We know that the entire desire of the Triune God is to work Himself into you that you may live Him. God’s desire is that you live Him. God created you in this way. Now we can understand Genesis 1:26. God created us in His image and after His likeness because His desire was just to put Himself into us. We have repeated this kind of word for many, many years. In 1950 I went to the Philippines, and right after my arrival, I began to speak concerning the mingling of God with man. Today I am much clearer concerning the mingling of God with man than I was thirty years ago. God created us in His image and after His likeness because He wants to work Himself into us to be our life and to be our nature. He even wants to work Himself into us to be our disposition, our character, our living. First He becomes your life, then your nature, then your disposition, eventually even your character and your living. So you live Him. This is the central thought of the divine revelation in the Bible. This is the life pulse of the divine revelation.
The situation among Christians today is altogether too poor. Not only do they not know that God wants to put Himself into them to be their living, their character, their disposition, and their nature, they don’t even know He wants to be their life. What they have is simply an objective religious God in a remote place. Most of them just have God as an object of worship. They just have a religion. But this is not the Bible. The Bible says abide in Me and I in you (John 15:4). If anyone loves Me, My Father and I will go to him, not just to have a visit, but to make our abode with him (John 14:23). Then it says Christ lives in me (Gal. 2:20), and even the more Christ will make His home in me (Eph. 3:17). Furthermore, He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit (1 Cor. 6:17). God is Spirit (John 4:24), and we are one spirit with Him.
We have a clear picture in the Bible that we are a vessel made in God’s shape, God’s image, in God’s likeness. And through Christ passing through so many processes, He has entered into our being and made us one spirit with Him. For what purpose? That we may live Him. He comes into us to be our life, our nature, our disposition, our character, and our living. We need to remember these five things: life, nature, disposition, character, and living. He first becomes our life, and He wants to travel through three things—our nature, our disposition, and our character—to become our living. He needs to become our disposition, our nature, our character, and eventually our living. Life is different from nature, and nature is different from disposition, and disposition is different from character. Disposition is something within, and character is something expressed with your disposition. The life implies the nature, and the nature implies the disposition, and the disposition expresses the character. All this added together is just your daily living. According to the Bible I can say strongly that the Triune God today should be not only our life but also our nature, our disposition, our character, and eventually and ultimately, our living. So we have to live Him.
How could this objective God become our life subjectively? And how could He become our nature not only subjectively but very intrinsically? He becomes our nature, and then He becomes our disposition. I like to see your disposition changing year after year because God is being subjectively and intrinsically added to your disposition.
In the New Testament we have four strong pictures. We have Paul, Peter, John, and James. These are four big characters. In the four Gospels you could see Peter’s old disposition. It was not Peter, it was Simon. But when Peter wrote First and Second Peter you could see a kind of Petrine disposition. It is quite different from Paul’s, but both are quite divine. The third is the old apostle John. When he wrote the Gospel of John and the book of Revelation you can hardly find any trace of the old disposition. You just see a kind of disposition that is transformed and becoming very divine. James also has his kind of disposition which may not be as shiny as John’s. They are all precious but in different degrees. It was Paul who said: “To me to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21). God’s desire is to be our life, our nature, our disposition, our character, and our living. Hallelujah! At least God could succeed in these few persons. Not even the angels could deny that God succeeded in Paul, Peter, John, and James. There are four people with such a history that God became man’s life, man’s nature, man’s disposition, man’s character, and man’s daily living. How could this be? You must realize all four of these assimilated God. They absorbed God all their life by two things: by the divine Word and the divine Spirit. Actually the very subjective God becomes our portion by these two things: the Word and the Spirit.