God has predestinated us human beings to be His sons (Eph. 1:5). This is according to His good pleasure. It is most pleasant to God that a group of human beings can be men of God.
To be called a man of God does not mean merely that one belongs to God, but rather that he lives God. This term is used even in the Old Testament. It is applied to Moses several times (e.g., Psa. 90, title). Of course, he was not a man of God for the first forty years of his life, when he lived as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter and became “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians” (Acts 7:22). Nor was he a man of God in the second forty years of his life, which he spent in the wilderness. By the time God called him at the age of eighty, he was just a country shepherd, all his might “in words and in deeds” (v. 22) far behind him. He had already passed “threescore years and ten” (Psa. 90:10); by his own evaluation his life was as good as finished.
It was during the last forty years of his life that Moses was a man of God. Because he was already at an end, he could live in resurrection, having God as the fuel to burn upon him. During those years of his ministry, Moses lived God. That is why Caleb could later refer to him as the man of God (Josh. 14:6). Deuteronomy 33 gives the “blessing, wherewith Moses the man of God blessed the children of Israel before his death” (v. 1). Later on, in the time of Ezra, mention is again made “of Moses the man of God” (Ezra 3:2).
The most pleasant thing to God is to have some people on this earth who are living Him. This is His heart’s desire. Even if you are young, God wants you to live Him before your family. Even if you live in a palatial home and have Pharaoh for your father, God still wants you to live Him there. Living Him means being one with Him. This is what makes you a man of God. It is not merely that you represent Him. God wants to be lived out of you. In your speaking, He would speak. He would like the work you do to be what He is doing. You are only a human being, but you can have a divine living.
In the Epistles to Timothy the phrase man of God is used again. Paul wrote these Epistles when the church was in a state of degradation. In such a time “the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Tim. 3:17). Would you like to be a man of God? The preceding verse tells us the way. “All Scripture is God-breathed” (v. 16, Gk.). By breathing in God’s Word, spontaneously you will live God. Take ten minutes every morning to pray-read the Word. By breathing in His Word and eating of Him you will become a man of God. Even if you are quite young, you can still live God. I do not mean that you will improve your behavior. I am talking about God Himself being expressed through you.
The standard pattern of a man of God is not Moses, but Jesus of Nazareth. He was surely a man: He had a mother, and He lived in a small town for thirty years. Then He came forth to minister for three and a half years. If you read through the four Gospels, you will see there is not much mention of works that He did. Mostly He just lived and walked among His disciples.
But He did not live out Himself. He explained His relation to the Father in this way: “As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father; so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me” (John 6:57, KJV). He also told the Jews, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing from Himself except what He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, this also the Son does in like manner” (5:19). He could say, “I can do nothing from Myself” (v. 30). In John 10:30 He went on to say, “I and the Father are one.”
Here was a Man who lived out God. This is why the Father delighted in Him. However much you try to do for God, He will not be impressed. Simply live Him, and you will touch His heart.
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