The New Man is the Spontaneous Issue of our Taking Christ as our Life and Living Him

We need to take Christ as our life, our person, and live Him by being daily saved in His life; the spontaneous issue of our taking Christ as our life and living Him is the one new man in practicality and reality today.

The fact that Christ is our life is a strong indication that we need to take Christ as life and live by Him so that we may live Him in our daily life.

Day by day Christ needs to be real and experiential to us; as we are taking Christ as our life and live Him, we realize our need to be saved in His life. We were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, and now we are in the process of being saved in the divine life day by day.

There are at least eight main aspects of our being saved in the divine life – in our previous article we covered the first four, and in this article we will cover the last four.

1. To be saved in the divine life from the slavery of sin, the law of sin, is by the release of the law of the consummated Spirit (Rom. 8:2). Even after being regenerated, we still sin; we don’t sin habitually, and we are very conscious of our sin, but we still sin, so we need to be freed from the slavery of sin.

The only way to be saved from the law of sin, the bondage of sin, is by the law of the Spirit of life; when we call on the name of the Lord, we activate the law of life and we’re spontaneously freed from the law of sin and of death!

2. To be saved in the divine life from the present age of the world is by the sanctification of the consummated Spirit (Rom. 12:2a; 6:19b, 22b). The world has a trend in this age, a flood that sweeps us away, and it lures us, corrupts us, and takes us away from the Lord and His salvation. We need to be saved in the divine life by being sanctified in God’s word. We need to be those who are taking Christ as our life and living Him so that we may be saved from the present age of this world!

3. To be saved in the divine life from our natural being is by the transformation of the life-giving Spirit (Rom. 12:2b). We need to enjoy the Lord’s word to be renewed in the spirit of our mind, and we will undergo a metabolic change in our inward being.

When we enjoy the Lord’s word, we are being transformed inwardly, and we are freed from our natural being.

4. To be saved in the divine life from individualism is by being built up in the Body of Christ (Rom. 12:5). We all have to admit that we are so individualistic; we do not have the feeling that we are built up in the Body, but in so many things we still are very individualistic.

We need to be saved in the divine life from our individualism by being built up in the Body of Christ.

The result and issue of our taking Christ as our life and living Him is the one new man!

Being Saved from Self-Likeness by the Conformation of the Spirit

Whether we are kind or rough, good or bad, nice or not so nice, we still bear our self-likeness; when others see us, they still see us living and not Christ living in us.

We need to be saved much more in the divine life of Christ from self-likeness by the conformation of the life-imparting Spirit (Rom. 8:29). As the Lord transforms us into the image of the Son of God, we are being conformed to His image to be like Him – and no longer to express ourselves.

We need to cooperate with the Lord so that He may transform us inwardly until the image of Christ is being formed in us, and what we express is no longer the self but Christ, the One who is being formed in us. This conformation is for the maturity in the divine life.

Being Transfigured from the Body of our Humiliation through the Spirit

The indwelling Spirit is constantly transforming us, little by little, day by day; He came into our spirit to regenerate our spirit, and He is spreading in our mind, emotion, and will to saturate all the inward parts of our being.

The issue of our being saved in the divine life of Christ is transfiguration from the body of our humiliation; this transfiguration is in the virtue of the divine life (Rom. 8:30; Phi. 3:21; Rom. 8:11).

The mysterious yet divine Spirit with our spirit is constantly operating in us to saturate us, permeate us, and soak us with the element of God; as we are saturated in our spirit and soul by the Spirit, eventually the Spirit will saturate our mortal body to transfigure it into the body of the glory of Christ.

The saturation of our body with the Spirit is actually the transfiguration of our body. One day the body of our humiliation will be redeemed through the indwelling Spirit as the firstfruits, the foretaste.

Today we are still in the old creation, still in the process; but one day the Spirit will have saturated all our inner being, and then our body will be saturated and transfigured by the Spirit to become a glorious body! Hallelujah!

Thank You Lord for being the life-giving, life-imparting Spirit in our spirit, always imparting life to our spirit, soul, and body. Keep us in this transformation process that we may be metabolically changed within until even our mortal body is transfigured by the Spirit in the virtue of the divine life! Amen, Lord, we want to cooperate with Your transformation work in our being so that we may be fully saturated, soaked, and permeated with the Spirit, until even our mortal body will be redeemed and transfigured!

