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Scripture Reading: 1 Cor. 15:45; 1 Thes. 5:23; Matt. 27:45-46; Col. 3:4; 1 John 5:11-12; Col. 1:13; 2 Cor. 3:18; 1 John 3:1-2; Rom. 8:19
In this chapter we will present a brief outline of what we have seen so far concerning life. For this purpose, we will use the twelve charts arranged on pages 166-167. To my realization, these charts are the best of their kind in all the publications of Christianity. They were prepared by an American sister named Mary E. McDonough, who only recently left to be with the Lord, for her book God’s Plan of Redemption. It is remarkable that we cannot find this book in almost any Christian bookstore in this country. Shortly after this book was written in 1922, it was translated into Chinese. However, the translator was not clear about the way of life, so we did not agree with his translation. About fifteen years ago we retranslated it into Chinese, and we published it in our bookrooms in Shanghai and in Taiwan. This book was eagerly accepted and familiar to all the brothers and sisters in the Far East, and they received much help from it. I myself have used it in North China, in Shanghai, in Taiwan, and in the Philippines to help people several times. The charts presented here are very revealing, giving us a clear vision and impressing us with God’s plan, His way in His redemption, and the way of life.
The first chart, Figure 1, contains a golden circle. In its spiritual meaning a circle denotes something eternal, something without beginning or end. If someone puts his finger on a point of a circle, he cannot say what part of the circle comes before it and what part comes after it. With God there is no limit of time and space. Therefore, this circle signifies the eternal life. In the types in the Scriptures, gold signifies the nature of God, that is, God Himself. This is very clear with the types in the tabernacle. Many of the furnishings in the tabernacle, such as the Ark and the showbread table, were made either of gold or of acacia wood overlaid with gold. These are types of the Lord Jesus with His two natures — the divine nature and the human nature. The acacia wood represents His human nature, and the gold represents His divine nature. The divine life is the Triune God, and this life is the self-existing, eternal, uncreated, and unlimited life, without beginning and without end.
Figure 2 signifies that the Triune God created a man. God created man because God desires to express Himself through man. The Scriptures clearly tell us that man is a vessel to contain God in order to express God. Man is not eternal; he has a beginning in time, signified by the vertical line at the top of the circle. As we know, this man is the first Adam (1 Cor. 15:45a), who is the created, limited life with a beginning and an end. This life, as it was created, was good, pure, and sinless.
Figure 3 shows us that the man created by God as a vessel to contain God has three parts — a spirit, a soul, and a body (1 Thes. 5:23). The spirit is the inner content to contain and contact God, who is Spirit, and the body is the outward appearance to contact the physical world. Between the inward spirit and the outward body is the soul as a medium, which is the personality of man. With this tripartite man there was no sin.
Figure 4 requires little explanation; we are clear just by looking at it. Every part has become dark; this is the fallen Adam. Man was made as a vessel to contain God, but before God came into him, something else came in. That was Satan, the enemy of God, personified sin. In the universe a particular creature, Satan, rebelled against God and became the enemy of God. Now Satan is the very sin in the universe. Satan came into the created life, so the whole person of man — body, soul, and spirit — was corrupted, damaged, and spoiled by Satan as Sin. The fallen man became filled with sin and possessed by Satan, and his every part is full of darkness. We all know how much corruption has come out of this corrupted human being. He is truly dark — corrupted in body, corrupted in soul, and corrupted in spirit.
Figure 5 shows us another man. The first Adam was the first man, who became corrupted by the fall. The second man is the last Adam, who is Christ (1 Cor. 15:45b). What kind of man is Christ? Christ is a God-man, a real man, yet the incarnation of God. Since this second man is a real man, He also has a spirit, soul, and body. He is the same as the created man, but there is still a difference. Within the created man there was nothing of God, but within this God-man is God Himself, as represented by the golden star. This man is the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. This is a very meaningful figure.
Figure 6 shows how this God-man, at the time that He was crucified on the cross, became the Sin-bearer. At that time He bore all our sins as the Lamb of God. According to the record of the Gospels, a change came over the universe at the third hour of His crucifixion (Matt. 27:45). All the sins of mankind were put upon the Lord Jesus for a period of three hours, from noon until three o’clock in the afternoon, when He cried, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (v. 46). When the Lord was on this earth, He said that the Father was always with Him; the Father never left Him alone. During these three hours, however, the Father forsook Christ because He put all our sins upon Him as the Sin-bearer. In this way, the God-man, God incarnated, bore our sins and dealt with them.
After Christ’s crucifixion He was resurrected, and in resurrection He is living forever. If we compare the resurrected Christ (Figure 7) with the incarnated God-man (Figure 5), we can see that in His resurrection He was transfigured in His entire being with the divine nature. When Christ was incarnated, He took upon Himself the human nature, and in resurrection He transfigured, or transformed, His entire human nature with the divine nature. By becoming the God-man He brought God into man, and by being resurrected He brought man into God. By incarnation He joined and mingled God with man, and by resurrection He joined and mingled man with God. Every part of His being still has the human nature, yet it is now in the divine nature. He has a human spirit, soul, and body that are mingled with the divine nature. Divinity and humanity are mingled as one. As such, He is the model, the example; each one of us gradually will be exactly the same as this One.
