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Scripture Reading: 1 Tim. 3:16; Phil. 2:7-8; John 3:17; Matt. 9:10-13; Luke 4:19-22a; Acts 10:38; Isa. 53:2; Luke 2:7, 12, 40, 42, 46-47, 49, 52; 3:23; Isa. 53:3; Matt. 13:55-57; Luke 4:28-30; Matt. 26:4, 16; 4:1, 11
I. God manifested in the flesh — 1 Tim. 3:16:
А. Taking the form of a slave, becoming in the likeness of men, and being found in fashion as a man — Phil. 2:7-8.
B. To express the eternal, infinite, invisible, glorious, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent God through the mortal, finite, visible, inglorious man, limited in power, knowledge, and presence:
1. Divinity unveiled in humanity.
2. The divine attributes shown in the human virtues.
3. The divine life mingled with the human life to have one living without a third entity being produced.
C. In mercy, love, and grace and not in the condemnation of the law — John 3:17:
1. Exhibiting that God desires mercy — Matt. 9:10-13.
2. Proclaiming God’s acceptable year of jubilee through the words of grace proceeding out of His mouth — Luke 4:19-22a.
D. Under the anointing of the Holy Spirit and the divine power with the presence of God — Acts 10:38:
1. To declare the Triune God in doing good.
2. To show people the power of God.
3. To heal the people oppressed by the devil.
II. In the stages of human life:
А. Growing up before Jehovah as a tender plant and as a root out of dry ground — Isa. 53:2.
B. In babyhood — Luke 2:7, 12:
1. Wrapped in swaddling clothes.
2. Lying in a manger.
C. In boyhood:
1. Growing in wisdom and stature, in the grace of God, and in favor with God and men — vv. 40, 52.
2. Caring for the things of God at the age of twelve — vv. 42, 46-47, 49.
D. In maturity:
1. To begin His ministry for God at the age of thirty — 3:23.
2. To be a man of sorrows, suffering the despising, rejection, and persecution of man — Isa. 53:3; Matt. 13:55-57; Luke 4:28-30; Matt. 26:4, 16.
3. To be tempted by the devil:
а. Led by the Spirit — 4:1.
b. Defeating the devil and being ministered to by the angels — v. 11.
In this chapter we want to fellowship concerning Christ’s human living. We may think that Christ’s human living was a common thing, but it was altogether uncommon. This is because His human living was God’s human living. He was a man, but He lived God. We Christians are men, but we should also be those who live Christ, who live God. To say that we live Christ, that we live God, means that we and Christ are one. When we say that we live for Christ, this indicates that Christ and we are two. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:15 that we need to live to Christ. Paul also says in Philippians 1:21, “To me, to live is Christ.” Philippians 1 shows that to magnify Christ (v. 20) is to live Christ, not to live for Christ.
The Bible does show that we need to live for Christ and to live to Christ, but it also shows that we need to live Christ. To live for Christ is somewhat shallow, to live to Christ is deeper, and to live Christ is the deepest. When we say that we live Christ, this is new utterance to convey the divine facts in our spiritual culture. The language serves the facts in a culture. We need the spiritual, divine language to express the things in our spiritual culture. We need to speak as Paul spoke when he said that for him to live was Christ. We all need to be those who live Christ.
There was a human living on this earth not just by man but by God in man. This was God’s living in humanity. In Christ’s human living, the divine life was mingled with the human life. In the previous chapter on God’s incarnation, we saw that the purpose of the incarnation was to mingle God with man so that God and man might be one. We can see the mingling of God and man in the type of the meal offering (Lev. 2:4). Stanza 5 of Hymns, #86 says, “Thou as a man art tender, sweet, / Balanced in every way, complete, / Meal–offering to the Father meet; / Lord, I remember Thee!” In the meal offering, there were two elements. One element was the fine flour made of wheat. The other element was the olive oil. The meal offering was made of fine flour mingled with oil. The word mingle means to combine two elements together to be one entity without a third element being produced. The two elements are combined together, but they still remain distinguishable. God and man are mingled together as one, but they still remain distinguishable.
In His incarnation God entered into a virgin’s womb and stayed there for nine months. Then He was born to be a God-man and lived a human life within man for thirty-three and a half years. We have to pay our attention to His human living and fellowship about it because today we Christians are repeating His human living. Today God is moving in man, and He is living a human life in man.
We may have the boldness to say that Christ was God living a human life, but we would not say this about ourselves. Instead, we would say, “I am a man living a divine life.” Christ is God, we are men, and we live Christ. Thus, we would say that we are men living God’s life.
It seems that this is right, but we need to consider this from another angle. We are those who take Christ as our person. We all should say, “Christ is my person.” Our person is Christ, and Christ lives in us. He lives in our human life. When we take Christ as our person, we can say that “it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20a). This means that we are not living, but Christ is the One who is living. In this sense, we are Christ, and Christ is living a human life. Thus, we are Christ living a human life. Since Christ is God, we may say that we are God living a human life. Instead of saying, “I am a man living a divine life,” we should say, “I am God living a human life.”
