«　WEEK 5　DAY 3　»

　　John 6:57 As the living Father has sent Me and I live because of the Father…

　　5:30 I can do nothing from Myself; as I hear, I judge, and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will but the will of Him who sent Me.

　　8:28 …I do nothing from Myself, but as My Father has taught Me, I speak these things.

　　As the God-man, the Lord Jesus has the divine nature with its divine attributes to be His content and reality for the expression of God. The God-man has the essence of God, the nature of God, and the attributes of God. He is a genuine man with the real human nature and the perfect human virtues to express God. However, in order to express God, He must have God as His content and reality…. We may use the illustration of a glove. A glove expresses the hand. But if a glove is to express the hand, it must have the hand as its content and reality. The God-man is both the “glove” and the “hand, ” for He has both humanity as the container and divinity as the content. (Life-study of Luke, p. 522)

　　Let us now go on to consider the Man-Savior’s God-man living. This is the living of a genuine man, but not by man’s life—man’s mind, will, and emotion—to express man in man’s virtues.

　　In John 5:30 the Lord Jesus said, “I can do nothing from Myself; … I do not seek My own will but the will of Him who sent Me.” In John 6:38 He went on to say, “I have come down from heaven not to do My own will but the will of Him who sent Me.” In a very real sense, our will represents our whole being…. The mind… represents our being only in thought; the will represents our being, or our soul, in its doings. You may have thought about many things, but how many of those things have you done? Perhaps out of a hundred matters we have thought, only two have been accomplished. The fact that the Lord Jesus did not seek or do His own will indicates that while He was living as a man, He was not living by His own mind, will, and emotion. This means that He was not living by His own life. Here “life” equals our being, and our being is composed of our mind, will, and emotion. The Man-Savior, the God-man, lived as a man, but He did not live by His own mind, will, and emotion.

　　The Lord Jesus had a genuine man’s living by God’s mind, will, and emotion—to express God in God’s attributes…. He came not to do His own will but to do God’s will. This means that He came to live as a man not by man’s life, but by God’s life. He lived by God’s mind, will, and emotion to express God in God’s attributes. These attributes are contained in and mingled with His human virtues.

　　The Lord’s God-man living constituted His qualification to be the Man-Savior and…constituted a prototype to His believers …for the “mass production, ” the reproduction, of the God-man in the believers. (Life-study of Luke, pp. 523-524, 526)

　　In the Gospel of Mark we see a person, the God-man, who lived a life that was fully according to and for God’s New Testament economy. Through His death, resurrection, and ascension, and by bringing His followers into that death, resurrection, and ascension, the Lord Jesus has brought forth the new man as the reality of the kingdom of God. First, this new man issues in the church. Then, in the coming age, the new man will develop into the millennium. Ultimately, in the new heaven and the new earth, the new man will consummate in the New Jerusalem. The Gospel of Mark presents the person of the God-man, the One who lived, acted, moved, and worked step by step according to God’s economy. (Life-study of Mark, pp. 445, 452-453)

　　Further Reading: Life-study of Mark, msg. 52; Life-study of Luke, msg. 61