This week we are exploring the deeper meaning and implication of the expression, “shepherding according to God” in 1 Pet. 5:2. The Lord Jesus as the good Shepherd took good care of His sheep when He was on earth, and now in His heavenly ministry He still cares for us, His flock, by interceding for us and by ministering God to us.
Furthermore, Christ as the good Shepherd is now the life-giving Spirit in our spirit, and we are becoming His reproduction – we are becoming the ones shepherding others according to God. God put us in His flock where there’s only One Shepherd – Christ Himself – and we are all His sheep; this one Shepherd is being reproduced and multiplied in us to make us good shepherds to those around us.
In order for us to shepherd according to God we first need to be one with God – we need to be joined to Him and be one with Him when shepherding others. In this union with God, gradually, God will dispense Himself into us and we will be constituted with God day by day; then, we will live out what we are constituted with – we will live God, and this living will be the expression of God. In the expression of God issuing from our oneness with God, living of God, and constitution with God, we will represent God with His authority and we are able to minister the God constituted into our being.
According to the entire revelation in the word of God, in order for us to shepherd according to God we need to become one with God, be constituted with God, live God, express God, represent God, and minister God. Let us now see in more details what does this mean.
To Shepherd According to God is to Shepherd according to What God is in His Attributes
Basically, to shepherd according to God is to shepherd according to what God is in all His attributes. In His economy God is saturating and filling our human virtues with His divine attributes to saturate, uplift, and enrich them, so that God would be expressed through us. There are many divine attributes – what God is in His life and nature – but the foremost of them are love, light, righteousness, and holiness.
God is love (1 John 4); He not only exercises love toward us or loves us – He is love. To shepherd according to God means that we have to become God in the attribute of love. We are NOT love; we are for and in ourselves, but we have become sons of the heavenly Father, and we are to be perfect in love as He is perfect (Matt. 5:35-38). This is a promise from the Lord: the divine life of the Father, who is love, is in us, and we will be as He is perfect in love! We need to have faith in the divine life in us which will operate in us to make us the same as our Father in life, nature, and expression, but not in His Godhead!
God is light (1 John 1:5), and Christ is the light of the world (John 8:12); furthermore, by believing into Christ we become the light of the world, and we who were one darkness are now light in the Lord – therefore we walk as children of light (Eph. 5:8). The One who is the light of the world is being dispensed into us as light, and we become that light – we will become the city of light, New Jerusalem. Shepherding according to God means shepherding in love and in light.
God is righteousness, and we are becoming the righteousness of God in Christ (2 Cor. 5:21). God is holy, and we shall be holy as our Father is holy! We shouldn’t look at ourselves and see how much we “look like God” in the attributes of love, light, holiness, and righteousness, but we should enjoy the Lord and allow Him to fill us and saturate us until we are fully one with Him and we shepherd others according to what He is.
We cannot shepherd others according to God if we don’t have God in us; we need to shepherd the young ones, the weak ones, and the backsliding ones according to God as love, light, holiness, and righteousness. Without shepherding others according to God, there’s no way for us to minister life to others.
Lord Jesus, thank You for coming into us and living in us to make us Your reproduction as the good Shepherd. Lord, we want to shepherd others according to God by enjoying You and expressing You in Your attributes of love, light, holiness, and righteousness. Lord, may our shepherding of others be filled with God as light, love, holiness, and righteousness. Reproduce Yourself in us today that we may shepherd others according to God!
If we would Shepherd according to God, we need to Become One with God
The basic principle of the Bible is that, in His economy, God is making Himself one with man and man one with Him (see John 15:4; 1 Cor. 6:17); this is the high peak of the divine revelation, God’s economy. God has an economy, a plan with many arrangements, and His aim is to have a group of human beings who have His life and nature inwardly and image and likeness outwardly, and this corporate man is the Body of Christ who lives Him and expresses Him.
God desires that the divine life and the human life would be joined together as one life with one living (see John 6:57; Gal. 2:20). God’s main purpose is to make Himself one with man and make man one with Him; the Lord Jesus said, I am the vine, and you are the branches….abide in Me, and I in you. We were once separate and apart from the Lord, but through repentance and regeneration we have been grafted into Him; now we are one with Him organically, and all we have to do is to abide in Him so that He may abide in us. If we abide in the Lord, He will abide in us, and He and us will be one, having one life, one nature, one living, and one expression.