We should not be the person in our Christian life. It is not we who are living a divine life, but it is Christ who is living a human life. If we say, “I am living a divine life,” we are the person living. Instead, we should say, “I am Christ living a human life.” The Christian life is Christ living a human life. It is not an American, a Chinese, or a Japanese living a divine life. The Americans, Chinese, and Japanese are all on the cross. They have been crucified. We do not have many different kinds of people living in the church. We have only one person living — Christ. Christ, the very God, is here living a human life.
What is the Christian life? The Christian life is God living a human life. What is the church? The church is Christ living a human life. The church cannot come into existence and be built up by the miraculous gifts and miracles according to the Pentecostal movement. The church has only one way of being built up. That way is to have God living a human life. What builds the Christians up is God living a human life.
You may think that the Christian life is a matter of learning how to imitate Christ and that you need to bear your cross to follow Him. This is a natural thought. You have to be converted to realize that your Christian life is not you living. Your Christian life is God living. It is not you living a divine life but God living a human life. The proper Christians are those who have God in them living a human life. God is moving in them to be a husband, a wife, or the proper children of parents. The Christian life is God living a human life.
First Timothy 3:16 says that God was manifested in the flesh. God being manifested in the flesh is God living a human life. We should not try to be angels, because God is not manifested in the angels but in the flesh. This means that God is living a human life.
In Philippians 2:7-8 Paul says that the Lord Jesus took the form of a slave, became in the likeness of men, and was found in fashion as a man. Paul uses three particular words here: form, likeness, and fashion. We may think that these are synonyms, but each bears a particular significance. The form is the outward appearance, implying the reality within. We may use a horse as an illustration. The horse, of course, is in the form of the horse, having the outward appearance of a horse, but this form implies the reality of a horse. A false horse would have only the form of a horse but no inward reality. The form is the outward appearance, implying the inward reality. Christ existed in the form of God. The form of God is Christ’s outward appearance, implying the inward reality of Christ’s deity. In His human living, Christ, who was in the form of God, took the form of a slave. He did not have just the appearance of a slave; He was really a slave, serving people as a slave.
Christ also had the human likeness. He became in the likeness of men (plural). Men means mankind. The likeness of men denotes the outward appearance of His humanity.
Christ was also found in fashion as a man. The fashion is the outward guise, the semblance. The likeness and the fashion are nearly the same, but likeness is general. The Lord Jesus became in the likeness of mankind in a general sense, but He was found in fashion as a man. The man Jesus had the likeness of men, and all the people were observing Him, inspecting Him, and watching over Him. As they observed Him, they talked about Him and wondered who He was. In their observance of Him they found Him in the fashion of a man. What Christ looked like in His humanity was found by men to be in fashion as a man. Thus, fashion is a more particular term than likeness. In Philippians Paul stresses that in form, in likeness, and in fashion Christ was a real man.
The Lord Jesus was a real, perfect man to express the complete God. He was God manifested in the flesh to express the eternal, infinite, invisible, glorious, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent God through the mortal, finite, visible, inglorious man, limited in power, knowledge, and presence. Mortal is versus eternal, finite is versus infinite, visible is versus invisible, and inglorious is versus glorious. God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and present everywhere, but man is limited in power, knowledge, and presence.
God can be in heaven and on earth at the same time. But when He became a man in time, He could be in only one place. When He was in Nazareth, He could not be in Jerusalem, because He became a limited man. In John 7 His brothers told Him to go into Judea and manifest Himself to the world (vv. 3-4), but the Lord said, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always ready” (v. 6). He was telling them that His time was limited. Although He was the almighty God, as a man under persecution, the Lord was limited in relation to His activity. Although He was the eternal, infinite, unlimited God, He lived here on earth as a man, being limited even in the matter of time.
It is wrong to say that humanity was unveiled in divinity. Rather, divinity was unveiled in humanity. If your Christian life is an unveiling of your humanity, that is wrong. If this is the case, you get the glory and the exaltation. You are the one manifested. The Christian life is a life of divinity unveiled in humanity.
In Christ’s human living, the divine attributes were shown in the human virtues. When He loved people, that was a display of His human virtue, yet within that human virtue was the divine attribute as the reality. We can illustrate this by considering a glove and the hand within it. The glove may be likened to the human virtues, and the hand to the divine attributes. The real contents of the glove is the hand, just as the real contents of the human virtues of Christ are the divine attributes. God has many attributes. One attribute is love, another attribute is light, and another attribute is kindness. All these are His attributes, and they were lived out of the man Jesus as His virtues. All of God’s attributes became the virtues of the man Jesus.
The Gospels show us the man Jesus loving people, but actually this was God’s love expressed in Christ’s love. The inward reality is the divine attribute and the outward appearance is the human virtue. First Peter 2:9 speaks of the virtues of our Lord, not His attributes. In His nature are the attributes, but in expression the attributes become the virtues. The attributes are of God, and the virtues are of the man Jesus.
