Becoming God in Life and Nature: Watchman Nee and Witness Lee on Sanctification, Union with Christ, and Deification

Abstract

This article examines the theological trajectories of Watchman Nee (1903–1972) and Witness Lee (1905–1997) on sanctification, union with Christ, and deification, situating their contributions within recent reappraisals of the doctrine of theosis in the academy. Though deification was universally affirmed by the early church and retained in various forms in medieval and early Protestant theology, post-Reformation Western Christianity marginalized this theme in favor of juridical and forensic soteriological categories. Against this backdrop, Nee and Lee offer a theologically rich, biblically grounded, and experientially oriented articulation of deification that warrants greater scholarly attention. Drawing from the Keswick Holiness tradition, patristic sources, and Christian mysticism, Nee developed a soteriology that integrates justification, sanctification, and glorification within an organic model of progressive union with God. Though he does not explicitly use the term “deification”, the language he employs regarding union and participation closely mirrors classical expressions of Christian theosis. For Nee, sanctification is not merely moral improvement but the transformative increase of the divine life, culminating in conformity to Christ’s image. Lee builds upon and expands Nee’s participatory soteriology into a comprehensive theology of deification, explicitly referring to it as “the high peak of the divine revelation” in the Holy Scriptures. For Lee, humans become God “in life and nature but not in the Godhead”. By employing the phrase “not in the Godhead”, Lee upholds the Creator–creature distinction—i.e., humans never participate in the ontological Trinity or God’s incommunicable attributes. Yet, in the first portion of his description, he affirms that human beings undergo an organic, transformative process by which they become God in deeply significant ways. His framework structures sanctification as a seven-stage process, culminating in the believer’s transformation and incorporation into the Body of Christ to become a constituent of a corporate God-man. This corporate dimension—often overlooked in Western accounts—lies at the heart of Lee’s ecclesiology, which he sees as being consummated in the eschatological New Jerusalem. Ultimately, this study argues that Nee and Lee provide a coherent, non-speculative model of deification that integrates biblical exegesis, theological tradition, and practical spirituality, and thus, present a compelling alternative to individualistic and forensic soteriologies while also highlighting the need for deeper engagement across global theological discourse on sanctification, union with Christ, and the Triune God.

1. Introduction

Two millennia of Christian reflection have yielded a diverse spectrum of conceptions regarding the nature and goal of Christian salvation. Among the more historically pervasive but often underappreciated salvific models—especially in ecclesial orientations outside of Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism—is deification, which, broadly construed, refers to a Christian’s transformative participation in the divine life to the extent that they become God, gods, or in some sense divine. The doctrine of deification was universally affirmed by the early church—so much so that it was utilized as evidence in support of the genuine deity of the Son and the Spirit during the first four ecumenical councils.1 Thinkers in the medieval and early Reformation years—while varying in linguistic terminology, conceptual categories, and theological emphasis—largely retained some version of this transformative soteriological outlook. And of course, all the individuals examined in this Special Issue of Religions articulate some version of salvation understood as a participatory ascent toward union with and participation in God. In the face of this univocal historical witness, however, post-Reformation Protestants shaped by Enlightenment ideals of rationality and logic set aside the doctrine of deification in favor of prioritizing forensic categories, deeming the latter to be entirely too mystical for their sensibilities.2 As a result, the doctrine of deification fell into relative obscurity within the Western academy for the ensuing centuries.

Today, this situation no longer exists. A wave of scholarship in recent decades has reopened theological space for deification to be re-examined in the works of a host of prominent Christian thinkers.3 At the forefront of this retrieval was Tuomo Mannermaa’s Finnish interpretation of Martin Luther—a provocative re-reading of the mercurial monk’s doctrine of justification through the lens of the believers’ ontological participation in and union with Christ. What began as a movement within Lutheran–Orthodox ecumenical dialogues has since catalyzed a broader reassessment of Reformation theology. Parallel developments in Orthodox-Reformed, Baptist-Orthodox, and Methodist–Orthodox dialogues have contributed to a fresh recognition that biblical soteriology encompasses more than juridical metaphors—it includes union with Christ and participation in the life of God (Mosser 2021; Simu 2021; Rakestraw 1997). Consequently, scholars have demonstrated how themes of union and participation can be understood as in terms of deification in a host of significant Protestant thinkers—John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, Peter Martyr Vermigli, Richard Hooker, John Owen, John and Charles Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, Herman Bavinck, C. S. Lewis, T. F. Torrance, Karl Barth, and Robert Jenson being among them.4 In other words, scholars have demonstrated that key Protestant thinkers—though employing different verbiage ranging from union with Christ to participation in divine life—have articulated doctrines of salvation that embody core features of deification. Far from being foreign to Protestant thought, deification is central—albeit often implicitly—in the soteriological and mystical writings of key figures across centuries and traditions.