At the time of our regeneration, we have been spiritually grafted into Christ; we were a branch in a “sour tree” but we have been grafted into Christ, the grape-vine tree; now His life flows in us and we are organically joined to Him as one. The Lord Jesus came from and with the Father to do the Father’s will, and He lived because of the Father – He was “grafted” into the Father, taking the Father as His source and everything; now we as branches in Christ need to eat Him, be filled with Him, and live because of Him as we abide in this organic union with Him.
We can shepherd according to God FIRST by being one with God organically and by abiding in the Lord, in this organic union with Him. In 1 Cor. 7 Paul was one with the Lord in all circumstances, situations, and conditions (see 1 Cor. 7:17, 24). In this chapter he deals with the problems in the marriage life, where there can be many difficulties…but he remained one spirit with the Lord as he talked of some of the issues. Paul was one who loved the Lord, cared for the Lord’s interest, was absolutely for the Lord, and in every respect he was obedient, submissive, and satisfied with God and with the circumstances arranged by Him.
Being one with God implies that we are for Him, we love Him, we care for His interest, and we are in every respect obedient to Him and are satisfied with Him and with the circumstances He arranged for us. To become one with God we need to have any differences between us and God eliminated; we need to be fully reconciled.
We were reconciled with God judicially through the death of His Son, but now we need to be reconciled further to God until all the things in us that don’t match God or are His nature are torn down and rebuilt with God Himself. To become one with God we need to allow Him to flow in us and remove anything that is not of Him in us, so that we may be fully reconciled to Him and be one with Him in all our living as God-men and functioning a shepherds.
Lord Jesus, thank You for making us one with You by grafting us into You as the vine. Lord, we choose to abide in You and we allow the flow of Your life to remove anything that is not according to You in us. Lord, we love You, we care for Your interest, and we want to be obedient to You and satisfied with You and with the circumstances You have arranged for us. Reconcile us further to You, Lord until there’s no difference between us and You but we are fully one with You to shepherd others according to God!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, brother M.R’s sharing in the message for this week, and Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1975-1976, vol. 1, “Living in the Spirit,” chs. 1-3, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Need for a New Revival, week 6 / msg 6, Shepherding according to God (2) Becoming One with God, Being Constituted with God, Living God, Expressing God, Representing God, and Ministering God to Shepherd according to God.
- All Bible verses are taken from, Holy Bible Recovery Version.
- Hymns on this topic to strengthen this burden:
# By Thy love we are Thy children, / Abba Father calling Thee; / Light disperses all our darkness, / Till, like Him, Thy Son, we see. / Thou art love! Thou art light! / In the Son as life Thou art; / Love expressing, light illum’ning / Thou dost life to us impart. (Hymns #13)
# I am just a branch, and You’re the vine. / As I dwell in You, everything is fine. / Here I’d like to be, Lord, all the time. / Here I’m Yours, dear Lord, and You are mine. / I’m a branch that’s been, Lord, grafted in. / I’m supplied in You in this life union. / Here Your riches, Lord, in this sweet life flow. / As I dwell in You, I will surely grow. (Song on Abiding in Christ)
# He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit. / Our life is a life that’s in organic union. / As a branch is in the vine, / Grafted, His life and mine intertwine. / Lord, I am joined to You! / One spirit with You; / One spirit, not two. / Lord, we are joined to You: / One spirit… with You. (Song on being Joined to Christ)
About aGodMan
We all know that in botany, grafting means to unite two trees. A farmer grafts a branch of a sweet tree into that of a sour tree so that the life of the sweet tree can enter into the sour tree and the life of the sour tree can enter into the sweet tree. Eventually these two lives are joined together to become one life. The fruit produced thereafter is the expression of the sweet tree through the sour tree. To the sour tree, the sweet tree is its life, so it is no longer the sour tree that lives, but it is the sweet tree that lives in it. If the sour tree could speak, it would declare, “As always, even now the sweet tree will be magnified in my body, whether through wind and frost or through rain and snow.” This is the life of a Christian. (The Mystery of the Universe and the Meaning of Human Life, pp. 27-28, by Witness Lee)