Outline

«　WEEK 2　DAY 6　»

　　Rom. 12:4-5 For just as in one body we have many members, and all the members do not have the same function, so we who are many are one Body in Christ, and individually members one of another.

　　As those who are born of God, the God-men have not only the divine life but also the divine nature…We are partakers of the divine nature [2 Pet. 1:4], which is the nature of God…We are men, for we do have the human nature. But we have also been born of God; we are God’s sons, God’s children. Thus, we have God’s nature…In fact, we are God in His life and His nature but not in His Godhead.

　　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. Eventually, the Bible builds up a corporate man. Ultimately, this corporate man will be enlarged to be its consummation, the New Jerusalem. The issue of the Bible’s teaching is just one entity, the New Jerusalem as the aggregate of all the God-men. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 2, “The God-men,” pp. 438-439)

　　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.

　　Our human life (the old man) has been crucified for the living of the divine life with the resurrected human life (the new man) (Gal. 2:20a; Eph. 4:22-24). Our old man, the natural man, should not be cultivated. Rather, it should be cut off; it should be crucified. It has been crucified already with Christ on the cross (Rom. 6:6). Christ has crucified all His believers so that His believers may live not by the crucified life but by the divine life in a humanity that is resurrected. Now the divine life is living not in the natural humanity but in the resurrected humanity. That is the new man. We all need to see such a vision…We should always be reminded that our old man was crucified. Then, in regeneration our natural humanity was resurrected. Regeneration is a resurrection (cf. Acts 13:33). To be regenerated is to be resurrected with the divine life. Therefore, today we should live a life conformed to the death of Christ (Phil. 3:10) that the divine life may have an opportunity to live with our resurrected humanity.

　　First Timothy 3:16 says, “Confessedly, great is the mystery of godliness: He who was manifested in the flesh.” According to the context of this verse, godliness here refers not only to piety but also to the living of God in the church, that is, to God as life lived out in the church. Godliness means that God becomes man and man becomes God. This is a great mystery in the universe. God has become man so that man may become God to produce a corporate God-man for the manifestation of God in the flesh as the new man.

　　This corporate God-man grows up for the purpose of building up the organic Body of Christ for the fulfillment of the eternal’ economy of God (Eph. 4:12-13, 15-16). The manifestation of God is possible by the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ is just the manifestation of God for the fulfillment of the eternal economy of God. Regardless of how much our natural self can be built up, and regardless of how much our natural capacity can be cultivated, we can never be the manifestation of God, and we can never be a part of the Body of Christ. This must be the responsibility of the God-men. The God-men are born of God to have God’s life and God’s nature, to live by a mingled life in a mingled nature, to build up the Body of Christ as God’s manifestation. This is the revelation of the Bible…The Bible teaches that a man must be born of God to be a God-man, and this God-man must be raised up, must grow up. Then the God-men know how to build up themselves to be the Body of Christ for the manifestation of God and for the fulfillment of God’s economy. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 2, “The God-men,” pp. 439-441)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 1, “The High Peak of the Vision and the Reality of the Body of Christ,” chs. 1—2