Figure 8 shows that in Him, that is, in this incarnated, crucified, and resurrected One, there is life. Life is in Him, and this life is none other than Christ Himself (Col. 3:4). First John 5:11 says, “God gave to us eternal life and this life is in His Son.” This Son is the incarnated, crucified, and resurrected God-man, who is life to us.
Figure 9 is not simple. Here are two spheres, the sphere of Adam on the one hand, and the sphere of Christ on the other hand. In the sphere of Adam there is nothing but sin and death, and in the sphere of Christ there is the eternal life. Between these two spheres is the cross. If one is on the left side of the cross, he is in the sphere of sin and death; if one has passed through the cross, he is in the sphere of life.
We have been delivered out of the sphere of sin and death and have been transferred into the sphere of life (Col. 1:13). We can say this because we believe in the One who was crucified on the cross for our sins, and we have accepted all the wonderful facts that have been accomplished by the Lord Jesus on the cross. Therefore, we have passed through the cross and are no longer in the sphere of sin and death. Rather, we are now in the glorious sphere of the eternal life. However, how much are we in this sphere? We may be in this sphere in only a small part of our being.
We have now been regenerated in our human spirit (Figure 10). At the very time we received the Lord Jesus as our Savior, He came into our spirit as the Spirit and gives life to us. First John 5:12 says, “He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.” Praise the Lord, if we have the Son, we have the life, because the Son is life! However, at the time of regeneration we received life only to a small degree. We received the divine life in only a limited part of our being.
After we are regenerated, we need to be transformed from darkness into glory (Figure 11). For this, we need to give a free way for the divine life to spread throughout our entire being. The more the divine life spreads, the more we are transformed from glory to glory (2 Cor. 3:18). After being regenerated for a few years, we are transformed a certain amount, but each additional year we are gradually transformed more and more. Eventually, our entire being is transformed from glory to glory.
Transformation is more subjective than positional sanctification, to which many Christians pay their main attention. First Timothy 4:4-5 tells us that even our food is sanctified through the word of God and intercession. A piece of bread in the supermarket is common, not sanctified, but if we buy it, put it on our table, and pray and thank the Lord for it, it is sanctified. This sanctification is a positional matter. It is to be separated from the world unto God. Transformation, however, is something more. It is a change in nature as well as in form.
Freedom from sin (Rom. 6:18, 22), sanctification (v. 19), and transformation are three different matters, but many Christians today confuse them. We may be freed from sin but not yet experience our sanctification, and we may be sanctified but not yet transformed. A person who is regenerated may realize that he is still under the bondage of sin, so he reckons that he has died on the cross with the Lord (v. 11). In this way he is released from the bondage of sin by the power of the resurrected Lord. However, he is still not absolutely sanctified, separated from the world unto God. Perhaps after another year he consecrates himself absolutely to the Lord and experiences separation from the world unto God. However, he is still not transformed. He needs another change, that is, transformation in his soul. Moreover, when the Lord comes back, he will experience another type of transformation, the transfiguration of the body of the old creation into a body of glory. This demonstrates that sanctification is something more than release from sin, and transformation is something more than sanctification. There is a relationship among these three matters, but there is also a clear distinction between release from sin and sanctification, and a further distinction between sanctification and transformation.
In order to know the way of life, we must know transformation, because transformation is a matter of life. At the time of our regeneration we receive a little of the divine life, but if we cooperate with God and give Him the way, the Holy Spirit will work within us to spread, to increase, the divine life within us. First, the Spirit fills our spirit with the divine life, and gradually, He saturates our soul — our mind, will, and emotion. Eventually, when the Lord comes back, our entire body will be transformed from the old creation into the new creation to be a body of glory.
At the time we are saved, we are regenerated in our spirit. After that, we need to be transformed mostly in our soul. At times this spreading from the spirit to the soul influences our body. Sometimes we overcome our physical weaknesses by realizing the divine life in our body, as mentioned in Romans 8:11. Then when the Lord comes back, our whole body will be transfigured, transformed from the old creation into the new creation to be a body of glory. At that time we will be like Him (Figure 12). We will be exactly the same as the incarnated, crucified, and resurrected Christ (1 John 3:1-2). Every part of our being — spirit, soul, and body — will be filled, saturated, permeated, and mingled with the divine life. This will be the manifestation, the revelation, of the sons of God (Rom. 8:19). We will be wholly, absolutely like the Lord Christ in spirit, soul, and body. This is wonderful!
This is not a matter of reformation or regulation. Of course, we should not be loose; rather, we need to realize that after we are regenerated, what we need is to cooperate with the Holy Spirit to give Him the way to fill, saturate, and transform us. This is a matter not of conduct or behavior but of transformation in life. The fallen man, who is absolutely in darkness, does not need reformation, regulation, or improvement; he only needs another life to come into him to regenerate him. Then from the time of his regeneration, his only need is to be transformed.
Transformation is not regulation from being proud to being humble. Whether one is proud or humble, he is still dark before God. Human pride and humility, and human hatred and love, are all equally dark in God’s eyes. Therefore, we should not try to regulate ourselves. If we say, “I am too proud, so I need to learn to be humble,” we are still in darkness. Even if we are the most humble persons, we may be in darkness the most. We may be full of human love, sacrificing everything for others, but we are still as dark as one that murders others. What we need is not regulation, reformation, or improvement but transformation in nature with the divine life. We need to be transformed into glory, into a glorious condition.
The accompanying charts are truly impressive and revealing. May the Spirit impress us so that we may know where we are, what we are, and what we need.
