I.　The life of a Christ-pursuing God-man is a life of pursuing to die with Christ through the experience of the cross—Matt. 10:38; 16:24:

A.　A God-man is one who lives under the cross daily—Luke 9:23; 14:27.

B.　The cross must become our experience; the cross that enters into our heart is not the objective cross on Golgotha but the cross that has become our subjective experience for us to live Christ—Gal. 6:14; 5:24.

C.　A living under the shadow of the cross touches the deepest parts of our being and every detail in our daily life.

II.　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 that He might live by the life of the Father—John 6:57; 5:19; 4:34; 17:4; 5:30; 7:18.

2.　The death of Christ means that when Christ lived on earth, He was always rejecting Himself, putting His human life to death and living by the Father's life.

3.　The life of Jesus is a model for us, and we should be the mass reproduction of this model—1 Pet. 2:21; Rom. 8:29.

4.　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).

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

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

2.　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.

3.　To be conformed to Christ's death is to be made the same as the form of Christ's death, that is, to take Christ's death as the mold of our life.

D.　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.

III.　We must beware of not conforming to the death of Christ:

A.　To not conform to the death of Christ is to not absolutely deny our self and bear the cross, keeping the self on the cross—cf. Phil 3:18.

B.　Not to conform to the death of Christ is not to crucify our natural man.

C.　Not to conform to the death of Christ is not to put to death our disposition by birth.

D.　If we deal with the "gopher" of not conforming to the death of Christ (as well as the "gophers" of ambition, pride, and self-justificiaton), the Lord's recovery will have a revival.

IV.　The reality of the Body of Christ is a corporate living of conformity to the death of Christ by the power of the resurrection of Christ—Phil. 3:10; Rom. 12:5; 1 Cor. 12:27:

A.　The reality of the Body of Christ is a living of being conformed to the death of Christ through the cross—Phil. 3:10:

1.　Christ is the person of the divine economy, and the cross is the way to carry out God's economy—1 Cor. 2:2; Gal. 3:1.

2.　The cross—the death of Christ—is the centrality and universality of our way to live the Christian life in order to fulfill God's purpose.

3.　In our experience, the turning point in living a life with Christ is the cross.

4.　There is a particular portion of the cross for each one of us to cross each one of us out—Matt. 16:24; Luke 14:27.

5.　As Christ's continuation, we should live a crucified life every day—1 Cor. 15:31; 2 Cor. 4:10-11.

B.　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 God-men, for the building up of His organic Body—Gal. 4:19; Eph. 4:12, 16.

C.　We must be those who live a crucified life continually by taking Christ's death as the mold of our life; it is only by this kind of corporate living that we can have the reality of the Body of Christ—Phil. 3:10; Rom. 12:5; 1 Cor. 2:2; 12:27.

D.　All the believers in Christ need to live a life crucified to the human life to live by the divine life that they may be the real God-men to be the expression of God in humanity with the divine attributes lived out from humanity, to be the reality of the Body of Christ, consummating in the New Jerusalem—Eph. 1:22-23; Rev. 21:2.