In this New Year’s conference, we will have four meetings on God’s way in life. God’s life is our way. The Bible shows us clearly that God is life. God is the source of life. When we have God, we have life. This life is our way. On the other hand, without God, there is death. With death, we have no way to go on. Today, we are taking a way of life. This way is simply God Himself. With God there is life, and with life there is the way. Without God, there is no life, and without life, there is no way. Apart from God, everything is death, and death affords no way to go on.
The Bible reveals further that this God of life desires to join Himself to man and to be man’s life. For this reason, the Bible tells us that God loves the world. The love God has for the world is like the love a man has for a woman. It is not a general kind of love. Rather, it is a romantic love. God is in love with man in a romantic way. Perhaps some find it hard to compare God’s love to the love between a man and a woman. But according to the Bible, the love between a man and a woman is holy; it is ordained by God. The Bible compares God to a man and compares mankind to a woman. God loves us. He is loving us not only in a merciful way, but in a romantic way. God loves us in this way because He desires to join Himself to us. A man and a woman love each other with the purpose of being joined together. When two love each other very much, they are joined as one. Marriage is such a union. This is the way God loves us. He desires to be one with us and to be our life.
For this reason, God created man according to His image. It is wonderful that God did not create a pair of human beings; He created only one man, Adam. After Adam was created, though all the living creatures were brought before him, he did not find his match. He was a lonely man. Hence, the Bible says that “it is not good that the man should be alone’’ (Gen. 2:18). This signifies that it is not good for God to be alone. He does not want to dwell alone. Instead, He wants to join Himself to the man He created in His image. When God created man, He created only one man, Adam. Before God prepared a counterpart for Adam, He brought all the created beasts of the field and fowls of the air before him, and Adam gave names to each one of them. But he did not find his counterpart. He was still a lonely bachelor. God then caused Adam to go into a deep sleep, and He opened his side and took out a rib. From that rib God built a woman. Hence, man was created by God, whereas woman was built by God.
God brought the woman He had built unto Adam. When Adam saw her, he said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.’’ As a result, the two were joined as one flesh (Gen. 2:23-24). From that day on, Adam became Eve’s life, and Eve became Adam’s living. In human society, whether in the East or in the West, the female takes her name from the male; never does the male take his name from the female. This means that once a man and a woman are married, the man becomes the woman’s life, and the woman has the man as her living. After a girl is married, she can no longer live her maiden life. Instead, she must live her husband’s living. The wife has to take the husband as her life and her living.
First, God created Adam. Then He completed Adam’s marriage. Eve came out of Adam and had Adam for her life. Eve was also for Adam and had Adam as her living. This is a type. It signifies that God desires to be joined to the created man, to be man’s life, so that man can be His living. Brothers and sisters, from this we can see what kind of a living we Christians should have. We should have God’s living. We are human beings; yet we can have God’s living. For this reason, God came to be our life. This life is our way in everything. Do you want to submit to your husband? The way is to take God as your life. Do you want to love your wife? The way also is to take God as your life. Today, many are not living in a proper way. If we want to live as a proper man, there is no way other than through God’s life. Only when God is life in us can we be a proper man. God’s life is the way for us to live a proper human life.
Hence, God desires not only that we would have His image, but that we would take Him as life. For this reason, after God created man in His image, He put him before the tree of life, which is a symbol of Himself, and said, “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die’’ (Gen. 2:16-17). This is the beginning of the Bible. By the end of the New Testament, in Revelation the Lord Jesus said, “To him who overcomes, to him I will give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God’’ (Rev. 2:7b). Finally, in the holy city, the New Jerusalem, we have the tree of life spreading as a vine along the river of water of life for God’s people to receive and enjoy. This describes the God who loves us, who is joined to us, who has become our life and is giving us life, becoming our eternal and infinite supply of life. We have to receive Him again and again as our life, so that we can live Him as our living.
(God's Way in Life, Chapter 1, by Witness Lee)