Scripture Reading: Mark 1:15; John 3:3, 5-6; 1:12-13; 2 Pet. 1:4; 1 John 3:1
Ⅰ
Because we have been born of God, we are God’s species; that is, we are God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead—John 3:3, 5-8.
Ⅱ
The God-men have the divine right to participate in God’s species—vv. 3, 5-6; 18:36.
Ⅲ
As believers in Christ, we are living the life of a God-man—Mark 1:15; John 14:17b, 20; Rom. 8:9a, 10; Gal. 5:25:
A
In Christ God has been constituted into man, man has been constituted into God, and God and man have been mingled together to be one entity, which is called the God-man—Matt. 1:21, 23; Luke 1:35; Titus 2:13; 1 Tim. 2:5.
B
The God-men, the sons of God, are the duplication and continuation of Christ, the first God-man—John 12:24; Heb. 2:10; Rom. 8:29.
C
A God-man is one who has been born of God and partakes of God’s life and nature, becoming one with God in His life and nature and thereby expressing Him—John 1:12-13; 3:15; 2 Pet. 1:4; 1 Cor. 6:17.
D
A God-man is constituted with God, having God as his life, nature, and everything; a God-man is man yet God and God yet man—Eph. 3:16-17a.
E
Christ’s human living was man living God to express the attributes of God in the human virtues, which were filled, mingled, and saturated with the divine attributes—Luke 1:26-35; 7:11-17; 10:25-37; 19:1-10.
F
As the reproduction and duplication of the first God-man, we should live the same kind of life that He lived:
１
The Lord’s God-man living set up a model for our God-man living—being crucified to live God so that God might be expressed in humanity—Gal. 2:20.
２
The Lord Jesus did not live a life of trying to be spiritual, holy, and victorious; He lived a life that was fully according to and for God’s New Testament economy.
３
In the four Gospels we see Jesus living the life of a God-man, and in Acts we see the disciples also living such a life.
４
Christ lived a life of suffering, a suffering life; now we are His partners living the same kind of life; when we suffer for Christ, our sufferings are counted by God as the sufferings of Christ—Heb. 3:14.
５
We must deny ourselves, be conformed to Christ’s death, and magnify Him by the bountiful supply of His Spirit—Matt. 16:24; Phil. 3:10; 1:19-21a.
６
The One who lived the life of a God-man is now the Spirit living in us and through us; we must reject self-cultivation and the building up of our natural man and allow nothing other than this One to fill us and occupy us so that we may live Him and express Him personally and corporately in the church, which is His Body—Eph. 3:16-19; 1:22-23.
Ⅳ
As believers in Christ, we are living in the kingdom of God—Rom. 14:17:
A
The kingdom of God is God Himself—Mark 1:15; Matt. 6:33.
B
The kingdom of God is God in Christ being the totality of the divine life with all its activities—John 11:25; 10:10b; 14:6.
C
The kingdom of God is the realm of the divine life for this life to move, to work, to rule, and to govern that life may accomplish its purpose.
D
The kingdom of God is an organism constituted with God’s life as the realm of life for His ruling, in which He reigns by His life and expresses Himself as the Divine Trinity in the divine life—15:1-8, 16, 26.
E
The kingdom of God is a realm, not only of the divine dominion but also of the divine species, in which are all the divine things—3:3, 5-6; 18:36:
１
In John 3 the kingdom of God refers more to the species of God than to the reign of God.
２
God became man to enter into the human species, and man becomes God in life and nature but not in the Godhead to enter into the realm of the divine species—1:1, 12-14; Rom. 8:3; 1:3-4.
３
In order to enter into the realm of the divine species, we need to be born of God to have the divine life and the divine nature—John 1:12-13; 3:3, 5-6, 15; 2 Pet. 1:4:
ａ
God created man not according to man’s kind but in His image and according to His likeness to be God’s kind, God’s species—Gen. 1:26.
ｂ
The believers, who are born of God by regeneration to be His children in His life and nature but not in His Godhead, are more God’s kind than Adam was—John 1:12-13:
⑴
Adam had only the outward appearance without the inward reality of the divine life.
⑵
We, the believers in Christ and the children of God, have the reality of the divine life, and we are being transformed and conformed to the Lord’s image in our entire being—2 Cor. 3:18; Rom. 12:2; 8:29.
⑶
Our second birth, regeneration, caused us to enter into the kingdom of God to become the species of God—John 3:3, 5-6.
⑷
We have been regenerated to be Godkind; as God’s sons, we are God’s kind, God’s species—Rom. 8:19; Heb. 2:10.
⑸
All the children of God are in the divine realm of the divine species— John 1:12-13; 3:3, 5.
⑹
The believers are God-men in the divine species, that is, in the kingdom of God—1 John 3:1a; John 3:5.
F
We live in the kingdom of God as the realm of the divine life by the sense of life— Rom. 8:6.
G
In the church, we are living in the kingdom of God today; Romans 14:17 is a strong proof that today’s church life is the kingdom.
H
When we exercise that part of us which is the new creation—Christ Himself as the element of the kingdom of God—we are living in the kingdom of God.
I
The overcomers will inherit the kingdom of Christ and of God so that they can enter into the manifestation of the kingdom of the heavens—2 Tim. 4:18.
Ⅴ
In the Gospel of John we see many aspects of the believers’ living in the realm of the divine species—1:16; 15:4a, 9, 11; 4:23-24; 14:2, 20, 23; 17:22-24:
A
“Of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace”—1:16.
B
“The water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into eternal life”—4:14b.
C
“He who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me”—6:57b.
D
“If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there also My servant will be. If anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him”—12:26.
E
“In My Father’s house are many abodes… I go to prepare a place for you”—14:2.
F
“In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you”—v. 20.
G
“If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make an abode with him”—v. 23.
H
“Abide in Me and I in you”—15:4a.
I
“If you abide in Me and My words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you”—v. 7.
J
“As the Father has loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love”—v. 9.
K
“These things I have spoken to you that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be made full”—v. 11.
L
“These things I have spoken to you that in Me you may have peace”; “My peace I give to you”—16:33a; 14:27b.
M
“Holy Father, keep them in Your name, which You have given to Me, that they may be one even as We are”—17:11b.
N
“The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, even as We are one”—v. 22.
O
“I in them, and You in Me, that they may be perfected into one”—v. 23a.
P
“Father, concerning that which You have given Me, I desire that they also may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory”—v. 24a.