Lo, the central thought of God

Hymns, #972 is on the central thought of God. Stanza 1 says, "Lo, the central thought of God / Is that He be one with man; / He to man is everything / That He might fulfill His plan." Stanza 9 says, "God in man and man in God / Mutual dwelling thus possess; / God the content is to man, / And the man doth God express." Today God is in man, and man is in God. God and man thus possess a mutual dwelling. God is man's content, and man is God's expression.

God's desire was not merely to have a man as a living soul with a body of clay and a human spirit formed of God's breath. This cannot satisfy God, because the central thought of God is that He would be one with man (Hymns, #972). In the garden of Eden, God was still not one with Adam. God was God and Adam was Adam. In order to carry out His desire, God put man in front of two trees, one tree, the tree of life, symbolizing God Himself, and the other tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, being the embodiment of Satan. Then, God warned man to be careful about his eating. He 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. 2:16b-17). God's putting man in front of the two trees was a strong indication that God wanted man to take Him in by eating Him. If man would take God in, God would be life to man in his spirit. This was fulfilled in the New Testament. According to the New Testament, God came as the bread of life (John 6:35), good for us to eat. If we eat Him, we have the eternal life, the divine life, in our spirit. When we received the eternal life in our spirit, our spirit was regenerated, and we were born again. First, we were born of the flesh through our parents, but now we have been born of the Spirit in our spirit (3:6). Now we not only have God's life within us, but we are one with God. God can rejoice because He has come into man and become one with man.