Being Saved in the Divine Life to Reign in the Divine Life

The more we are saved in the divine life by taking Christ as our life and person, the more we are released, sanctified, transformed, conformed, and transfigured, with the result that we will reign in the divine life (Rom. 5:17).

The more we are saved in the divine life, the more we will exercise the kingship and we will reign in the divine life.

The divine life in which we are being saved is kingly, royal; our destiny is to not only be transfigured in our body to have a glorious body, but also to be co-kings with Christ in the millennium (as His overcomers) and reign with Him in the New Jerusalem (see Rev. 20:4, 6).

As we are fully saturated and swallowed up by the divine life, we become full of life – even the embodiment of life, and we will have the kingship in full.

To be saved in life is to reign in life; we reign in life because we are full of the divine life which releases us, transforms us, sanctifies us, conforms us, and transfigures us.

Both the apostle John and the apostle Paul spoke of reigning in life (see Rom. 5:17; 2 Tim. 2:12; Rev. 20:4, 6); this is our portion, and this is the result of being saved in the divine life.

We don’t reign over others but reign as kings over sin, the world, Satan, the natural man, the self, and individualism. We reign by receiving the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness, and we reign through the one – Jesus Christ.

As we enjoy Christ and experience Him, taking Christ as our life and living Him, we receive the abundance of grace to reign in life.

Lord Jesus, we want to be saved in the divine life until we reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ! Amen, Lord, saturate us and permeate us with the divine life until we are swallowed up in life, we become the embodiment of life, and we reign in life! May Your divine life saturate us, soak us, and permeate every part of our inner being until we are released, sanctified, transformed, and conformed, so that we may reign in the divine life which saturates us!

Being Saved in Life Results in Victory over Satan

The result of reigning in life is victory over Satan; as we are being saved in the divine life, the God of peace will soon crush Satan under our feet (Rom. 16:20).

We need to be reminded that Christ is our life, and therefore we should experience God’s salvation in life to be freed from the law of sin, the world, our natural being, individualism, self-likeness, and the body of our humiliation, and to reign in life, with the result that we have victory over Satan!

Satan is crushed, and we have God as our peace and Christ as our grace. We enjoy the peace of God, which is God Himself as our peace, and we enjoy the abundance of the grace of Christ, which is Christ Himself. Hallelujah!

The New Man is the Spontaneous Issue of our Taking Christ as our Life and Living Him

The spontaneous issue of our taking Christ as our life and living Him is the one new man (Col. 3:3-4, 10-11). Our taking Christ as our life and person is not aimless, but it has a definite purpose.

As we set our mind on the things which are above, we are one with Christ in His intercession for the churches, in His ministry of the heavenly life supply to the saints, and in His administration of God’s government.

The result of living together with the Lord in such a way is the one new man.

The new man is not produced by organization; the one new man is the spontaneous issue of our taking Christ as our life and living Him. The desire of God’s heart is to have the new man, and for this reason He created the universe and He accomplished redemption for us in Christ.

We preach the gospel and we become the new creation for the one new man. It’s time for God to obtain the one new man expressed on earth through us who are taking Christ as our life and living Him.

Lord Jesus, gain the one new man in reality all over the earth! Keep us in the process of being renewed in the spirit of our mind, turning to our spirit by calling on Your name, eating You as the hidden manna, and living You for the one new man! Amen, Lord, we want to take You as our life, our person, and live You for the new man. We are one with You in Your heavenly ministry and we stand with You on earth in prayer for what You are praying in heaven. Amen, Lord, we take You as our life to live You for the one new man!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message given by the brothers for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1990, vol. 1, “The Triune God to Be Life to the Tripartite Man,” chs. 6-7, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Goal of the Lord’s Recovery – to Bring Forth the One New Man (2018 ICSC), week 4, Experiencing Christ as Our Life, Our Person, for the One New Man.
• Hymns on this topic:
  # So now we have to set our mind on Him; / Each day, each hour, our mind on Him must be; / That by this Spirit we’d be saved within / By life and reign in life eternally. (Hymns #1195)
  # Christ is the hope of glory, my very life is He, / He has regenerated and saturated me; / He comes to change my body by His subduing might / Like to His glorious body in glory bright! (Hymns #949)
  # God of peace now crushes Satan / Under overcoming feet; / Our rejoicing overthrows him, / Shaming every enemy. (Song on, Living Christ, Our Victory)