It is against this backdrop that the contributions of Watchman Nee (1903–1972) and Witness Lee (1905–1997) deserve careful consideration. Though largely unknown within the Western academy, both figures have been maligned—and in multiple cases, grossly misrepresented—in lay-level apologetic and countercult circles due to various factors, including their expansive soteriological vision. Both Nee and Lee articulated a theology of sanctification that integrates the themes of union with Christ and deification in robust and compelling ways that were materially different from traditional forensic and juridical categories common both to 20th-century Chinese Christianity and American Evangelicalism. Nee and Lee, drawing from a wide spectrum of Christian sources, including the Keswick Holiness tradition, patristic theology, and Christian mysticism, recovered and advanced an organic model of salvation in which union with Christ and progressive sanctification result in believers genuinely participating in God’s life and nature. Their insightful articulation of transformative participation in God, which occurs on both an individual and corporate level, provides a much-needed corrective to overly rehearsed debates of the past half-millennium surrounding forensic, juridical soteriological categories. Moreover, because Nee and Lee emphasize not only the individual believer’s salvific transformation but also the church’s corporate participation in the Triune God, their theological outlook is a valuable resource within Evangelical theology, which tends to be overly individualistic in its variegated expressions. For these reasons, among others, Nee’s and Lee’s understanding of deification addresses various lacunae related to soteriology within Western Christendom.

The article thus proceeds in the following manner. First, we offer a brief biographical introduction to Watchman Nee for readers unfamiliar with his corpus. Thereafter, we examine how the themes of sanctification and union with Christ function as a formative core within his intellectual topography. The second half of the article shifts focus squarely to Witness Lee, who develops and builds upon Nee’s soteriology to arrive at a fully formed articulation of deification. Ultimately, the totality of Nee’s and Lee’s soteriology, we suggest, is a theologically robust and biblically grounded account of deification as the telos of sanctification. Particularly noteworthy, as discussed below, is Lee’s insistence that believers become partakers of God’s life and nature, though not of His Godhead—a formulation that preserves the Creator–creature distinction while affirming the doctrine of deification.

2. Brief Biographical Sketch of Watchman Nee

Born to Methodist parents in 1903 and educated in an Anglican college in Foochow, China, Nee experienced a dynamic conversion in 1920 at age 17 through the preaching of evangelist Dora Yu (1873–1931) and dedicated his life to Christ. He later became a prominent church leader, raising up over 400 local churches in the country before the 1949 Communist revolution (Lee 1991).5 His theological development was further shaped by English missionary Margaret Barber (1866–1930), who introduced him to Western spiritual traditions, including the Plymouth Brethren and other dispensationalists, key figures associated with the Holiness movement, and ‘inner-life’ mystics such as Jessie Penn-Lewis and Jeanne Guyon (Wu 2012). Through early interactions with missionaries and evangelists such as Margaret Barber and Dora Yu—both closely connected to the Keswick speakers—Nee was also deeply inspired by Keswick writings,6 especially those written by Andrew Murray and F. B. Meyer (Wu 2012).

3. From Keswickian Sanctification to Deification

In the early years of his ministry, Nee’s understanding of sanctification largely followed a threefold trajectory common to many Christian traditions: (1) believers are positionally sanctified in Christ through His blood (Heb 10:10, 14; 13:12); (2) they are being experientially sanctified in their disposition by the Spirit through God’s Word, and thus, progressively approach a sinless life (John 17:17–19); and (3) the final stage of their sanctification occurs at Christ’s second coming (1 Thess 5:23) (Nee 1992–1994, vol. 2). Concerning the first two points, it is crucial to underscore that Nee contends that two types of sanctification exist: positional sanctification, which refers to the change in position of believers from the authority of Satan to the kingdom of God, and dispositional sanctification, which refers to the imbuing of holiness within believers. Both positional and dispositional sanctification are actuated by faith; dispositional sanctification is lifelong, refers to the experiential sanctification of believers in their daily lives, and is grounded in the divine reality of what God has already accomplished on their behalf positionally. Despite dispositional sanctification requiring the cooperation of believers, both aspects of sanctification, according to Nee, are ultimately completed by God on behalf of believers by virtue of their uniting faith with Christ (Nee 1992–1994, vol. 1).

In the 1930s, Nee began incorporating various elements of the Keswick model of sanctification into his broader vision of victorious Christian living. This influence is evident in his writings of the time period, many of which emphasize sanctification by faith, the Spirit-filled life, and the overcoming Christian experience. Additionally, throughout his corpus, Nee consistently highlights the Spirit’s sanctifying work in salvation—a notion rooted in Keswickian theology that can also be traced back to various strands of Protestant mystical traditions and Pietism (Scorgie 2020).7 Another aspect of Keswick’s theology that Nee inherited was the understanding that sanctification is inextricably linked to the divine life (zōē). Where Nee differed from many of his contemporaries, however, was that he did not view this relationship primarily as a doctrinal matter; rather, he endeavored to speak about the Spirit’s salvific work in a manner that would practically and experientially impact the spiritual lives of his readers.

