As a genuine man and the complete God, the Man-Savior is the God-man. He has the human nature with its virtues to contain God and express Him. No one has ever contained as much of God as the Lord Jesus does. With His human virtues He contained God and expressed Him. In the Olympic games athletes try their best to display their ability. But the God-man did not need to exert Himself to display His ability to contain and express God. No one can compare with Him in having the human nature with its virtues to contain and express God.
As the God-man the Lord Jesus has the divine nature with its divine attributes to be His content and reality for the expression of God. The God-man has the essence of God, the nature of God, and the attributes of God. He is a genuine man with the real human nature and the perfect human virtues to express God. However, in order to express God, He must have God as His content and reality. Once again we may use the illustration of a glove. A glove expresses the hand. But if a glove is to express the hand, it must have the hand as its content and reality. The God-man is both the “glove” and the “hand,” for He has both humanity as the container and divinity as the content.
Today the Man-Savior is still both man and God. He is man as the container, and He is God as the content. In Him we have the real human nature and the true divine nature. In Him we have the perfect human virtues and the excellent divine attributes. These two categories meet in Him and are mingled in Him to become one composition. Hence, He is the God-man.
However, in this mingling there is not the producing of a third nature, a nature that is neither fully human nor completely divine. Furthermore, after the essences of the two natures, the divine nature and the human nature, have been mingled and have become one composition, they still remain distinct. This means that in the mingling of divinity and humanity in the Man-Savior there is no confusion of the two natures. This mingling is mysterious; this God-man is truly a mystery.
When I was young, I did not receive this kind of help in understanding the Lord Jesus as the God-man. I am thankful that the young saints are able to receive this help today. The young generation in the Lord’s recovery is very blessed to hear such a word concerning the God-man, the Man-Savior, with His human nature and His divine nature.
Many books say that Jesus Christ is the God-man, but which of them interprets the God-man in the way presented in these messages on the Life-study of Luke? What is the God-man? He is a genuine man with a real human nature and perfect human virtues, and He is the complete God with the true divine nature and the excellent divine attributes. He has the human nature with its virtues to contain and express God. He also has the divine nature with its attributes to be His content and reality for the expression of God. This is the God-man.
Let us now go on to consider the Man-Savior’s God-man living. This is the living of a genuine man, but not by man’s life—man’s mind, will, and emotion—to express man in man’s virtues.
Two verses from the Gospel of John are helpful in understanding this. In John 5:30 the Lord Jesus says, “I can do nothing from Myself; as I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.” In John 6:38 He goes on to say, “I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.” In these verses we see that the Lord Jesus did not do or seek His own will.
In a very real sense, our will represents our whole being. Yes, in one sense our being is represented by our mind. The mind, however, represents our being only in thought; the will represents our being, or our soul, in its doings. You may have thought about many things, but how many of those things have you done? Perhaps out of a hundred matters we have thought, only two have been accomplished. The point we are making here is that our mind represents our being in thought, and our will represents our being in action, in deeds.
The fact that the Lord Jesus did not seek or do His own will indicates that while He was living as a man, He was not living by His own mind, will, and emotion. This means that He was not living by His own life. Here “life” equals our being, and our being is composed of our mind, will, and emotion. The Man-Savior, the God-man, lived as a man, but He did not live by His own mind, will, and emotion.