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Scripture Reading: Phil. 3:10
Philippians 3:10 says, “To know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.” This verse unveils three items, which Paul wanted to know. First, Paul wanted to know Christ. Second, he wanted to know the power of His resurrection. Third, he wanted to know the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.
We want to see the practical way to live a life according to the high peak of the divine revelation, which is not out of man’s imagination but in the Holy Scriptures. This high peak is that God became man that man may become God in life and nature but not in the Godhead. The eternal, infinite, self-existing, ever-existing, and almighty God one day became a man, like you and me. The human race has a history of about six thousand years, from the creation of Adam to our time. God became a man only about two thousand years ago.
About four thousand years before God became a man, He created man in His image and according to His likeness (Gen. 1:26). Man is in the image of God and according to the likeness of God. Suppose a little boy made a clay toy in the image and likeness of a lion. When the little boy’s friend saw it, he would say, “You have made a lion.” Surely that is a real toy, but it is in the image of a lion. God made a real man according to His kind, not according to man’s kind. Actually, man in himself has no kind. Mankind is “Godkind.” One day God shaped some clay in His own image and according to His own likeness. That man was according to God’s kind. We human beings are in God’s kind.
After His creation of man He did not do anything to mingle Himself with man for four thousand years. But He did promise mankind that a threefold seed would come: the seed of the woman (3:15), the seed of Abraham (22:18), and the seed of David (2 Sam. 7:12-14). The seed of the woman would bruise the head of Satan, the seed of Abraham would be a blessing to all the nations on earth, and the seed of David would build up God’s temple and set up God’s kingdom. In the genealogy of Christ in Matthew 1 these three seeds are one person, Christ.
There is also a prophecy in the Old Testament saying that a virgin would conceive and bear a son (Isa. 7:14). This is the fulfillment of the promise of the seed of the woman. Isaiah says that this human son, this human child, is called Mighty God and Eternal Father (9:6). That is God Himself. Thus, the threefold seed is God Himself. God is divine, and the threefold seed is human. This indicates that the divine God would become a human seed, a man. Micah 5:2 says that out of Bethlehem would come forth a Ruler, whose goings forth are from ancient times, from the days of eternity. We can see such a record in the Old Testament, but after God created man in His kind, He did not do anything for His New Testament economy for four thousand years. Within these four thousand years He promised and prophesied that He would come to be a man.
In the whole universe there was God, there were the angels, there were men, but there had never been a God-man. One day an extraordinary event took place. Jesus was born. He is both God and man, the God-man. God became a man by the name of Jesus. This God-man became the firstborn Son of God (Rom. 1:3-4; 8:29), and the firstborn Son indicates, no doubt, that many brothers will follow. In eternity before God created man, He had chosen millions of men to be His many sons (Eph. 1:4-5). Today our being the many sons of God is not based upon creation but based upon God’s selection, God’s choosing.
He chose us in eternity past, and one day He regenerated us. He regenerated us on the same day that Jesus was born to be the firstborn Son of God in His resurrection (1 Pet. 1:3). In His resurrection we were born to be the many sons of God. This indicates that the firstborn Son is a prototype, and the many sons are the mass reproduction. What should we as the reproduction of the firstborn Son of God be? We should be the God-men. He was the first God-man, the prototype. He was the original copy for xeroxing, and we are the following copies. We should be exactly the same as He is. He is a God-man, and we should be the God-men.
God desired to become a man, and one day He became a man, living on earth as a God-man. Yet when He lived on earth as the God-man, He did not live by His human life but by His divine life. He was divine. He wanted to become human, and He was human. Yet He lived a human life not by His humanity but by His divinity. He was a human being who came with divinity. He lived on this earth not only as God but also as man. He lived as a God-man, yet not by the life of man but by the life of God. So His human living was not lived out by the human life but by the divine life. Yet within the divine life there was the element of humanity, and within the human life there was the element of divinity. The divine attributes became the human virtues.
Caesar Augustus (Luke 2:1) was the first formal Caesar of the Roman Empire, who took possession of the land where this God-man lived. This God-man’s living under the Roman Empire is a part of human history. He lived by always rejecting His human life, by always putting His human life under the cross. From the first day that He lived on earth, He was crucified. He lived a crucified human life, not by His human life but by His divine life. His human living did not express humanity but divinity in the divine attributes becoming the human virtues. This is what Paul meant in 1 Timothy 3 when he spoke of Christ as God manifested in the flesh (v. 16).
