In a series of messages published in the book Christ as the Reality to indicate the kind of humanity we should have, Brother Lee says,

Please do not misunderstand what I mean when I speak of the proper humanity. I realize that some may think that we must simply be human. So they say, “Let us be human. God does not want angels; He wants human beings. Let us go to the beach, engage in sports, and watch TV.” That may be human but not Jesusly human. We must be Jesusly human, not humanly human. I am not referring to our natural and fallen humanity. We should not bring anything natural into the realm of Jesus. We already have enough of this kind of humanity. We need another category of humanity—a new, holy human nature…Jesus perfected such a human nature, not in a natural way but in a divine way. It is humanity yet something divine. (The Collected Works of Witness Lee [CWWL], 1971, vol. 2, “Christ as the Reality,” pp. 96-97)

In 1984 Witness Lee presented his justification for inventing the term Jesusly human.

By His mercy, in the Holy Spirit and in our spirit we experience something that has never existed and been understood in human culture, so there has never been the kind of vocabulary to express this experience…In our fellowship concerning the vision of the Lord’s recovery of the church, I was forced to create the adjectives Christly and resurrectionly. I did the same thing in 1971 at Elden hall in Los Angeles, when I said that we need to be “Jesusly human.” If we say that we need to be human like Jesus, this is imitation. This kind of expression bears a wrong denotation. This is like saying that a monkey should be like a man. As a result, we invented the term Jesusly human. We needed a new adjective that did not exist in Webster’s dictionary or any other English dictionary. We should not say that such a term is wrong because no one has ever used it before. We must see that in any culture new words must be invented as the culture is progressing and new things are transpiring. (CWWL, 1984, vol. 2, “Elders’ Training, Book 3: The Way to Carry Out the Vision,” pp. 239-240)

The Lord’s human life on earth was lived by the divine life of the Father. His humanity was thoroughly mingled with divinity, and at the end of His human life, as He passed through death and resurrection, His humanity was uplifted and brought fully into divinity, in which He fully expresses God in glory. Through His process of death, resurrection, and ascension, He also defeated God’s enemy and was made Lord of all. His is genuine humanity; ours is at best a shadow. The difference is like that between growing living flowers compared to producing artificial flowers. We may be able to imitate His humanity in some respects, but this is just “an artificial flower,” sometimes difficult to distinguish from a real flower, but without organic substance.

In chapters four and five of Christ as the Reality, Witness Lee went on to show that the Lord’s humanity is typified by the meal offering in the Old Testament (Lev. 2:4). The meal offering was formed by the mingling of fine flour (signifying the Lord’s fine and balanced humanity) with oil (signifying the Holy Spirit) plus salt (signifying the death of Christ) and frankincense (signifying the Lord’s resurrection) but without leaven (signifying the sinful human life) and honey (signifying the natural human life).

His fine, balanced, uplifted humanity mingled with divinity is the means for us to become divine and human. Just as the meal offering was eaten by the priests to supply them for their service, the Lord charged the believers to eat His flesh and drink His blood so that they could have the divine, eternal, zoe life in themselves (John 6:53-57). However, Jesus was not talking about cannibalism. Eating His physical flesh and drinking His physical blood profits nothing; it is the Spirit who gives life (6:63). He was talking about Himself as the last Adam becoming the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45), changing His form so that He could impart the divine life. His humanity has been compounded into the Spirit of Jesus. By contacting Him as the life-giving Spirit, we receive the divine life so that we can express this life in and through our humanity, thus fulfilling God’s first purpose in creating man—to bear the image of God to express Him.

In chapters sixteen and seventeen of Christ as the Reality and in messages given immediately thereafter, Witness Lee went on to show how a Jesusly human humanity is also needed to defeat His enemy, thus exercising God’s dominion on the earth and bringing in His kingdom. God will not deal with His enemy directly. He will use a weaker, lower creature (man) to defeat and destroy His enemy. A Jesusly human humanity is needed to conduct spiritual warfare and defeat God’s enemy. The Lord Jesus defeated the enemy as a man. So also will we by partaking of the Lord’s proper humanity.

The Lord became flesh so that He might destroy the devil through His death in the flesh on the cross (John 1:14; 3:14; 12:31; Rom. 8:3). Unless we are Jesusly human, we will be defeated by Satan and will thereby lose the ground to fight against him.

