This is for the manifestation of God in the flesh as the new man (1 Tim. 3:16; Eph. 2:15). First Timothy 3:16 says, “And 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 natural concept we have received from human philosophy and religion is not the revelation of the Bible. The Bible does not teach this. 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.
The Bible never says that there are many new men. The Bible tells us that there is only one new man (Eph. 2:15). This one new man is not an individual; he is a corporate man, and this corporate new man is the aggregate of all the God-men. When we put all the God-men together, we have one man. This one man is called “the new man” (Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10), referring to the new mankind. Adam was the old mankind. All his descendants are one with him to be the old man. Today we, the believers in Christ, are all one with Christ to be the new man.
The new man was created by Christ (Eph. 2:15). To understand how the new man was created, we need a detailed definition. We were born the old man. One day we heard about the Lord Jesus and we believed in Him, and we received Him into us. He is the very embodiment of God (Col. 2:9). This means that when the Lord Jesus entered into us, God came into us; God was imparted into us. On the one hand, the divine element was brought into our being, and on the other hand, Christ terminated our old nature on the cross. Hence, Christ terminated our old nature and imparted God into us as the new element. By these two things Christ created us to be the new man. To create us, the sinners, to be the new man, our natural person, our natural being, had to be crossed out, and God Himself had to be imparted into us. This is the constitution of the new man.
According to Ephesians 2:15, Christ used the Jews and the Gentiles as the materials in His creating of the new man. Christ created the new man by imparting the divine nature into the redeemed humanity of the believing Jews and Gentiles.
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