Nee also incorporated an expansive understanding of salvation as union with God within his theological framework. On Nee’s trichotomist anthropological account, union with God is a holistic reality that encompasses three stages corresponding to humankind’s three parts (i.e., spirit, soul, and body): (1) justification and regeneration as union, related to the human spirit, (2) sanctification as union, related to the human soul, and (3) glorification as union, related to the human body. All three stages of union with God, per Nee, are dependent upon grace (Nee 1992–1994, vol. 36). Justification and regeneration are monergistic acts: justification alters a sinner’s status to be deemed righteous, while regeneration initiates a life-union between a believer’s spirit and the Holy Spirit by virtue of the impartation of the divine life.

The divine life, for Nee, is the foundation of the believer’s progressive sanctification—a synergistic process whereby believers cooperate with God so that their soul (which Nee defines as being composed of the mind, emotion, and will) is transformed to increasingly match Christ’s (Chow 2013). The deepening of this union results in the increasing alignment of human and divine wills (Nee 1992–1994, vol. 14). Glorification, which involves the sealing Spirit (Eph 1:13), transforms believers’ physical bodies instantaneously to match Christ’s resurrected body (Eph 4:30; Phil 3:21).

The Keswick model of sanctification aims to mediate between two perceived theological extremes concerning the growth in holiness within believers by addressing the gap between what is considered to be a victorious Christian life (which Nee argues is “normal”) and the Christian life that is continuously marked by struggling with sin and failure (which Nee considers to be the “average” experience of Christians) (McQuilkin 1987). For Nee, the “normal” Christian life is encapsulated in Paul’s words, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20).8 However, this “normal” Christian life can only be lived by the Son of God, Christ; it is impossible for humans to strive to live as such in their flesh or natural lives. This is not a problem for Nee, however, because the same Christ who lived the “normal” Christian life during His earthly life is resurrected and now living in His believers.9 In other words, no one except Christ can live the life that the Bible calls Christians to live; the risen Christ as the believer’s indwelling life, however, enables believers to do what they once could never do. As they experience Christ’s overcoming, holy, and victorious life individually, they, together with other believers undergoing the same process, become a corporate testimony of God’s salvific work. This expansive view of sanctification, including its corporate dimensions, is more fully developed in Lee’s theological vision of deification.

To be sure, Nee never explicitly uses the term “deification” in his writings. Yet, the concept permeates his entire corpus, especially when discussing “union [with God/Christ]”.10 For example, Nee draws from Jeanne Guyon’s mystical expression of “being lost in God” to state that “[t]he goal of life is to bring God into man so that man may become lost in God. In this way, God and man, man and God, become perfectly one” (Nee 1992–1994, vol. 55, p. 47). Elsewhere, he describes salvation as conformity to Christ’s image through participation in God’s life and nature that results in a complete and perfect union with Him. Notably, the Spirit actualizes this union, transforming believers to align with Christ in life and nature.11

In his most famous publication, The Normal Christian Life, Nee notes that Christ, as the only begotten Son of God, shares the same substance with the Father. He goes on to argue that through regeneration, believers are truly born of God (indeed, they are reborn), receive His life, and genuinely become “partakers of the divine nature” (John 1:12–13; 2 Pet 1:4).12 This regenerative act for Nee transforms fallen sinners into sons of God, brothers of Christ, and ultimately secures their progressively intimate union with Christ as the firstborn Son of God (Rom 8:29).13 It is this impartation of God’s life and nature, Nee avers, that enables believers to live holy lives, or in the verbiage of our earlier discussion, to be sanctified—not by their own self-effort or moral improvement but by the increase in divine life within them.14

In addition to his spoken messages and treatises, Nee was an avid hymn writer. In one of his hymns entitled “Oh, Jesus, Lord, when Thou on earth”, he poetically articulates several key components of his understanding of sanctification, including the Spirit’s role in securing the union between believers with Christ, the Spirit’s economic identification with the resurrected Christ,15 and the Spirit’s indwelling of believers leading to the renewing of their minds, the revelation of God’s knowledge,16 and ultimately, the glorification of their bodies:

• Thy Spirit, Lord, in mine, I pray,
• O’erflow my being as a flood,
• That every part with glory shine
• And everywhere be Thee and God.
• 9 How close we are in such a life,
• In one is blended earth with heav’n;
• Thy presence sweetly fills our souls;
• Our hearts are to Thy praises giv’n.

In sum, Nee conceived of salvation both as progressive sanctification, as an ever-deepening union with Christ and as a transformative participation in God’s life and nature. Ultimately, the telos of salvation is for believers to live the life Christ lived and share in divine glory.17 This, for Nee, is the “normal” Christian life. Because Nee frames sanctification as inextricably linked to the indwelling Christ, who alone is uniquely able to live this life—encapsulated according to Nee in Paul’s statement “no longer I… but Christ”—it is perhaps most apropos to call Nee’s concept of sanctification “Christification”. This term, later used by Lee, captures the totality of Christian salvation: a transformative sanctification predicated upon increasing union with God that involves continual participation in the divine life and nature as well as in Christ’s human living, death, resurrection, and ascension.18 With this overview in place, we now turn to examine how Lee developed Nee’s participatory soteriology into a full-fledged understanding of deification.