Many Christians know that one day God was incarnated to be a man by the name of Jesus. They know this just in black and white, but sorry to say, they do not know the intrinsic fact of this incarnation. This incarnation produced a God-man, who lived on the earth not by His human life but by His divine life. All the days when He was on earth, He put Himself on the cross. He remained on the cross to die that He might live by God, not to express man but to express God in His divine attributes becoming man’s virtues. This was the life of the first God-man as a prototype. Today we are His reproduction, His many copies, so we should live the same kind of life.
I was born in Christianity. From my youth I was taught that we have to follow Jesus. What they meant, however, was this: “Jesus loves people, so we have to follow Him in loving people. Jesus was meek and patient, so we have to follow Jesus in meekness and in patience.” Apparently, this teaching is right, but intrinsically, it is absolutely off. Intrinsically speaking, to follow Jesus is to be a xerox copy of that first God-man. To follow Jesus is to live the life of a God-man, not by the human life but by the divine life, so that God may be expressed, or manifested, in the flesh in all His divine attributes becoming the human virtues. This is the intrinsic significance of what it is to follow Christ. So the practical way to live a life according to the high peak of the divine revelation is that you must be a God-man. As a God-man, you need to live a life not by yourself but by another One, not by your human life but by His divine life, not to express yourself but to express His divinity in His divine attributes, which all become your human virtues.
First, we need to be clear about the life of Christ, the first God-man, on the earth. He was both God and man, having the divine life and the human life.
Christ lived a life of humanity, not by His human life but by His divine life.
He died to live. He was dying every day during His whole life of thirty-three and a half years. He died to Himself that He might live to the Father (John 5:19, 30; 8:28).
I like this phrase dying to live. Christ died to Himself in order to live out the divine attributes as His human virtues.
Christ was under the cross all the time on the earth, expressing not Himself but the Father. One day Philip asked Him, “Lord, show us the Father and it is sufficient for us” (John 14:8). The Lord responded, “Have I been so long a time with you, and you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how is it that you say, Show us the Father?” (v. 9). The disciples saw the Lord Jesus, but when they saw Him, they saw the Father. This shows that He was the expression of the Father.
Christ lived a life under the cross all the time until He was practically crucified on the cross to accomplish His all-inclusive death for God’s eternal redemption of His chosen people. God’s chosen people became fallen and lost, but He redeemed them back through the wonderful death of that wonderful person, Christ.
Christ made Himself, the first God-man, a prototype for the mass reproduction of many brothers, the many God-men (Rom. 8:29). I have been a Christian for about sixty-nine years. After so many years I have been made by God to know only one thing—God became man so that man may become God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead. This is my unique burden, my unique message. God and man will become one entity, and that one entity is the mingling of divinity with humanity. This mingling will consummate in the New Jerusalem, which is the conclusion of the entire Bible.
First Peter 2:21 says that Christ as the first God-man was a model for us. We need to live a life that is a copy, a reproduction, of the life of Christ.
In Matthew 16:24 the Lord said, “If anyone wants to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.” This is to live a life of bearing the cross in the steps of Christ (1 Pet. 2:21b).
Both 2 Corinthians 5:15 and Galatians 2:19 show that the believers in Christ should die to themselves and live to God.
Paul says that he was crucified with Christ (v. 20) to be conformed to His death by the power of His resurrection (Phil. 3:10).
Romans 8:13 says, “If you live according to the flesh, you must die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the practices of the body, you will live.” You have to put to death by the Spirit in His resurrection whatever your body does. This is to be conformed to the death of Christ by the power of His resurrection. No one in his natural life can put everything that his body does to death. But we, the God-men, who are the reproduction of the prototype, can. We can know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.
Such a life of dying to ourselves and living to God is for Christ, the first God-man, to be formed in His many brothers, the many God-men, for the building up of His organic Body that the eternal economy of God might be carried out. The Christian life is not a matter of outwardly loving people or of being meek or patient in our human ethics. We need to die every day (1 Cor. 15:31). The married saints need to die to their spouse. The students need to die to their classmates and teachers. We need to die to live so that the many God-men can become the building material for the building up of the Body of Christ to carry out God’s eternal economy.
Thus, a number (not all) of His brothers, the many God-men, through His death and in His resurrection may be constituted to be His overcomers to close this age and to bring in His kingdom age. This is the real meaning of our being a Christian. It is a life of dying every day. We must admit that we have not been that absolute or faithful in practicing this dying-to-live life. God has opened up to us the high peak of His divine revelation. He also puts us in an environment of sufferings to force us to die to live. I hope we all would be brought into the reality of Philippians 3:10: “To know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.”
