«　WEEK 1　DAY 3　»

　　1 Pet. 2:21 For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered on your behalf, leaving you a model so that you may follow in His steps.

　　1 Cor. 6:17 But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.

　　Today what we have seen of the Lord… is in God’s central lane, the economy of God, with Christ as its centrality and universality, with Christ as its center, reality, and everything. This Christ is now the life-giving Spirit indwelling our regenerated spirit to be one with our spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b; 6:17).

　　For such a revelation, which is so high, deep, and profound, the Lord needs a model. He needs a corporate people to be raised up by His grace through this high peak of the divine revelation to live a life according to this revelation….Where is the model of living a crucified life that we may live Christ?… Where is the model of living Christ and magnifying Christ by the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ? Where is this life? We have these revelations released as messages printed in books, but where is the model? (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 1, “Living a Life according to the High Peak of God’s Revelation,” p. 196)

　　The disciples who followed the Lord for three and a half years saw what He did, how He behaved, and how He spoke. That discipled them….Christ used these three processes—His human living; His all-inclusive, all-terminating, life-releasing, and new-man-creating death; and His life-dispensing resurrection—to disciple His followers.

　　In resurrection He became the life-giving Spirit and entered into them…. In Genesis 2 God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into man the breath of life (v. 7). This caused man to become living, that is, a living person. On the day of His resurrection Christ breathed Himself into His disciples, and they also became living [John 20:22]. They were made alive with the divine life. The Spirit of life and of reality who was breathed into them would guide them into all the reality of what they had observed of the Lord when they were with Him for three and a half years.

　　The followers of Christ were discipled through Christ’s human living on the earth, as the model of a God-man—living God by denying Himself in humanity (John 5:19, 30), revolutionizing their concept concerning man (Phil. 3:10; 1:21a). The concept of the disciples was revolutionized by what they saw of the Lord Jesus living God by denying Himself in His humanity.

　　They were discipled through Christ’s crucifixion to annul their human life for them to live the divine life (Gal. 2:20).

　　They were also discipled through Christ’s resurrection to know Him as God’s firstborn Son (Rom. 1:4; Acts 13:33; Rom. 8:29). As the only begotten Son of God, Christ had only the divine life and nature. He had nothing human. But as the firstborn Son of God, He is both divine and human. Christ had the human life and nature, but He lived the divine life and nature through the denying of His human life and nature. This was His divine and mystical living to disciple all His followers for three and a half years.

　　They were also discipled to know Christ as the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45).

　　If we open to the Spirit within us as we prayerfully consider this fellowship, we will be discipled. Only the discipled ones are the constituents of the vital groups. They have been discipled to be vital. A disciple is one who lives the divine life in his human life. The vitality of the ministry is due to a person’s living the divine life out of his human life. Then what he utters is divine out of a crucified human life. We need to deny our human life for the releasing of something divine. This is the main factor of our being vital. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 5, “The Vital Groups,” pp. 75-77)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 5, “The Vital Groups,” chs. 2-4, 6-11; CWWL, 1993, vol. 1, “The Move of God in Man,” ch. 1