«　WEEK 6　DAY 1　»

　　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.

　　Gal. 2:20 I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me…

　　4:19 My children, with whom I travail again in birth until Christ is formed in you.

　　There are two main ways to grow trees. One way is to sow a seed. If we sow the seed of a peach, a peach tree will grow up. The second way is to plant the sapling of a peach tree into the earth. This sapling will grow to be a peach tree…The Bible tells us that God has sown Himself into our spirit as the life seed to grow a tree, a miniature of the tree of life. The tree of life was unique in Genesis 2:9, but today the tree of life grows in all of us, causing each of us to be a small tree of life. As small trees of life, we need to grow. We, the believers in Christ, have all been regenerated by God sowing Himself into us as the life seed. From that day a life tree came out. (CWWL, 1993, vol. 2, “The Organic Union in God’s Relationship with Man,” p. 420)

　　We need to be sowers and planters, sowing and planting Christ into many vacant sinners. Today there are many sinners who do not have Christ… If we have some dear friends who are still not believers in Christ or are believers in Christ in name but not in reality, these kinds of friends may have a feeling of emptiness within them. They may feel that their living on this earth is empty and is vanity of vanities. If they would pray, “Lord Jesus, I do not want to be empty anymore. I want to take You; I want to receive You,” immediately they would be filled by Christ as either a seed or a plant. Sometimes they will be blessed to receive Christ not only as a small seed but as a large plant planted into their being. This will cause them to feel that they are filled with Christ. They will be happy and will tell others that they are no longer empty, but they now have something within them, that is, Christ. (CWWL, 1993, vol. 2, “The Organic Union in God’s Relationship with Man,” pp. 420-421)

　　Literally, the Greek word [for model in 1 Peter 2:21] means a writing-copy, an underwriting for students to use in tracing letters as they learn to draw them…The Greek word for model is the word that denotes… a master copy used in the teaching of writing. The Lord Jesus has set His life before us as an underwriting for us to copy by tracing and following His steps. It is not God’s intention, however, that we try to imitate Christ by our own effort. We know from experience that trying to imitate Christ does not work. We are not able to imitate Him. What we need is not imitation, but reproduction…Outwardly Christ is our model, and inwardly He is our person, living in us, being formed in us, and making His home in us. Through this process we become a reproduction of the original, a reproduction of Christ as our model.

　　He is a writing-copy, an original to be used for making many copies. We need to become Christ’s reproduction, copies of Christ, by experiencing a process that involves the riches of the divine life. When this process is completed, we shall become a reproduction of Christ. When anyone observes the expression of the Triune God from within a believer, this indicates that such a believer has become a reproduction of Christ, the model. The manner of life that expresses the processed Triune God is a reproduction of Christ. As a model to the believers, Christ is the original used for making a reproduction of Himself. In order to understand Christ as our model, we need experience. From experience we know that as we enjoy Christ day by day, we are undergoing the process of spiritual reproduction to make us living copies of Christ. (The Conclusion of the New Testament, pp. 600-601)

　　Further Reading: The Conclusion of the New Testament, msgs. 56, 302; CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 3, “The God-man Living,” ch. 14