Him, so he abhorred himself and repented in dust and ashes.
This is a typical and standard response of someone who has finally received mercy from God to see the light of who they really are.
When we see God, when we realize what His intention is, we will realize that everything we have done in ourselves to please God, all the things we built up in our natural man, and all our efforts in the natural realm outside of God are just filthy rags, unclean things, and worthless things.
When we see this, when we realize this, we cannot but abhor ourselves; like both Job and Paul, we will hate our accomplishments, we will not be proud of them anymore, for we might have gained so much apparently but we have actually missed the one thing we really needed – God Himself.
May the Lord have mercy on us and shine on us to cause us to realize that anything we do or can do in ourselves, by our natural strength, and in our natural being, everything is just worthless in the eyes of God; may we repent and return to God to enjoy Him and take Christ as our life to live Him and express Him.
In Job’s case, he had a lot to say, a lot of rhetorics, a lot of insisting on his integrity and defending his righteousness….but the conclusion was that all this was nothing, for he repented and abhorred himself.
In the New Testament, we are told that we need to deny ourselves; we can deny the self only when we realize that it is worthless and useless.
God has no use for man’s self and flesh; we may still think it is something we can boast in, but when we come before God and He shines on us, we will realize it is utterly useless.
When the Lord shines on us and exposes the vain efforts of the flesh and the self, we will deny ourselves, pick up the cross, bear the cross, and let go of our soul-life.
This is not an act of suicide, neither is this something of asceticism; rather, it is realizing that our self is worthless, for it is unable to fulfil God’s desire and intention, and it is a frustration to this, a replacement of God Himself.
May we be saved to this extent that we realize the worthlessness of the self with all its efforts and striving, and may we turn to the Lord, take Christ as our life, live Christ, and be those expressing God in His attributes!
Lord Jesus, we open to Your shining; have a way to expose how worthless our self is and how futile are its efforts to please God and to build up its perfection. Have mercy on us, Lord, and shine on the self-efforts to please God and to build up the natural integrity. Cause us to realize how vain it is for our natural man to try to please God, build up its self-righteousness, and try to attain perfection. We repent of all our vain efforts to please God in ourselves and we come to You, Lord, to take You as our life and live because of You. We come to eat You in Your word, partake of Your life and nature, and allow You to live in us a life expressing God in His divine attributes. Amen, Lord, save us in a new and fresh way to the extent that we live Christ and express God!
God’s Intention is for us to Become a God-Man, Expressing God in His Attributes in our Daily Living
God’s intention was that Job would become a God-man, one who expresses God in His attributes, not that he would express himself and his self-made perfection (Job 22:24-25; 38:1-3).
What is to express God? It is to express Him in His attributes, which are so dear, so glorious, so high, and so divine. How can we as men express God in His attributes? It is only by having the divine life and nature of God.
We may have been taught to be virtuous, humble, patient, and kind, but the more we try to do this, the more fail, for we may be able to do all these for a short period of time, but not in a constant daily way.
There’s no way for us to express God unless we have the life and nature of God, for only the life of God can express God.
God’s desire is to enter into us to be our contents, our holiness, our righteousness, our patience, our kindness, and our everything, for us to live a life of expressing God in His attributes.
When we realize that the only way we can live the Christian life is by having God in Christ to be our life and everything, our whole living will be revolutionized, for we are not supposed to be the ones doing the living and the working – we are only vessels, and God is our content!
We shouldn’t try in ourselves to love others, for the more we try, the more we will eventually hate them; and if we actually do love them at one point, we will be proud of this.
God wants us to be ushered into another realm – the realm of God, so that we may gain Him instead of our attainments in our perfection, righteousness, and integrity (Job 42:5-6).
We need to simply gain Christ, enjoy Christ, and be filled with Christ; anything else besides Christ is worthless, and our desire is to be found in Him to live a life of expressing God in His attributes.
God’s intention with Job and with us is that we would be not just a good man but a man of God, a God-man filled with Christ, the embodiment of God, to be the fullness of God for the expression of God in Christ (1 Tim. 6:11; 2 Tim. 3:17).
As believers in Christ we are not just men but God-men – we have two lives (the human life and the divine life) and two natures (the human nature and the divine nature).
Religion cultivates man’s natural capacity in order to build up the self. Education does the same thing, simply building up the natural human being.
But the Bible is not here to build up the natural man but to build up a God-man, a child of God, to live a life of expressing God in His attributes.
In the church life, we are not here to be good brothers or sisters; we are here to live the Christian life and the church life by living not by our human life but by God’s life mingling with our human life to make us divine.
What God wants is life, not our efforts to please Him; what He wants is that we partake of Him as life, live by Him as our life, and be those expressing God in His attributes as we allow Christ to live in us.
We cannot express God if we are merely a good man; we are made in God’s image and according to His likeness for the purpose of expressing God, and we can do this only by being filled with God!
The only way we can fulfil the purpose of God’s creation of man is by being a God-man and living a God-man life; a God-man is an expression of God, a man filled with God to express God and not himself.
A God-man is one who expresses God and represents Him; because he has God’s life and nature, and he bears God’s image, he can express God and represent Him.
What God wants is not a good man but a God-man who expresses Him and represents Him.
As believers in Christ, we have God in our spirit, and we can be filled with God day by day to express not ourselves but God Himself.
In His economy, God wants to dispense Himself into us to make us God-men; a genuine Christian is a God-man who has God’s life and nature, one who lives by the divine life within him to express God in His attributes.
It is not a good man but a God-man who expresses God and represents God. It is good to open to the Lord and tell Him,
Thank You, Lord, for coming into us to be our very life and nature so that we may live by the divine life a life of expressing God in His attributes. Hallelujah, we have God living in us, for He has become our very life and nature! Praise the Lord, we as believers in Christ are a vessel containing God and being filled with God to express God and represent God. Amen, Lord, we give up our efforts in the self to please You and to live a good and perfect life – we simply come to You, we seek You, and we want to gain You and be filled with You! Dispense Yourself into us, Lord, to make us God-men who express God and represent Him. We open to You to receive You into us as our life, our life supply, and our everything to be our very contents for us to be God-men expressing God in His attributes in our daily living!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Minoru Chen for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1984, vol. 3, “The Divine Economy,” pp. 10-12, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-study of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes (2020 winter training), week 5, God’s Intention with Job – a Good Man Becoming a God-man.
- Hymns on this topic:
– God created us His vessels / His expression to achieve; / Thus He made a heart to love Him / And a spirit to receive. / With our heart we have to love Him, / With our spirit Him possess / As our life, of Him partaking, / That Himself we may express. (Hymns #743)
– In spirit while gazing on Thee, / As a glass reflecting Thy glory, / Like to Thyself transformed I’ll be, / That Thou might be expressed thru me. (Hymns #501)
– But when man takes Christ as life, / He’s in spirit born anew. / When he daily lives by Christ, / Vanity is turned to song. / Therefore, man can God express / That the whole world he would bless. / Living water flowing out / People’s thirst to satisfy. (Hymns #1404)
