THE ALL-INCLUSIVE, EXTENSIVE CHRIST REPLACING CULTURE FOR THE ONE NEW MAN TABLE OF CONTENTS
Message Five
Living the Life of the One New Man instead of Our Culture by Learning Christ as the Reality Is in Jesus
Scripture Reading: Eph. 4:20-21; Matt. 11:28-30; 14:19; John 5:19, 30; 7:18; 10:30
I. Our standard of living must not be according to our culture but according to the reality in Jesus, the reality lived out by the Lord Jesus when He was on earth—Eph. 4:20-21:
A. The way the Lord Jesus lived on earth is the way the one new man should live today—Matt. 11:28-30; John 6:57; 4:34; 5:17, 19, 30; 6:38; 17:4.
B. The reality is in Jesus (Eph. 4:21) refers to the actual condition of the life of Jesus as recorded in the four Gospels; Jesus lived a life in which He did everything in God, with God, and for God; God was in His living, and He was one with God.
C. Jesus lived in a way that always corresponded to God's righteousness and holiness; in the life of Jesus the righteousness and holiness of the reality were always exhibited—v. 24:
1. The human living of Jesus was according to the reality, that is, according to God Himself, full of righteousness and holiness.
2. It was in the righteousness and holiness of this reality—God glorified and expressed—that the new man was created.
D. We need to learn Christ and be taught in Him to live a life of reality; to learn Christ is simply to be molded into the pattern of Christ, that is, to be conformed to the image of Christ—vv. 20-21; Rom. 8:28-29; 2 John 1; John 4:23-24.
E. As a corporate person, the new man should live a life of reality, as the reality is in Jesus—a life of expressing God.
F. If we live according to the spirit of our mind, we shall have the daily living of the corporate new man—a living that corresponds to the reality in Jesus—Eph. 4:23.
II. The living of the one new man should be exactly the same as the living of Jesus; for the one new man as the corporate God-man, we need to live the life of a God-man—Phil. 1:19-21a; 3:10; Eph. 4:20-21; cf. 1 John 4:17 and footnote 5:
A. Christ's human living was man living God to express the attributes of God in the human virtues; His human virtues were filled, mingled, and saturated with the divine attributes—Luke 1:26-35; 7:11-17; 10:25-37; 19:1-10:
1. When the Lord Jesus was on earth, though He was a man, He lived by God—John 6:57; 5:19, 30; 6:38; 8:28; 7:16-17.
2. The Lord Jesus lived God and expressed God in everything; whatever He did was God's doing from within Him and through Him—14:10.
3. The Gospel of Mark reveals that the life the Lord Jesus lived was absolutely according to and for God's New Testament economy.
B. As the expansion, increase, reproduction, and continuation of the first God-man, we should live the same kind of life He lived—1 John 2:6:
1. The Lord's God-man living set up a model for our God-man living—being crucified to live that God might be expressed in humanity—Gal. 2:20.
2. We need to deny ourselves, be conformed to Christ's death, and magnify Him by the bountiful supply of His Spirit—Matt. 16:24; Phil. 3:10; 1:19-21a.
3. We must reject self-cultivation and condemn the building up of the natural man; we need to realize that the Christian virtues are related essentially to the divine life, to the divine nature, and to God Himself—Gal. 5:22-23.
4. The One who lived the life of a God-man is now the Spirit living in us and through us; we should not allow anything other than this One to fill us and occupy us— 2 Cor. 3:17; 13:5; Eph. 3:16-19.
5. We need to open our entire being to the Lord to receive (in a spirit and atmosphere of prayer) His charge to us in Luke 6:36: "Be full of compassion, even as your Father also is full of compassion"; we need to contact the Lord as the compassionate One every morning—Lam. 3:22-23; Rom. 9:15 and footnote 2; Exo. 34:6; Psa. 103:8; Luke 1:78-79; 10:25-37; Rom. 12:1.
III. In the performing of the miracle of feeding five thousand people with five loaves and two fish, the Lord trained His disciples to learn from Him—Matt. 14:14-21; 11:28-30:
A. Matthew 14:19 says that He took the five loaves and the two fish, and when He was going to bless them, He looked up to heaven:
1. Looking up to heaven indicates that He was looking up to His source, His Father in heaven:
a. This indicates that He realized the source of the blessing was not Him; the Father as the sending One, not the sent One, should be the source of blessing—cf. Rom. 11:36.
b. Regardless of how much we can do or how much we know what to do, we must realize that we need the Sender's blessing upon our doing so that we can be channels of supply by trusting in Him, not in ourselves—cf. Matt. 14:19b; Num. 6:22-27.
2. His looking up to the Father in heaven indicated that as the Son on earth sent by the Father in heaven, He was one with the Father, trusting in the Father—John 10:30:
a. What we know and what we can do mean nothing; being one with the Lord and trusting in Him mean everything in our ministry—cf. 1 Cor. 2:3-4.
b. The blessing comes only by our being one with the Lord and trusting in Him—cf. 2 Cor. 1:8-9.
3. The Lord did not do anything from Himself—John 5:19; cf. Matt. 16:24:
a. We should deny ourselves and not have the intention of doing anything from ourselves but have the intention of doing everything from Him.
b. We need to continually exercise our spirit to reject the self and live by another life by the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ—Phil. 1:19-21a.
4. The Lord did not seek His own will but the will of Him who sent Him—John 5:30b; 6:38; Matt. 26:39, 42:
a. He rejected His idea, His intention, and His purpose.
b. All of us should be on the alert for this one thing—when we are sent to do some work, we should not take that chance to seek our own goal; we should just go seeking the idea, purpose, aim, goal, and intention of our sending Lord—cf. 1 Tim. 5:2b.
5. The Lord did not seek His own glory but the glory of the Father who sent Him—John 7:18; 5:41; cf. 12:43:
a. To be ambitious is to seek your own glory—cf. 3 John 9.
b. We need to see that our self, our purpose, and our ambition are three big destroying "worms" in our work; we must learn to hate them.
B. If we are going to be used for the Lord always in His recovery, our self has to be denied, our purpose has to be rejected, and our ambition must be given up for the sake of the one new man—Matt. 16:24.