The virtues of the man Jesus are filled, mingled, and saturated with the attributes of God. We should not love anyone without the inward attribute of God’s love. Otherwise, our love for people is an empty love. It is a virtue in appearance, but there is no reality within it as an attribute.
In Christ’s human living, the divine life was mingled with the human life to have one kind of living without a third entity being produced. Christ’s virtues were a mingling of divinity with humanity.
In His human living, Christ was God manifested in the flesh to express God in mercy, love, and grace and not in the condemnation of the law (John 3:17). Mercy is the source of God’s love. Without God’s mercy there is no source for God’s love. This is because the ones whom God loves are pitiful. We are pitiful, yet He loved us because He is merciful to us. Mercy is the source of God’s love, and grace is the instrument of God’s love, so mercy, love, and grace are actually one thing.
The Lord Jesus told the Pharisees that God desires mercy and not sacrifice (Matt. 9:10-13). His human living exhibited that God desires mercy.
A jubilee is the biggest release, the biggest liberation. In the Old Testament the Israelites could have only one jubilee every fifty years (Lev. 25:8-17). Fifty is a number of fullness in people’s age. This indicates that the longer we live, the more we become bound and imprisoned. A newborn babe is not bound or imprisoned by anything. But as he gets older, he becomes more and more bound and imprisoned. This is why we need a jubilee. God is merciful, and God desires to bring His people into a jubilee, a time of liberation. When the jubilee comes, everyone — old and young, male and female, strong and weak — is released unconditionally and without exception. In His human living Christ proclaimed God’s acceptable year of jubilee through the words of grace proceeding out of His mouth (Luke 4:19-22a).
Acts 10:38 says that Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power and that He went about doing good and healing all those who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him. In His human living, He was the Son of God anointed with the Holy Spirit, and He was with the presence of God the Father. Here we can see the entire Divine Trinity moving in the man Jesus.
He declared the Triune God in doing good. The good things He did were a display of His virtues saturated with God’s attributes to declare the Triune God under the anointing of the Holy Spirit.
He did many miracles under the anointing of the divine power to show people the power of God.
He fought down the evil one to release his captives, healing the people oppressed by the devil. On the one hand, Christ in His humanity did many good things, expressing God’s attributes in His virtues. On the other hand, He performed many miracles in power to defeat God’s enemy and to release all the oppressed ones.
God was manifested in the flesh in the stages of human life.
When He became a man, He was growing up before Jehovah like a tender plant and like a root out of dry ground (Isa. 53:2). He came out of a very poor family, and that poor family was the dry ground. He was a descendant of the royal family of David, but at His time David’s royal family had become a poor family, the dry ground.
God was manifested in the flesh in babyhood. Luke 2 tells us that Mary wrapped Him in swaddling clothes and laid Him in a manger (v. 7). The angel told the shepherds, “This will be the sign to you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger” (v. 12). He was the unique One who was born in a manger. The manger was a particular, unique sign of the Man-Savior. A baby in a manger, signifying smallness in lowliness, was a sign of the Man-Savior’s life.
In His boyhood He grew in wisdom and stature, in the grace of God, and in favor with God and men (vv. 40, 52). Wisdom refers to the inner man, and stature refers to the physical body. The wisdom of the Savior’s deity (Col. 2:2-3) was revealed in proportion to the measure of His bodily growth. In His boyhood the grace of God was upon Him. As a boy, He needed the grace of God for His human life. He was filled with the wisdom of His deity and needed the grace of God in His humanity.
He advanced in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men. He was in favor with God because He was growing in the expression of God according to God’s desire. He was in favor with men because He was growing in human virtues, which were gracious to men. He was growing as a God-man before God and men.
He also cared for the things of God at the age of twelve (Luke 2:42, 46-47, 49). The age of twelve is the age of a boy’s full growth. The boy Jesus was caring for the interest of God when He was twelve years old.
In His maturity as a man at the age of thirty, He began His ministry for God (3:23). Thirty years of age is the full age for God’s service (Num. 4:3, 35, 39-40, 43-44, 47-48). In the Old Testament a man entered into an apprenticeship for the priesthood at the age of twenty-five. He learned for five years and became mature at the age of thirty. The Lord Jesus became mature at the age of thirty to carry out His earthly ministry.
From the time that He became a minister of God, He also became a man of sorrows, suffering the despising, rejection, and persecution of man (Isa. 53:3; Matt. 13:55-57; Luke 4:28-30; Matt. 26:4, 16). Throughout His whole life He was suffering, but especially in the last three and a half years.
After He became thirty years old, He was tempted by the devil, and this temptation was under the leading of the Spirit of God (4:1).
In that temptation He defeated the devil, and after that temptation He was ministered to by the angels (v. 11).
We can see the move of God in man as He passed through human living in the stages of human life. He was a real man in babyhood, in boyhood, and in His maturity as He ministered for God. His human living was a very particular living. It was the living of God in His move within man and through man. His living was God’s living in a man, which should be our living today. The Christian living should be a living in which God lives a human life in His children.