The proper humanity is the ground upon which we fight the spiritual warfare against Satan. We must be Jesusly human in order to have a strong standing before God’s enemy. Satan is afraid of those who are proper in their humanity, those who stand on the ground of the humanity of Jesus in their daily life. (CWWL, 1971, vol. 2, “Enjoying Christ as the Reality of the Offerings for the Church Life,” p. 255)

In 1979 in the Life-study of Exodus, Witness Lee also indicated that Jesusly human humanity is needed for God’s building. This humanity is corporate, built together for God’s house. God’s building is typified by the tabernacle that was made of boards of acacia wood overlaid with gold (Exo. 26:15, 29). We can participate in God’s building by experiencing the Lord’s humanity in the Spirit.

Through regeneration we have the uplifted humanity of Jesus. One of our hymns speaks of being “Jesusly human” [Hymns, #1146]. Because we have the uplifted humanity of Jesus, others may find it difficult to understand us. On the one hand, we seem to be ordinary human beings; on the other hand, we are different from others because we have the divine life and the divine nature. The divine nature is expressed in our humanity. This is typified by the gold overlaying the acacia wood. (p. 1133)

Inside the tabernacle you do not see wood but gold. Furthermore, it is through the gold that the boards are connected to and contact each other, indicating that their oneness is in the divine life and nature.

As boards, our standing power is the acacia wood. We stand because we have a regenerated and uplifted humanity. However, we do not express this humanity. Instead, we express divinity. Thus, gold is the church’s expression. (p. 1135)

In 1980 Witness Lee also spoke of living a Jesusly human life under the worst social system—slavery during the time of the Roman Empire. In the midst of such a situation, the believers had an opportunity to express a Jesusly human living.

Paul did not touch this social system in the way of trying to reform it. On the contrary, on the one hand, he instructed the slaves to live a Jesusly human life under this social system; on the other hand, he illustrated how both slaves and masters are brothers in the Lord and, as members of the new man, share the same status. (Life-study of Philemon, p. 11)

In 1984 Witness Lee indicated that the Lord trained and tested the disciples for 40 days after His resurrection and before His public ascension to realize what had transpired in their being through the Lord’s resurrection and His breathing Himself into them as the Holy Spirit (John 20:22).

He trained them to know that He had become them, that He had entered into them, and that He had brought them into Him. He also trained them to realize that He was in the Father, that they were in Him, and that He was in them (John 14:20). Ultimately, this kind of training was to help the disciples realize that they were mingled with the Triune God, that they were no longer merely human but divinely human, even “Jesusly human.” (CWWL, 1984, vol. 3, “God’s New Testament Economy,” p. 184)

Finally, in 1993 in The Spirit with Our Spirit, Witness Lee demonstrated that the Christian life is a matter of two spirits—the divine Spirit and the human spirit. He hearkened back to the time when he coined the term Jesusly human in 1971, acknowledging his debt to Andrew Murray’s book The Spirit of Christ in the chapter “The Spirit of the Glorified Jesus,” which pointed out that the Spirit today has not only the divine element but also the human element. This Spirit also has the elements of Christ’s death and resurrection compounded into it, as typified by the compound ointment that anointed the tabernacle, its furnishings, and the priests (Exo. 30:22-31). Through experiencing and enjoying this Spirit we have the means to be Jesusly human.

To be Jesusly human is not to have divinity mingled with our natural humanity but to have the divinity of Christ mingled with His humanity compounded in the Spirit to become our spiritual food and drink so that our humanity can be transformed, making our humanity Jesusly human. By living a Jesusly human life we express God, represent Him corporately, and defeat His enemy, thus fulfilling God’s intention in creating us. We also have the proper humanity to be His dwelling place on earth. This Jesusly human humanity also enables us to live on earth regardless of the condition of human society (even under the worst social conditions). The disciples were trained by the Lord to live a Jesusly human life based on His pattern of one who lived a life that denied the self and the natural life to live by another life, the divine life. Likewise, we need to be trained to live such a life. If we want to live a Jesusly human life, we need to live a life of two spirits mingled as one—the Spirit (compounded with the elements of the Lord’s divinity, humanity, death, and resurrection) with our spirit.