4. Introducing Witness Lee

Born in northern China in 1905, Lee was raised in a Christian household. His mother, a third-generation Southern Baptist, played a significant role in his upbringing and afforded him the opportunity to attend both a Southern Baptist Chinese elementary school and the Presbyterian English Mission College in Chefoo. At the age of 19, Lee experienced a personal conversion after attending a gospel meeting preached by Peace Wang (1899–1971) (Lee 1991). His early adult years were spent among the Brethren Assemblies (Benjamin Newton branch) before moving to Shanghai in 1934 to work with Nee. Lee then served as editor of one of Nee’s periodicals, The Christian, for six years (1934–1940) while traveling to establish local churches. By 1949, Nee and Lee had established more than 400 congregations in 30 provinces across China.

In 1949, Nee implored Lee to leave China due to rising political uncertainties. This proved prescient, as Nee and other church leaders were arrested by the new ruling regime only three years later. Between 1949 and 1962, Lee established hundreds of local churches in Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Japan, and Korea. Thereafter, he moved to California, founded a publishing house, Living Stream Ministry, established churches on six continents, completed a commentary series of the 66 books of Scripture entitled The Life-Study of the Bible (LS), and published a series of messages outlining his theological outlook entitled The Conclusion of the New Testament (CNT). He passed away in 1997 at the age of 91. Today, an estimated 1.5–2 million Christians meet in churches directly established by Nee and Lee’s ministry, and tens of millions of believers in underground Chinese churches continue to be formatively shaped by their writings.

A significant result of Lee’s six decades of ministry is a voluminous corpus. The Collected Works of Witness Lee (CWWL) comprises 139 volumes containing over 78,000 pages.19 Recently, the entirety of Lee’s corpus was digitized and made accessible via an online subscription service, offering an unprecedented ability to comprehensively examine his theological outlook. With this in mind, our present investigation is merely illustrative, not exhaustive, of Lee’s theological outlook, and more specifically, limited only to how the themes of sanctification, union, and deification function in his writings.

5. Sanctification as the Holding Line of God’s Economy

While Nee’s theology of sanctification is foundational to the soteriology of millions of Christians associated with Chinese underground house churches, it was Witness Lee who most explicitly developed Nee’s doctrine into a progressive and comprehensive theological framework. Building on Nee’s theological outlook, Lee identifies three aspects of the Spirit’s sanctifying work in Scripture: (1) sanctification in seeking God’s chosen people even before their repentance (1 Pet 1:2; cf. Luke 15:8–10; John 16:8); (2) positional sanctification through the blood of Christ at the time of their believing (Heb 13:12; 9:13–14; 10:29); and (3) dispositional sanctification throughout the believer’s Christian life following regeneration (Rom 15:16b; 6:19, 22). Of these, Lee emphasizes that the Spirit’s essential work is focused on the dispositional aspect (Lee 2004–2020, vol. 126).

For Lee, sanctification is not an isolated doctrinal category but the “holding line in the carrying out of the divine economy” (Lee 2004–2020, vol. 126, p. 219). Here, clarification regarding Lee’s metaphor of a “holding line” is warranted: per Lee, “When a person goes fishing, he needs a line. That is the holding line for his fishing. The line holds his fish. In other words, the line directs his fishing. We say that sanctification is the holding line because every step of God’s economy in His work with us is to make us holy” (Lee 2004–2020, vol. 126, p. 219) In other words, sanctification, according to Lee, structures the entire salvific process of believers—both objective aspects such as judicial redemption, and organic aspects, spanning from regeneration at the moment of personal repentance to the eschatological glorification of their mortal bodies. This expansive and holistic understanding of sanctification provides the theological scaffolding for Lee’s portrayal of deification and serves as the telic thread connecting every soteriological event/step—seeking, redemption, regeneration, renewing, transformation, conformation, and glorification.

Sanctification, according to Lee, is a progressive process of being infused with the divine essence. He writes:

If you are holy, you must have the holy essence, and the holy essence in the whole universe is God Himself.

(Lee 2004–2020, vol. 126, p. 219)

This statement signals a unique theological emphasis within his intellectual topography. Unlike earlier Protestant approaches to sanctification that emphasize moral development or forensic righteousness, Lee situates sanctification within an ontological participation in the life and nature of God—a process he refers to as being “sonized”—through which a believer grows unto full sonship, the destiny God marked out in eternity past for those He predestinated (Eph 1:4–5):

In regeneration we were sonized, but that sonizing is just a start, an initiation. After being regenerated we need to grow to reach maturity. We become mature when our soul is fully sonized. Eventually, our body, which is still full of weakness, sickness, lust, and sinfulness, will be transfigured, glorified in full.

