Phil. 1:19-21, According to my earnest expectation and hope that in nothing I will be put to shame, but with all boldness, as always, even now Christ will be magnified in my body, whether through life or through death.
When we say that all genuine believers in Christ are God-men, we don’t say this in a presumptuous and reckless way – we simply state what the Bible says. The Bible clearly says that Christ is the first God-man – in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and He fully manifested God on the earth individually.
The Bible also says that through death and resurrection, Christ has been multiplied – He produced His many brothers, Him being the Firstborn Son, and He regenerated millions of believers for His Body (see Col. 1:18; 1 Pet. 1:3).
Now we as the many believers in Christ are the many sons of God – and the Spirit witnesses with our spirit that we are children of God (Rom. 8:16), those born not of the will of man, nor of flesh, but of God (John 1:12-13). It is the greatest privilege and honor in the world to be sons of God, God-men, men who are mingled with God and in whom God lives and moves!
Now in our daily living we need and we can live the same kind of life that Christ lived – a life expressing God in His rich attributes through our human virtues. This means that we daily have to turn to the Lord, enjoy Him, take Him as our life and person, and let Him fill our virtues – just as a hand fills the glove – with His divine attributes!
The believers are not those who “strive to please God” or who “try their best to be better people” – they are a new mankind, the new man in the new creation of God, a new breed of people whose human virtues are gradually filled with the divine virtues of the wonderful Person of Jesus Christ who lives in each one of them!
The living of the genuine believers is Christ living again through them, and their earnest expectation and hope is that in nothing they would be put to shame but that Christ would be magnified in their body, whether through life or through death (see Phil. 1:19-21).
The One New Man is the Corporate God-man
The Lord Jesus was the first God-man, and through His death and resurrection, He regenerated those who believe into Him to become the many God-men as members of His Body.
Now all the sons of God, all the genuine Christians who received Christ into their heart, are the Body of Christ – and Christ is no longer the “individual Christ”, but “the corporate Christ”, that is, Christ the Head and Christ the Body (the many members of Christ on the earth).
When we received God’s life, we became a new creation – now everything is new, and all that is old has passed away (2 Cor. 5:17). We are now the many God-men, those regenerated by God with His life, and we constitute the one new man – God’s new creation in resurrection.
There is only one new man on the earth (Eph. 2:15), and this man is a corporate new man, even a corporate God-man, where Christ as the first God-man is the Head, and all the believers in Christ as the many God-men are the Body. Through our faith in Christ, we have been transferred out of the old man (Adam) and into the new man (the corporate Christ) to be the one new man, one with Christ!
By passing through death and resurrection, the Lord Jesus as the one grain of wheat was multiplied into the many grains of wheat (John 12:24), the unique only begotten Son of God has been multiplied into many sons of God and the many brothers of Christ (John 20:17) as the components of the one new man.
This means that, just as Christ as the Head is in resurrection, so we are now also in resurrection as the corporate new man (see Col. 1:18). Regardless our social rank, our education, our natural man, our race, our skin color, our gender, or anything that would divide us, we are now one in Christ as the one new man!
Together, we all as believers in Christ are part of the one corporate new man, the corporate God-man expressing God in full in the universe. Oh, what a fact! What a wonderful way to see all the saints in the church life! The Bible says it is so, and we believe this!
Living the Life of a God-man for the One New Man
When we see that we are the many God-men as components of the corporate one new man – the corporate God-man – we will no longer live the same as before. For the one new man as the corporate God-man, we need to live the life of a God-man, a life that is a duplication and continuation of the life the Lord Jesus as the first God-man lived on earth.
In His human living, Christ expressed God in full by expressing His divine attributes through His human virtues (see John 6:57; 14:10). When the Lord Jesus healed the sick and had compassion on the needy He didn’t just do it “out of His natural love and compassion” – He allowed God’s attributes of love and compassion to fill His human virtues, and He expressed God in a rich way.
It is one thing to be kind, compassionate, patient, and joyful in a natural way, and it is something completely different to allow God’s kindness, God’s compassion, God’s patience, and God’s joy to fill your human virtues and be expressed through them.
What we have as human beings is “God’s image” – we are as a glove is to a hand, we’re created in God’s image. But unless the hand fills the glove, the glove has not much meaning or expression.
In our daily life, we need to let God be involved in all the things we do, say, and are involved in. We are still doing this and that, taking care of our human responsibilities, but we let God be involved in all of them, and allow His divine attributes to be expressed in our human virtues.
In ourselves, our own love runs out pretty soon, our patience is exhausted very quickly, and our joy is not lasting. But God’s attributes last forever, being the reality of joy, love, peace, light, righteousness, holiness, and everything positive. We as God mingled with man need to live the life of a God-man by letting God’s divine attributes fill our human virtues for God to be expressed in us.
The Lord Jesus had His human virtues filled, mingled, and saturated with the divine attributes (see Luke 1:26-35; 7:11-17; 10:25-37; 19:1-10). He was not merely God living or man living – He was God mingled with man having a living of God yet man, man yet God.
We also as Christ’s duplication and continuation need live such a life of God mingled with man by letting God’s attributes fill our human virtues, living the life of a God-man.
Lord Jesus, thank You for regenerating us with Your divine life to make us the many God-men as the members of Your Body and components of the new man! Thank You for producing us as Your many brothers and as the many sons of God, the new creation of God! Lord, fill our human virtues with Your divine attributes, and live in us again the same kind of life You lived when You were on the earth. Mingle Yourself more with us, Lord Jesus, and have a way to live in us. We want to live the God-man life that matches the God-man we are by our re-birth with the divine life!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my Christian experience, bro. James Lee’s speaking in the message for this week, and portions from, The Move of God in Man (ch. 3), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Entering into the Fourth Stage of the Experience of Life to Arrive at a Full-Grown Man for the Fulfillment of God’s Purpose, week 7 / msg 7, Arriving at a Full-grown Man (1) Taking Christ as Our Person and Living the Life of a God-man.
- Hymns on this topic:
# Christ is God incarnated, / How wonderful! How marvellous! / Incarnated so that He could / Live inside of you and me, / He’s mingling now with us.
# God became man through incarnation / Man’s empty virtues to imbue, / In Christ fulfilling His intention / Creation old becoming new; / God’s attributes so bountiful / In human virtues shown / Uplifted, filled, enriched, and strengthened; / Love, life, and light—made known.
# God’s eternal economy / Is to make man the same as He is / In life and nature, / But not in the Godhead / And to make Himself one with man / And man one with Him / Thus to be enlarged and expanded in His expression / That all His divine, that all His divine / Attributes may be expressed in human virtues.
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