Morning Nourishment
1 Tim. 6:11 But you, O man of God, flee these things, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, meekness.2 Tim. 3:17 That the man of God may be complete, fully equipped for every good work.
The God-men not only have two lives, but they also have two natures, humanity and divinity…. Religion always cultivates man’s natural capacity in order to build up the self. Education does the same thing; it merely builds up the human being…. The Bible does not build up the natural man; rather, it builds up a God-man. We are born of God, and we are children of God.
My burden in the Lord’s ministry is not to build you up to be a nice man, a good man, or a gentle man, but to be a God-man. I have given thousands of messages on how to be a Christman, a God-man. In the Lord’s recovery our teaching is not to raise up good men… [but] to raise up God-men.
We need to know by seeing that we have God’s life and possess God’s nature. There is such a fact that the divine life is mingled with our human life. Therefore, we must learn how to live not by our human life but by God’s life mingling with our human life to make us divine. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 2, “The God-men,” p. 439)
Today’s Reading
I was taught that I should be very virtuous. Eventually, I discovered that I could not love, I could not be humble, and I could not be patient, kind, holy, or righteous. I became very disappointed and struggled for a long time. One day I saw that… only God can be holy. There is no possibility for a piece of black iron to be gold. I saw that what God wanted was to enter into me to be my contents, to be my holiness, to be my “gold.” When I saw and realized this, I became greatly excited. I wanted to tell everyone that I had God in me, that God was my contents. God is my life, my holiness, my love, my slowness, and my everything. I am a vessel, a container, to contain God and to be filled with God.Do not try in yourself to love others. The more you try to love others, the more you will eventually hate others. If you try to be humble, you will be proud. You may even have the inward attitude—”Don’t you know that I am so humble?” This is pride. You are proud of your humility.
In the garden of Eden there were two trees—the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:9). Evil always goes with good. Hatred goes with love. Pride goes with humility….God wants life. God does not want you to be a good man, but God wants you to be a God-man….You can never be an expression of God if you are merely a good man. God made man in His own image for the purpose of expressing God. When we become a God-man who is filled with God, we express God. A God-man is an expression of God.
Such a God-man, expressing God, is God’s representative. He represents God, and he has God’s authority over all things. God created man in His own image to express Him, and God gave His dominion to man that man may reign for Him (Gen. 1:26). It is not a good man but a God-man who expresses God and represents God. God’s image is for us to express God, and God’s dominion is for us to represent God. We have God Himself in our spirit, and we can be filled with God and full of God to express Him and represent Him as a God-man. This is the dispensing of God Himself into us according to the divine economy. I must testify that my only burden and my unique interest is God’s economy. God wants to dispense Himself into us to make us God-men, not good men. A Christian is not merely a good man but a God-man. We were made in God’s image with a spirit to receive God into us as our life, our life supply, and our everything to be our very contents for us to be God-men. (CWWL, 1984, vol. 3, “The Divine Economy,” pp. 10-12)
Further Reading: CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 2, “The God-men,” ch. 1; CWWL, 1984, vol. 2, “Elders’ Training, Book 1: The Ministry of the New Testament,” ch. 3