(Lee 2004–2020, vol. 126, p. 222)

This transformative process, comprised seven stages, is detailed in Lee’s volume The Spirit with our Spirit (Lee 2004–2020, vol. 126):

• Seeking Sanctification—the believer’s initial sanctification resulting in their repentance;
• Redeeming Sanctification—a positional shift from Adam to Christ via the blood of Christ;
• Regenerating Sanctification—the beginning of dispositional sanctification which makes sinners into sons of God;
• Renewing Sanctification—the transformation of the soul, beginning with the mind, to make believers’ souls part of God’s new creation;
• Transforming Sanctification—a daily metabolic reconstitution with the divine element to make believers into constituents of the Body of Christ;
• Conforming Sanctification—a stage when believers are shaped into the image of Christ;
• Glorifying Sanctification—the consummation of sanctification, i.e., bodily transfiguration.

Each step progressively brings believers into a deeper union, mingling, and incorporation with the Triune God.20 Especially notable is Lee’s identification of transformation as a “metabolic” process—a term he uses to convey the notion of the divine life spreading and maturing within believers to progressively and spontaneously restructure their inward constitution. For Lee, transformation underscores the organic, rather than forensic or juridical, character of believers’ salvation.

As previously noted, Lee’s description of sanctification, especially in his mature ministry, is repeatedly bound up with his articulation of deification. Sanctification is not merely being set apart for divine purposes—it is a genuine transformation into the “same image” as the Lord (2 Cor 3:18) and the “image of the Firstborn Son of God” (Rom 8:29); regeneration is the initiation of this process, and glorification is its consummation.

In brief, Lee’s understanding of sanctification as the holding line of God’s economy does not merely structure his theological outlook in a general sense; it formatively shapes his doctrine of deification in a specific sense. The stages of sanctification are not steps toward ethical maturity or outward mimesis; they are phases of ontological significance that ultimately enable believers to participate in the divine life. In other words, for Lee, sanctification—a metabolic process accomplished by the spreading of the divine life within believers—is actually the mechanism actuating the deification of believers. Believers are progressively constituted with God’s life and nature—a process that does not erase their creaturely identity, but fulfills God’s eternal intention to obtain a corporate expression of Himself through the aggregate of sanctified human beings.

6. Attempts at Defining Deification

The concept of deification has been defined in various ways across Christian traditions. One of the earliest definitions comes from Pseudo-Dionysius, who states that it is “the attaining of likeness to God and union with him so far as possible” (Russell 2004, p. 248). This brief statement, while doing little to explicate crucial dimensions of the doctrine, is significant in its early attempt to describe deification beyond patristic thinkers such as Irenaeus and Athanasius, who employed their famed “exchange formulas”.21 Later thinkers, including those situated within Christian mystical traditions or broader Protestantism, often chose to describe deification through less provocative lenses of union with Christ or participation in God. In more recent years, scholars have promulgated vastly differing typologies of the doctrine, ranging from nominal deification to versions of that exceed the boundaries of Christian orthodoxy (Russell 2004; Blackwell 2016; Popov 2011; Borysov 2019; Fairbairn 2007). Surveying three leading typologies of deification developed in contemporary scholarship—those proposed by Norman Russell, Gösta Hallonsten, and Paul Gavrilyuk—Daniel Keating concludes that such comparative studies illuminate the multifaceted meanings of deification across historical periods, theological traditions, and interpretive contexts; hence, he advocates for integration to enrich the contemporary relevance of Christian faith and living today (Keating 2015). Particularly, Keating highlights a central point of consensus in scriptural, orthodox conceptions of the doctrine: a preservation of the Creator-creature distinction and the genuine relationship in which the divine life and divine qualities are genuinely imparted to the creature (ibid.). Lee affirms these two points throughout his corpus. Nevertheless, given the wide variance of how deification can be articulated it is important to clearly outline Lee’s understanding of deification, beginning with what it does not entail.

7. What Deification Is Not

Situated within Lee’s commitment to orthodox Trinitarianism (Reardon and Chiu 2025a), Lee firmly rejects any notion—such as those embedded within ancient Greco-Roman or present-day Eastern mystical traditions—that deification invites human beings into the Godhead. For Lee, deification never effects “any essential change in the Godhead, in the eternal, immutable, triune being of the one true and unique God” (Kangas 2002, p. 3). Even at the height of their sanctification, believers remain creatures. They are never elevated to become objects of worship, nor does their transformation in any way alter the immanent Trinity, that is, the eternal, unchangeable Triune God. Lee’s circumscription of deification, “not in the Godhead”, echoes both the Palamite position advanced within Eastern Orthodoxy—believers may share in God’s energies, but not His essence—and the position articulated by some Western theologians, who, intending to preserve divine simplicity, argue that we partake of God’s essence without comprehending His essence. Whether speaking of Lee, the Greek East, or the Latin West, the key issue affirmed by all parties, as Keating notes above, is that an orthodox understanding of deification must affirm that God withholds some aspects of Godself from human participation, both presently and eschatologically.

