In the New Testament, God’s move on earth in man is always in the principle of incarnation, for the Triune God wants to be the reality of man, to be enjoyed by man, to transform man, and build man into God and God into man to obtain the New Jerusalem.
Before God could move in man, He moved in an indirect way, even in a preparatory way, among men and with men.
In the Old Testament we see many seekers of God who loved God, loved His word, and sought after God with a pure heart; God had a way to move with them and among them, but He could not get into them.
It was not until God was incarnated to be a man as the Lord Jesus that God could come into man and move in man.
Praise the Lord, God became a man as the first step of God’s move in man; now God moves not only among men and with men but even more, in man!
This man, Jesus Christ, was not just a man – He was a God-man, the first God-man, for He had both the divine life and the human life, and in Him, the divine nature was mingled with the human nature.
He went through the process of incarnation, human living, death, resurrection, and ascension, and He became a life-giving Spirit to come into all those who believe into Him to make them His continuation, His duplication, and His reproduction on earth.
All believers in Christ are God-men, men who have God in them, and they are the continuation of the move of God in man.
As believers in Christ, we have the divine life of God – and we need to grow in this life so that we may be transformed into what Christ is.
The Spirit with our spirit is working in us and on us to transform us, and the discipline of the Spirit in our environment works to consume us and reduce us in our outer man so that our inner man may be renewed.
As believers in Christ, we have been redeemed by God in Christ, and God forgave our sins, washed us, justified us, and reconciled us to Him.
God put us in Christ and make Christ our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.
Furthermore, by believing into Christ we have entered the process of God’s organic salvation; He is now renewing us, transforming us, and conforming us to the image of Christ in glory to make us the same as He is in life and nature but not in the Godhead.
In this process of being renewed and transformed, our outer man is consumed as we are put in the mold of Christ’s death and enter into the fellowship of His sufferings; at the same time, our inner man is being renewed and we gain an eternal weight of glory. Hallelujah!
We may suffer outwardly, but inwardly we are being renewed and transformed, with the result that we are conformed to the image of Christ, the firstborn Son of God.
The Mystery of the Triune God being the Reality in the Believers to be Enjoyed by them and Transform them to be the New Jerusalem
The book of Job is in the Bible, but this book doesn’t have a full ending; the entire Bible, especially the New Testament, is required for the proper ending of this book.
Job cared very much for his perfection and integrity, and he thought that God did all these things to him because He thought Job did something wrong, but God was in a different realm.
There is a mystery of the Triune God being the reality in the believers, and this mystery was revealed mainly in the New Testament through the writings of Paul.
Even when the Lord Jesus was on earth, He said that He had many things to tell the disciples, but they could not bear them until the Spirit of reality would come, and He would reveal these things to them (John 16:12-15).
This was done by the Spirit of reality mainly with the apostle Paul, who completed the word of God, that is, the divine revelation (Col. 1:25-27) regarding Christ as the mystery of God (Col. 2:2) and the church as the mystery of Christ (Eph. 3:4).
Job did not know this mystery of the Triune God, and the disciples themselves, even though they were with the Lord Jesus physically, could not understand it, until the Spirit of reality came, and He made all these things clear to them.
Job was in a primitive stage of God’s revelation, and all he saw and knew was that he had to be patient and humble, he had to be righteous and upright, and he had to do things to please God, and God would bless him.
But praise the Lord, we can now be enlightened to see what the economy of God is, for the mystery of the Triune God being life and everything to man is no longer hidden!
Today we know that God the Father is embodied in God the Son (Col. 2:9), God the Son is realized as God the Spirit, and God the Spirit comes to indwell us to be the reality of the Triune God (John 14:16-20).
God the Father, Christ the Lord, and the Spirit – as the Triune God – have become the source, the element, and the essence of the church as the Body of Christ (see Eph. 4:4-6).
May we have our eyes enlightened to see the mystery of the Triune God being reality to the believers, and may we realize that we can experience and enjoy the Triune God as our reality for the accomplishing of His purpose.
Christ was given to us to be the divine portion allotted to the saints by God and as life in us (Col. 1:12, 15-19; 3:4).
He has become our life and everything, and He is all the members of the new man and He is in all the members of the new man, which is His organic Body (Col. 3:10-11).
God wants to make Christ, the embodiment of God, everything to us, the believers in Christ (1 Cor. 12:12-18).
He has come into us as the life-giving Spirit, and He dwells in us to make Himself and all that He has accomplished, obtained, and attained real to us so that we may be one with Him and be transformed into the same image as the Lord from glory to glory (2 Cor. 3:16-18).
When we turn our heart to the Lord, we can behold the glory of the Lord to see Him ourselves and reflect the glory of the Lord to enable others to see Him through us.
May we daily open to the Lord by coming to Him with an open heart, an unveiled face, to behold Him and become like a mirror to reflect His glory and allow others to see Him through us.
As we behold the Lord, He saturates us with Himself, and His glory is expressed through us.
This is how God moves on earth in man in the principle of incarnation, by our opening to the Lord to be transformed by Him into His image to reflect Him to others.
Through God’s move in man, His people are becoming a glorified people, a people in glory, for God’s glory saturates them and is reflected by them.
God in Christ is carrying out His transforming work in us until His transformation consummates in the New Jerusalem! Hallelujah!
First, the overcomers become the reality of the New Jerusalem in the millennial kingdom (Rev. 2:7) and consummately all the saints become the New Jerusalem in the new heaven and the new earth for eternity (Rev. 21:1 – 22:5).
Hallelujah, God will make all His chosen and redeemed people His expression for the manifestation of Himself in man throughout the universe for eternity! Praise the Lord!
