Quote:
Originally Posted by Nell
Drake,
Please provide the quote (link) from Witness Lee’s written “ministry” confirming that these are Lee’s words and not your own rendition of what Lee taught.
Nell
|
1979 - Life Study of Galatians Message 20
"Some Christians oppose the use of the term God-men and even defame us for saying that the believers in Christ, the sons of God through faith in Christ, are God-men. But according to the Bible, it is a divine fact that the human beings can become sons of God. When we believed in Christ, the divine life with the divine nature--- in fact , the divine Being of the Triune God Himself-- entered into us, and we were born of God to become sons of God. Just as a man's son partakes of his life and nature, so we as God's sons partake of the divine life and nature. The offspring of a tiger is a tiger. In the same principle, God's offspring are His sons possessing the divine life and the divine nature.
Certain early church fathers went so far as to speak of the "deification" of the believers in Christ. We need to be careful in using such a term. To say that the believers are deified to become objects of worship is blasphemy. But it is correct to say that the believers are deified in the sense of possessing the divine life and the divine nature.
We may use the word deification in a limited sense to convey the fact that we have been born of God to become sons of God. Praise the Lord that God is our Father and that we are the same as He with respect to the divine life and nature! However, we emphatically state that we shall never be the same as God in the sense of deserving to be worshipped. It is blasphemy to claim that, as sons of God, we should be worshipped along with God. But it is not too much to say that because we are sons of God, we have the very life and nature of our Father. Far from being blasphemy, it is a glory to the Father to declare this fact."
1980 - Life Study of Philippians Message 46
"Because we have the divine life and divine nature, we can truly say that we are divine. However, this certainly does not mean that we are evolving into the Godhead or that we shall ever become God as an object of worship. Furthermore, this is not to teach pantheism or the deification of man. Nevertheless,
we may be bold to declare that as sons of God with the divine life and nature we are divine. Hallelujah, we are children of God with the divine life and divine nature!"
1984 - God's New Testament Economy Chapter 42
"The New Testament tells us that the Lord Jesus is God and the Son of God; also the Lord Jesus is man as well as the Son of Man. Some of the church fathers used the term deification to describe the fact that we have mingled with God and that we are partakers of God's life and nature.
When you use the word deified, though, if you mean that you have been made God in His Godhead to be an object of worship, this is heresy. On the other hand, if your denotation is that through regeneration you have received God's life and nature and that now you are a son of God, this is altogether safe and scriptural. We all have to admit and boast of the wonderful fact that we have been born of God. We have received His life and His nature, and we are now partakers of the divine nature, enjoying the divine nature daily. We and our God are mingled together as one entity."
Drake