Though sometimes employing different terminology, Lee also contends that human beings will never participate in God’s incommunicable attributes (transcendence, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, self-existence, the ability to create ex nihilo, etc.) (Robichaux 2002). Furthermore, Christian deification is not initiated by human effort nor can it ever originate with human desire; it is only possible because God acted first via the incarnation to make Him accessible for us to partake of. (2 Cor 5:21; 8:9).22 Lastly, though human beings are created in imago Dei—and thus, a close relationship exists between them and God—they do not possess any element of divinity in their created nature, despite what early Platonists or modern-day “New Age” practitioners propose. Rather, believers “participate” in the unique God by grace, become “God-men” through God’s life and nature, and remain forever distinct from God in His Godhead.

8. What Deification Is

Over the six decades of his ministry, Lee regularly spoke of individual sanctification in terms of “union/mingling” [with Christ], while also employing other significant participatory terms and suggestive metaphors.23 In the final years of his ministry, however, he explicitly articulated an expansive doctrine of deification which he often referred to as “the high peak of the divine revelation”:

We want to see the practical way to live a life according to the high peak of the divine revelation, which is not out of man’s imagination but in the Holy Scriptures. This high peak is that God became man that man may become God in life and nature but not in the Godhead.

(Lee 2004–2020, vol. 128, p. 51)

But now in the New Testament age, the time has come in which God would go further and deeper to make man absolutely one with Him, to make man Him and to make Him man. Athanasius, who was one of the church fathers, said concerning Christ, “He was made man that we might be made God”. This means that we are made God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead.

(Lee 2004–2020, vol. 126, p. 126)

We become the same as God and Christ in life, nature, expression, and function, but not in the Godhead. To say that we are the same as God in His Godhead is a great blasphemy, but to say that we cannot be the same as God in life, nature, expression, and function is unbelief. The Bible tells us again and again that God wants to be one with us and to make us one with Him. This is God’s intention.

(Lee 2010b, p. 4373)

In the chapter entitled “The God-Men’s Divine Right to Participate in God’s Divinity”, Lee further articulates the contours and content of his understanding of deification by listing ten items that he posits all regenerated believers participate in (Lee 2004–2020, vol. 130, pp. 213–19):

• God’s life (John 3:15; Col. 3:4)—that is, the eternal life of God, through regeneration by their believing in Jesus.
• God’s nature (Eph. 1:4; 2 Pet. 1:4)—that is, to be “sanctified, separated unto God”, and even to be “saturated and permeated with His holy nature”.
• God’s mind (Eph. 4:23; Phil. 2:5)—to allow the “divine mind” to penetrate and saturate the believer’s mind.
• God’s being (2 Cor. 3:18b; Eph. 3:8)—to be transformed by virtue of having God’s unsearchable riches dispensed unto them.
• God’s image (2 Cor. 3:18a; Rom. 8:29)—by virtue of their spiritual transformation, an organic and metabolic process, to conform to the resurrected and glorified Christ.
• God’s glory (v. 30; Heb. 2:10)—to have their bodies eventually saturated by the divine glory at Christ’s return.
• God’s sonship (Eph. 1:5; Rom. 8:23)—to truly become sons of God, an identity and organic reality that far transcends juridical and/or forensic notions of adoption.
• God’s manifestation (v. 19)—to participate in the manifestation that one day God will be manifested with His many sons to the entire cosmos.
• God’s likeness (1 John 3:2)—to bear God’s likeness, which is their “great blessing and enjoyment”.
• Being Godkind–God’s species (John 1:12; Rom. 8:14, 16)—Ultimately, regenerated humans truly possess God’s life and are thereby God-men.24

Again, we see that deification for Lee is not predicated upon legal adoption or moral transformation. It is genuine participation in God’s divinity that empowers Christians to re-narrate Christ’s life on earth, and in a real sense, become an extension of Christ’s incarnation on the earth today—a portrayal of the ‘lived experience’ of deification that he refers to as the “God-man living” (Reardon and Chiu 2025b).

9. Ecclesial Deification

As noted at the outset of this article, Lee’s understanding of deification is an especially helpful corrective to recent investigations into the doctrine due to his prioritization of the corporate, as opposed to individualistic, nature of theosis.25 For Lee, the deifying union, mingling, and incorporation of believers with the Triune God results in them being built up together to form a corporate God-man entity—that is, the “Body of Christ”26 or the “new man”. Though he often employs these terms interchangeably (Lee 2010a), there exists a subtle distinction: when he uses the term “Body of Christ”, he emphasizes the notion of the church taking Christ as her life, whereas when he employs “the one new man”, he emphasizes the church taking Christ as her person. A third term, “the universal man”, occasionally accompanies these synonymous identities. According to Lee,

The church is the Body of Christ, who is the Son of God. Just as a person’s body is the enlargement of a person, the church as the Body of the Son of God is the enlargement of the Son of God. The church and Christ, the Son of God, form a new man, a complete universal man.

