I.　If we would live the life of a God-man, we need to be conformed to the death of Christ by the power of His resurrection (Phil. 3:10):

A.　To be conformed to Christ's death is to take Christ's death as the mold of one's life:

1.　The mold of Christ's death refers to Christ's experience of continually putting to death His human life thatHemight live by the life of the Father (John 6:57; 5:19; 4:34; 17:4; 5:30; 7:18).

2.　Such a life was there originally just in an individual man, Jesus Christ, but now this life should be repeated, reproduced in many believers who have been redeemed and regenerated and who now possess the divine life within them (Gal. 2:20):

a.　Our life should be conformed to the mold of Christ's death by our dying to our human life to live the divine life (Luke 9:23; John 12:25-26).

b.　Paul lived a crucified life continually, a life under the cross, just as Christ did in His human living (1 Cor. 15:31; 2 Cor. 4:10-12): (1) Paul followed the pattern of the Lord Jesus, bearing the brands, the characteristics of His life (Gal. 6:17). (2) "This was Jesus living again on the earth in His divinely enriched humanity! This was the wonderful, excellent, and mysterious God-man,who lived in the Gospels, continuing to live in the Acts through one of His many members!" (note 1, Acts 28:9).

3.　The death of Christ is the mold, and we are the "dough":

a.　When we were saved,we became "dough" made of Christ as the fine flour (Lev. 2:1; John 12:24; 1 Cor. 10:17).

b.　God has put us all into the mold of Christ's death, and day by day God is molding us to conform to this death (Rom. 6:3-4).

B.　It is by the power of Christ's resurrection that we are conformed to the mold of Christ's death (Phil. 3:10; John 11:25; Eph. 1:19-20; 3:16; S. S. 2:8-12):

1.　The power of Christ's resurrection is the resurrection power which resurrected Him from among the dead (Acts 2:24; Eph. 1:19- 20).

2.　We first receive the power of His resurrection and then, through this power, we live a crucified life by taking the death of Christ as the mold of our living (Phil. 3:10):

a.　The more we know the power of Christ's resurrection, the more we are conformed to His death, and the more we are conformed to His death, the more we know the power of His resurrection.

b.　In our experience the sequence is resurrection, death, resurrection (Phil. 3:10-11).

C.　Such a life of dying to ourselves and living to God is for Christ, the first God-man, to be formed in His many members, the many Godmen, for the building up of His organic Body that the economy of God might be carried out (Gal. 4:19; Eph. 4:12, 16).

II.　The reality of the Body of Christ is a corporate living of conformity to the death of Christ through the power of the resurrection of Christ (Phil. 3:10):

A.　The life of Christ is a model (1 Pet. 2:21), and we should be the mass reproduction of this model—the God-men who have both the divine life and the human life uplifted in Christ's resurrection.

B.　When we live not by our natural life but by the divine life within us, we are in resurrection, and the issue of this is the Body of Christ (2 Cor. 1:9).

C.　The reality of the Body of Christ is absolutely in the resurrection life of Christ and requires the believers to be in the resurrection life of Christ (Rom. 8:10, 6, 11; 12:5):

1.　Anything that is carried out scripturally but in a natural way is not the reality of the Body of Christ.

2.　To be in resurrection means that our natural life is crucified and that the Godcreated part of our being is uplifted in resurrection to be one with Christ in resurrection.

III.　The reality of the Body of Christ is the corporate living by the perfected God-men, who are genuine men but are not living by their life, but by the processed God whose attributes are expressed through their virtues (Gal. 2:20; Phil. 3:10; 1:19-21a; Rom. 8:4):

A.　The reality of the Body of Christ is a group of God's redeemed who have been made God, the God-men, by God and who live a life not by themselves but by another life which is within them—the Triune God processed and consummated to enter into them and to take them as His dwelling place.

B.　The reality of the Body of Christ is a corporate living which is the aggregate of many saints, actual God-men, who have been redeemed, regenerated, sanctified, and transformed by the processed and consummated God within them.

C.　The reality of the Body of Christ is a mingling living:

1.　It is the mingling in the eternal union of the regenerated, transformed, glorified tripartite God-men with the Triune God in the resurrection life of Christ.

2.　"If among us there is, if not in full at least in part, such a living, the reality of the Body of Christ is among us. This is the high peak of the recovery in the local churches like Mount Zion in the city of Jerusalem. Such a mingling living as the reality of the Body of Christ will consummate ultimately in the New Jerusalem in the new heaven and new earth as God's increase and expression for eternity" (The Practical Points concerning Blending, p. 37).