photo credit: H is for Home – cc – Vessels to Contain God!
There’s a mysterious thought in the Bible concerning God’s relationship with man. If you read the Old and the New Testament, you could say that outwardly God wants to gain a people who would have Him as their God, would worship Him, and would bear His name among the peoples.
Many people who read the Bible think that what the Bible teaches is to be a better person, a moral man, doing good things, and not doing evil things.
But the mysterious thought in the Bible concerning God’s relationship with man is that God desires man to be the same as He is in life, nature, and expression (but not in the Godhead) so that man would express God corporately on earth.
God created man in His image and with His likeness so that man would have the capacity to receive God as life and express Him by living according to the divine life in him. God doesn’t want good men; God doesn’t merely want spiritual men or holy men; God wants God-men.
God became a man – God was man-ized – so that man would become God-man is God-ized – in like and nature but not in the Godhead. This is a mysterious thought in the Bible, it is God’s hobby, and is what makes Him happy.
We are created in God’s image with a spirit to contact God, receive God, and contain God, and somehow, mysteriously, as we enjoy God and let Him make His home in our heart, we are becoming the same as God is in life, nature, and expression.
This is God’s intention, His hobby, His good pleasure – to bring many sons into glory, to have many brothers to Christ for God to be expressed corporately on earth (Rom. 8:29). Hallelujah!
God’s Hobby: Having Man as His Reproduction and Expression
God has a hobby. He is passionate about His creation, especially concerning the man He created in His image and with His likeness. We bear God’s image (Gen. 1:26) – we are a copy of God by having His attributes copied into our spirit to become our human virtues.
We have the capacity to contain what God is and express God. God’s real hobby is not the creation of the universe or being the One who sovereignly administrates all things; God’s real hobby is to have His reproduction in many nations around the world.
He wants many groups of people filled with His life and expressing Him all over the earth. Just as a human father is happy to see his children growing up and expressing him, so God is happy to see His many children all around the world living Christ, expressing God, looking like God, speaking like God, and living like God!
photo credit: John 12:24 – We are Christ’s Reproduction
God in Christ as the unique grain of wheat has died and resurrected to reproduce Himself into many believers who not only bear His image inwardly and His likeness outwardly (as in a picture), but who also live like Him, speak like Him, and are like Him (see John 12:24; Rom. 8:29; Heb. 2:10).
The church today as Christ’s reproduction, expansion, enlargement, and duplication is the corporate expression of God in man! All the genuine believers in Christ are children of God, and we don’t know what we will be – but we know that, when He is manifested, we will be like Him (we will become God in life and nature in a full way!) because we will see Him even as He is (1 John 3:1-2)!
Many believers have the natural concept that “Oh, God is so Great, He’s on the Throne, He’s so High…and we are just worms, men of clay, we’re not worthy…we need God to help us, do this and that for us, strengthen us…” But God’s intention even from the creation of man is to enter into man and make man the same as He is to be His duplication!
The Father is happy when we all look like Him and speak like Him! And He’s obtaining His corporate expression and reproduction by coming into man as life to be lived out of man! We today are in the process of Christification – we are being deified as we grow in the divine life daily. Wow, Hallelujah!
The Mysterious Thought in the Bible Concerning the Relationship Between God and Man
The Bible is a mysterious book. God is mysterious; Christ is mysterious; man is mysterious; God’s economy is mysterious. We need to be saved from our good, religious, and pious concepts regarding God’s purpose for man.
The mysterious thought in the Bible concerning God’s relationship with man is that God desires to become the same as man is and to make man the same as He is. God made man in His image, just like Him inwardly land outwardly, and then He Himself became a man – Christ was the first God-man, a Person in whom God and man were mingled, blended, and living together.
The Lord Jesus was the complete God and the perfect man, the Man-God, the God-man, expressing God’s divine and rich attributes through His aromatic human virtues. God’s desire is that many would become like Christ, that He would be the Firstborn among man brothers (Rom. 8:29), leading many sons into glory (Heb. 2:10), and making man the same as He is (1 John 3:1-2).
To be a man of God is simply to be a God-man, a man mingled with God. God’s delight is to have many God-men who are built up together in His Body to be His expression.
For this, God became a man – God was man-ized – and lived a perfect human life on earth, died a vicarious and all-inclusive death on the cross, and resurrected to become the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45). Now God in Christ as the Spirit dispenses Himself into man to be man’s life and inner constitution, so that He would make man the same as He is – a God-man!
God doesn’t want many good men; He doesn’t desire to have many spiritual men and holy men (in a religious and moral way), but He wants many God-men, many men who are filled with His life, who live by His life, and who express God on earth!
What God is after today in His mysterious relationship with man is to obtain many God-men, men who are God-ized, men who express Him on earth. God doesn’t want man to improve or perfect himself “to please God”; God created man in His image with a spirit to receive God as Spirit so that from within to without God would saturate man, fill man with His life, and be lived out in man!
All human beings on earth today are like “a picture of God”, but they are lifeless and motionless without God’s life coming into them to animate them and live in them. We become “real men” as God intended us to be by receiving God as life and living out God.
Eventually, we and God become one – God is “God man-ized” and we are “man God-ized”, to match each other and live an eternal marriage life in the new heaven and the new earth. This is mysterious; we can’t comprehend it with our human intellect, and it is beyond our capacity to understand how man can become God.
However, we have God’s life in us, and He is growing in us every day to make us the same as He is in life and nature! Let’s just love Him, enjoy Him, spend time with Him, receive His dispensing, and let His life grow in us!
Lord Jesus, grow in us. Save us from focusing on improving ourselves, perfecting our humanity, or “better-ing ourselves”. Lord, we simply open to You. We are vessels to contain You and express You. We would like to exercise our spirit to touch You, receive You, enjoy You, be filled with You, and live You out. Christify us more today. Deify us more! Lord, work Yourself more into us. Make Your home in our heart. Spread as the Spirit from our spirit into every part of our soul. Gain Your corporate expression in man on earth today!
References and Further Reading
- Inspiration: bro. James Lee’s sharing in the message and portions in, Life-study of 1 & 2 Chronicles (msgs. 2, 4, 13), and, Life-study of Ezekiel (msg. 12), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on the Crystallization Study of Genesis (1), week / msg 4, God Creating Man in His Own Image for His Expression.
- Hymns on this topic:
# Every time I say “Amen” to His Spirit / And walk by my spirit, / The kingdom seed grows and develops / Deep inside of me. / On the outside, it may seem that there’s / No change in me— / But I’m not the same, / ’Cause as the seed grows in me, / Inside I’m becoming God!
# O Jesus Lord, Thou art that man, / The One who joined our race, / Who put upon Himself the flesh / And took a lower place. / But now with glory Thou art crowned, / With sovereignty complete. / Now through Thy Body Thou dost rule / With all beneath Thy feet.
# Changed into His likeness! / This my heart’s desire! / May the Lord fulfill it, / All my soul inspire. / Changed into His likeness! / He the Spirit is! / If the Spirit governs, / He’ll fulfill my wish.
# And is it so! I shall be like Thy Son? / Is this the grace which He for me has won? / Father of glory—thought beyond all thought! / In glory, to His own blest likeness brought!
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