(Lee 2004–2020, vol. 88, p. 324)

Whatever specific term Lee employs to describe this ecclesial reality—the Body of Christ, the (one) new man, or the universal man—the implications in relation to his understanding of deification are the same: through each believer’s individual sanctification, they become so intimately related to one another that they collectively form a single deified entity. Concerning this, Lee states,

We need to realize that Satan hates the high peak of the divine revelation concerning the ultimate goal of God’s economy. He hates this one main point—that God became a man so that man may become God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead to produce the organic Body of Christ for the fulfillment of God’s economy to close this age and to bring Christ back to set up His kingdom.

(Lee 2004–2020, vol. 127, p. 359)

God’s New Testament economy is to make the believers God-men for the constitution of the Body of Christ so that the New Jerusalem may be consummated as the eternal enlargement and expression of the processed and consummated Triune God (Gal. 3:26; 4:7, 26, 31)…For us to be deified means that we are being constituted with the processed and consummated Triune God so that we may be made God in life and in nature to be His corporate expression for eternity (Rev. 21:11). The New Jerusalem is built by God’s constituting Himself into man to make man the same as God in life, nature, and constitution so that God and man may become a corporate entity.

(Lee 2010b, p. 4362)

Although not explicit in the above passages, Lee elsewhere argues that the church’s identity as the Body of Christ exceeds the reality inherent to the physical world—the latter is reduced to a metaphor of the former:

When I was young, I was instructed that the term the Body of Christ was merely a metaphor signifying what the church is to Christ. I accepted this teaching at that time, but gradually, after many years, I found out that the Body of Christ is not a metaphor; it is a great reality in the universe. Rather, our physical body is a metaphor portraying the Body of Christ.

(Lee 2004–2020, vol. 125, p. 484)

This is an important feature of Lee’s thinking: Christ is the uniquely “real” Person in the universe.27 Thus, it is only by virtue of the believers comprising the church being constituted with Christ that they become members of a corporate, deified identity surpassing anything found in the physical universe, inclusive of the analogous human body.

Despite the church’s ontological supra-realness, Lee notes at least two significant differences between Christ as the Head and Christ as the Body. First, identifying the believers as members of the Body of Christ, and even as Christ, does not entail that they corporately become an object of worship:

The Lord Jesus is the Head, and He is also the Body. We cannot say, however, that we are the Body and also the Head. We can be only the Body and cannot be the Head, but the Lord Jesus can be both the Head and the Body. In Himself, He is the Head, and in us collectively, He is the Body. The Head is individual, while the Body is corporate. Both are Christ…We worship God in His Godhead; we do not worship those who have His divine nature…As I have said, Christ is the Head and the Body, but we are the Body and cannot be the Head; the Head is a matter related to the Godhead.

(Lee 2004–2020, vol. 79, pp. 295–301)

Second, Lee argues that Christ, as the Head of the Body, is perfect and does not need to grow. However, believers, in their corporate identity as Christ, are simultaneously Christ here and now and progressively manifesting Christ in greater measure. Consider the following two passages:

Christ as life is the essence of the Body as an organic entity. This organism is not for organization; it is for a living that expresses Christ. Christ is the essence of His Body and His Body is an organic entity which lives, grows, and matures with Himself until it eventually expresses Him. In [1 Corinthians] 12:12–27 the main thought is not activity or enterprise. It is that the Body is an organism to live, grow, mature, and express Christ as the inward essence.

(Lee 1984, pp. 555–56)

God’s growth in us is unto our maturity in the divine life ([Col.] 1:28; Eph. 4:13b). As we are growing, we are maturing until we reach the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (v. 13c). The fullness of Christ is the organic Body of Christ (1:23); thus, the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ is the measure of the stature of the Body of Christ. Christ fills all in all, and He needs a great Body as His fullness. The Body of Christ, which is His expression, has a stature, and this stature has a measure. The church grows with the growth of God until it reaches maturity. When it reaches maturity, it arrives at the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (4:13). By then the church will be Christ’s expression in full. This is the highest peak of the church’s growth.

(Lee 2004–2020, vol. 117, p. 286)

In the first passage, we see that Lee conceives of the Body of Christ is an organism. Like any organic entity, it must grow and mature to fully express its inward essence—in this case, Christ. In the second passage, Lee links the growth of God within each individual believer to the church’s corporate transformation. This is a crucial move, as it entails that the individual sanctification of believers is not an end in itself, but rather, has a directed end—ecclesial deification where the “highest peak of the church’s growth” results in “Christ’s expression in full”. Underscoring this point elsewhere, he states,

Apparently, growth is for individual believers and building is corporate. Actually, both growth and building are corporate. The feet do not grow at one time, and the hands at a later time, as if the two were autonomous. The entire body grows together as a corporate entity.

