The New Testament reveals the way for us to enter into the reality of God’s economy. In order to see how to live by the divine life, we first need to realize that God desires to be one with man. For two persons to live one life is altogether extraordinary and mysterious. The problem is that God and man have different lives. God has His zoe life, and we have our psuche life. God’s life is divine, uncreated, and eternal, and our life is human, created, and temporal. However, when someone is saved, these two lives are grafted together in that person.
Grafting implies more than adding, or joining, together. Grafting implies that two lives grow together. For two lives to be grafted, they must be of similar species. A banana tree cannot be grafted to a peach tree because these two species are too different. However, God and man are not too different to be grafted together. Genesis 1:26 says, “God said, Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” We are very similar to God, for we were made in His image. We are a photograph of God. The only difference between a man and a photograph of the man is that the man has his life within, his living essence, but the photograph does not. The photograph does not have the life or nature but only the likeness, the image, of the man. Human life is very similar to the divine life. According to the Bible, psuche is very similar to zoe because psuche is a photograph of zoe. We should not despise ourselves. We were made in God’s image and according to His likeness and are very similar to God. Therefore, it is possible for us to be grafted together with God just as it is possible to graft a pear tree with an apple tree. Grafting is not merely a joining of two lives but a mingling, because the two lives mutually enter into each other to live together as one.
For two persons to be grafted and mingled together to live together is not easy. Married ones know that it is hard for a couple to live together, yet a couple living together is not as strict as grafting. A husband and wife may quarrel about whether to have the window opened or closed, but they still breathe independently and thus do not need to coordinate the pace or manner of breathing. However, to live together with God is even harder than to live together with our spouse. When we are living a grafted life with God, we must do everything with God. To live together is really a bondage. When we are saved, on the one hand, we are freed by Christ, but on the other hand, we are bound by Him. The Christian life is a cycle of release and bondage. The more we are bound, the more we are freed, and the more we are freed, the more we are bound. This is difficult to understand, but it is the fact.
The human and divine lives are similar, but the human and divine natures are different, just as copper and gold have a similar appearance but different natures. Although copper and gold resemble each other, copper rusts, but gold never rusts, because the natures of the two substances are absolutely different. Human nature is like copper, and God’s nature is like gold. Every genuine believer has these two natures—the corruptible human nature and the incorruptible divine nature.
We need to see that God wants the believers to live a human life by the divine life. God does not want us to live as angels. Neither does He want us to live as God with His status and position. God treasures and loves man. He wants us to live as men, yet He wants us to live not by our human life but by His divine life. God wants us to be a husband or wife but not by our own life. God-created humanity is not evil, but our soul-life is corrupted and evil. God does not want us to commit suicide, but the Bible charges us strongly to deny, put off, and crucify our soul-life (Matt. 10:38-39; 16:24-26; Rom. 6:6; Eph. 4:22). We must live as a proper human being, but our old, natural life must be put aside and crucified, and we must live instead by God’s life.
We need to see the way to live as a man by God’s life. Romans 8:4 says, “The righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the spirit.” Within us there are two substances: flesh and spirit. We must choose to walk according to the flesh or according to the spirit. It is entirely up to us to make this choice. It is difficult to know what is the spirit, but it is easy to know what is the flesh. In every environment and situation we all can recognize the flesh. When we deduct the flesh, what remains is the spirit. Since we know what is the flesh, we can walk according to the spirit simply by not walking according to the flesh.
We may think that some things are neutral and that it is not possible to know whether or not they are the flesh. However, according to the Bible, there is no third choice or neutral ground; everything is either according to the flesh or the spirit (vv. 4, 6, 9; John 3:6; Gal. 5:17; 6:8; 1 Pet. 3:18). For instance, a wife may prefer to open the window, and her husband may prefer to close it. The window being open or closed may be neutral, but for either spouse to insist on his or her preference is the flesh. If we insist on anything for our own sake, interest, or profit, even if the thing itself is not sinful or immoral, we are walking according to the flesh. We may not know if something is according to the spirit, but we can always recognize the flesh. As long as we are not walking according to the flesh, we must be walking according to the spirit.