The final stage, the final station, of God’s move is the New Jerusalem; God is the divine Architect and Builder of this city, and He is building it with Himself and His deified people to be a miraculous structure of treasure – God in man and man in God! Hallelujah!
Lord, cause us to see the mystery of the Triune God being the reality in the believers. May the Spirit of reality guide us into all the reality of what the Triune God is, has, and has done. May we be unveiled to see Christ as the mystery of God and the church as the mystery of Christ. Amen, Lord Jesus, we come to enjoy You as our God-allotted portion in the light so that we may have Christ as our life and everything for the Body of Christ as the one new man! We turn our heart to You so that we may behold You with an unveiled face and be transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit! Amen, Lord, transform us until we become Your overcomers and the New Jerusalem, Your corporate expression for Your manifestation in this universe! Praise the Lord!
God’s Move on Earth in Man is always in the Principle of Incarnation: God in Man and Man in God
According to what the New Testament reveals, God’s move on earth in man is always in the principle of incarnation.
In the Old Testament the Spirit of God would come to and upon man, and man was inspired or moved by the Spirit; in the New Testament the Spirit of God is both in man and upon man.
When we believed into the Lord Jesus and were regenerated with His life, God’s move on earth reached us – He came into us to move in us.
Every experience we have of Christ, every experience in our organic salvation, is an experience of God’s move on the earth in man, and it is all in the principle of incarnation.
Our being saved or regenerated is God coming into a man in His divinity to make Himself part of us and to make us part of God. This is what God does today in the New Testament age; He moves in man in the principle of incarnation.
In a sense, God “risks everything” by coming into us, for He depends on us; if we cooperate with Him, He can move on earth in man, but if we don’t, He cannot move.
He has fully gained one man, the first God-man Jesus Christ, and in Him He could move, speak, and do what He wanted to do for the fulfilment of His purpose; God’s move on earth in the man Jesus was in the principle of incarnation.
Now we as the many believers in Christ are those who have the divine life and nature of God, and God’s salvation is for us to become the same as Christ in life and nature but not in the Godhead.
We are saved not merely for us to be better people to behave in a better way, or to improve our behaviour and be a positive influence on society.
We are saved and we are being transformed so that God would move on earth in man in the principle of incarnation, that is, so that God would live in us as we live Christ.
For example, husbands need to love their wives and wives need to submit to their own husbands.
In our natural life, the husband is not capable to love his wife, and the wife cannot submit to her husband; the husband may be able to love his wife for a time, but when things happen, his love runs out.
How can a husband love his wife and how can a wife submit to her husband? What husband can love his wife, and what wife can love her husband?
A real Christian husband loves his wife not by his own love but by Christ as his love.
As believers in Christ, we should live in the principle set forth in Gal. 2:20, that is, that Christ lives in us and we live in faith, by being organically joined to Christ.
A husband can love his wife only in the principle of incarnation, that is, only when Christ lives in him and he lives Christ.
A wife can submit to her husband only when she lives in the principle of incarnation, that is, when Christ lives in her and she lives Christ.
Similarly, every genuine Christian virtue is part of the incarnation of God in man; our human virtues are real, genuine, and full only when Christ lives in us and we live Christ.
Every day, as we live the Christian life, we need to realize that we’re part of God’s move on earth in man, and this move is in the principle of incarnation.
In our experience of Christ day by day, God is being incarnated by being made us and by making us Him; He wants nothing else but He Himself being expressed and lived out in man.
God is not after an improved and perfected human being; He doesn’t want to gain a man full of integrity and human perfection.
What He wants is men who have the life of God and who are in the process of being made God in life and nature but not in the Godhead.
He Himself became a man to make Himself the same as us with the purpose of making us the same as He is; this is the move of God on earth in man in the principle of incarnation.
Thank You, Lord Jesus, for becoming the same as we are so that we may be made the same as You are in life and nature but not in the Godhead. Hallelujah, we believers in Christ are not only saved persons but we are God-men, those who are being deified for the expression of God in man! Thank You for making us part of the move of God on earth in man which is in the principle of incarnation. We simply open to You, Lord, and we take You as our life and everything; may it be no longer we who live but Christ living in us, and the life we live today would be in faith, in the organic union with God. Live in us today, Lord Jesus. May our daily living and everything we do and say be in the principle of incarnation. Make us more the same as You are by our moment-by-moment abiding in You, contacting You, and allowing You to live in us! Amen, Lord, gain Your corporate expression and manifestation through a group of God-men who are made the same as Christ!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Sources of inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by James Lee for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1993, Vol. 1, “The Move of God in Man“, pp. 405-406, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-study of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes (2020 winter training), week 7, The Intrinsic Divine Revelation concerning the Move of God with and among Men in the Old Testament and concerning the Move of God in Man in the New Testament to Accomplish God’s Heart’s Desire and to Meet Man’s Need before God.
- Hymns on this topic:
– What miracle! What mystery! / That God and man should blended be! / God became man to make man God, / Untraceable economy! / From His good pleasure, heart’s desire, / His highest goal attained will be. (Song on, What miracle! What mystery!)
– As a glass, beholding / With uncovered face, / I can see His glory / And reflect His grace. / Gazing on His glory, / Face to face to see; / Constantly beholding, / Ever would I be. (Hymns #399)
– The principle of incarnation / Is but the blend of God and man, / Both acting in cooperation / To thus fulfill th’ eternal plan. / To God, the man is His expression, / And man is of God’s life possessed; / The man is wholly God’s possession, / And God thru man is thus expressed. (Hymns #740)
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