(Lee 2004–2020, vol. 126, p. 432)

Two final issues, both of which are foundational elements of Lee’s doctrine of ecclesial deification, merit our attention in the final pages of this article. First, unlike Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox portrayals of the doctrine, he does not situate ecclesial deification within visible, institutional structures. Rather, he contends that the universal church, as the Body of Christ, comprises all individuals throughout the ages who have been regenerated by faith (Lee 2004–2020, vol. 4, pp. 401–42).28 Further, he suggests that every believer, irrespective of specific doctrines, practices, race, or class, can be perfected to function according to their measure by members who have been gifted to the Body by the ascended Head (Eph 4:12).

On the local ecclesial level, he argues that the New Testament demonstrates that there should only be one church in one city.29 Thus, he suggests that all believers in a city are members of their geographically defined congregation, whether or not they physically meet in or even recognize the validity of their local church. When a local church is established, it is thus understood to be meeting on behalf of the believers in a city and as an expression of the unique, universal Body of Christ. In these local congregations, Lee proposes that there are only two scripturally revealed offices: elders and deacons/deaconesses. Additionally, he contends that Scripture does not allow for any mediatorial class between believers and God, and thus, congregations should not have pastors or priests; rather, all members should function for the building up of the Body of Christ (cf. 1 Cor 14:26–31).

The crux of the issue is that any believer experiencing the growth of God—specifically, the increase in the measure of Christ within them individually—personally contributes to the growth of the Body of Christ, regardless of whether they meet with a properly constituted local church. For Lee, members of the universal Body of Christ exist in the various denominations, whether Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, Baptist, or otherwise. While he thoroughly condemns the notion of denominationalism on an institutional level, he strongly affirms the inclusion of all regenerated believers both within the universal Body of Christ and the church in the locality in which they live (Lee 2004–2020, vol. 117, pp. 62–80).30 Thus, for Lee, all regenerated individuals have the potentiality both of being individually deified and of contributing to the corporate deification of the Body of Christ, the latter being the goal of individual sanctification.

Second, Lee does not tie his notion of ecclesial deification to the visible symbols of baptism or the Lord’s Table, but rather, to the spiritual realities that they signify.31 Lee stresses the importance of water baptism in the life of believers but delimits its significance as only an outward sign of the reality of Spirit baptism (Lee 2004–2020, vol. 73) Similarly, with the bread and cup at the Lord’s Table, Lee extols the importance of the gathering, arguing that believers should participate in the partaking of the elements at least once a week (Lee 2004–2020, vol. 66). However, the bread and cup, he argues, should not be construed as elements in a “ritual”, nor understood in a “superstitious” manner (Lee 2004–2020, vol. 31, pp. 144–45). Rather, both symbols point to spiritual realities that believers may participate in on a daily basis—not only during the Lord’s Table meeting of the local church but also, and more importantly, outside of the meeting whenever believers contact and enjoy God.

For Lee, the bread represents both Christ’s individual body broken for believers and Christ’s corporate mystical Body comprising all believers32 while simultaneously pointing to the spiritual reality that God presents Himself as food for believers to eat and enjoy in a daily, even moment-by-moment, manner. The cup for Lee typifies Christ’s blood shed on the cross for the redemption of sins, a reality that has opened the way for believers to eat the Lord; this can be experienced every time a believer confesses their sins in prayer (Lee 2004–2020, vol. 43; vol. 27). He posits that these spiritual realities—eating and drinking of the Lord in a daily manner—are the means by which deification occurs.33 Building upon John 6:57,34 Lee proposes that transformation—which he defines as “an inward metabolic process in which a new and living element gradually discharges and replaces our old element (Rom 12:2)”—primarily “takes place by eating, not by teaching” (Lee 2004–2020, vol. 71, pp. 401–3).

In closing, this paper aimed to introduce the theological trajectory of deification that encompasses union with Christ and sanctification in Watchman Nee’s and Witness Lee’s corpora. Far from representing a fringe innovation, their teachings emerge from a rich blend of biblical exegesis, patristic resonance, and practical Christian spirituality. Building upon Nee’s emphasis on participating in Christ’s life, nature, death, and resurrection through the Spirit’s unifying work in terms of the Keswickian approach to sanctification, Lee further developed these insights into a more robust theology of deification, wherein believers are not only sanctified but become God in life and nature but not in the Godhead. By situating their thought within the broader Christian tradition, this study sought to demonstrate the theological coherence and spiritual depth of their shared theological outlook.

The compelling vision of the Christian life Nee and Lee set forth is of a dynamic, participatory, progressive sanctification that involves believers being transformed into Christ’s likeness and culminates in the aggregate of believers being united, mingled, and incorporated in the Triune God. All believers, irrespective of denominational allegiances or theological orientations, are called to participate corporately in the Triune God’s life and nature in the present age for the fulfillment of the divine, eternal oikonomia. Further study is warranted to engage more thoroughly and constructively with Nee’s and Lee’s valuable contributions and correctives to contemporary theology, especially in light of global Christianity’s growing interest in three related areas: sanctification, deification, and the Trinity. On our reading of Nee and Lee, their insights masterfully synthesize these key doctrines in a manner that is both biblically faithful and experientially relevant to the lives of Christians today.