Search
Scripture Reading: Rom. 12:2b; 11, 2 Cor. 4:16; Phil. 3:10; 2 Cor. 3:18b; Phil. 3:12-14; Col. 3:10-11; Eph. 4:16
In this chapter we come to the third step of the sanctifying Spirit. The first step is regeneration, and the second step is renewing. Now we come to the transforming of the sanctifying Spirit.
The Bible is a complete revelation of God, unveiling God’s economy. God in His economy desires to gain the Body of Christ to be the very organism of the Triune God. If we are going to understand regeneration, renewing, and transforming, we have to realize that all these steps are for God to carry out His economy for the producing of an organism.
For the carrying out of His economy, God created man, but man became fallen. Then God came in not only to redeem the fallen man but also to regenerate the rotten man. This regenerating means a lot. It means that Christ had to die on the cross to terminate the old, rotten man, to redeem the created man back to God, and to put this redeemed man into Christ. In Christ there is the process of death and resurrection throughout our Christian life. We are passing through death and resurrection all the time. This is God’s ordained way. We have been redeemed back to God and put into Christ to go through a process of death and resurrection all the time.
This process begins with regeneration and continues through renewing and transforming until it reaches the goal, which is the last step of the sanctifying Spirit’s work to transfigure our rotten, evil body (Phil. 3:21). Then we will have the consummating glorification. At that time there will be a Body in the universe before God. That will be the kingdom age with the New Jerusalem as its center. Eventually, after passing through the kingdom age, we will arrive at the fullness of the times (Eph. 1:10). The fullness of the times is the consummation of the ages. That will be the completion, the consummation, of God’s carrying out of His economy in the new heaven and new earth with the New Jerusalem in eternity future. The transforming work of the sanctifying Spirit is for this goal.
We are regenerated, and now we are being renewed day by day (2 Cor. 4:16). Transformation comes out of the renewing. Romans 12:2 says that we are transformed by the renewing. We were regenerated in our spirit, but we are still old in our soul and rotten in our body. So we need the further work of the transforming, sanctifying Spirit to renew our entire soul—our mind, emotion, and will. When our soul is fully renewed, we will arrive at maturity and be prepared for our glorification, the transfiguration of our body.
This procedure, or process, implies the working of the death of Christ and the resurrection of Christ. Through the working of the death and resurrection of Christ, we are day by day renewed to be transformed. This goes on and on without ceasing from the day we are regenerated until the day we become matured. To be matured simply means that we are ready to have our body transfigured so that we may be glorified. Then God’s work in us for the producing of His organism will be consummated. Now we know the proper position of transformation in the work of the sanctifying Spirit.
Transformation is a step on the way of God’s process in us. In this transforming work we pass through the death of Christ, which deals with and terminates all the matters of the old creation. Then we pass through the resurrection of Christ, which supplies us with all the riches of the element of Christ, who is the embodiment of the Triune God. Death takes away and discharges the old element, and resurrection supplies us with the new element, the riches of Christ, who is the embodiment of the Triune God. Now this element is constituted into our being. In this constitution is the mingling of the Triune God with His saved humanity. This is the Body of Christ, the organism of the processed Triune God.
Such a thing has been missed entirely by today’s Christianity. Christianity’s theology today is too traditional and objective. But the Scripture reveals to us a divine revelation, not a traditional theology. This divine revelation is very subjective to us. God wants to work Himself into us. In order to work God into us, Christ had to go through death to terminate the old creation and enter into resurrection to produce the new creation. The old element is discharged, and the new element is supplied. This new element is Christ, the embodiment of the Triune God. The sanctifying Spirit transforms us by constituting the processed Triune God into us, the redeemed and regenerated humanity. The issue of this is the Body of Christ, the organism of the Triune God. All these things we are sharing here are part of our new culture. Hence, we need a new language full of new terminology.
I purposely use the word transforming here, not the noun transformation. Transformation refers to a fact, whereas transforming indicates that something is going on.
According to Romans 12:2, transforming is by the renewing of our mind, including our emotion and will, that is, our entire soul. Renewing is to deal with our oldness. We need to be renewed because we are old, even stale. Transforming is to bring forth Christ in newness. To be made new you need some new element added into you through the resurrection of Christ. Something within us is going on positively and subjectively. That is the resurrection of Christ. Actually, that is the pneumatic Christ. The pneumatic Christ is the resurrecting Spirit. The resurrecting Spirit is the reality of Christ’s resurrection, which is working within us all the time to bring in Christ. Thus, a new element is dispensed into us to renew us, and this results in transformation. Transformation is a further step of the sanctifying Spirit.
Transforming is a metabolism to bring in a new element. This element is the riches of the Triune God embodied in Christ, who today is the pneumatic Christ, the resurrecting Spirit. He is the new element. This transforming brings in the new element and discharges the old element—the rotten things of Adam. This is a metabolism to take away Adam and to replace Adam with Christ.
Transformation is a big replacement, but this does not mean that our being is taken away absolutely. It takes away only the fallen part of our being, and it keeps the part created and redeemed by God. Thus, the transforming of the sanctifying Spirit takes away the old, fallen part of our being and keeps our created, redeemed, and regenerated part for this part to grow, to be enlarged, and to increase until it will be matured in the processed Triune God. The new element is added into the God-created, redeemed, and regenerated part to increase that part with what God is. Then the divine element is mingled with the human element and constituted into the human element to make this constitution the organism of the Triune God. This organism is the Body of Christ.
Transforming is a process bringing our old man through the death of Christ (2 Cor. 4:16) and carrying on our new man in the resurrection of Christ (v. 11; Phil. 3:10). In Philippians 3:10 Paul says that he desired to know the power of Christ’s resurrection and to be conformed to the death of Christ. This means that we need to be shaped, to be fashioned, by the death of Christ through the power of resurrection and with the element of resurrection.
The farmers who grow fruit trees know that the trees need fertilizer. If you do not fertilize the tree, the fruit will still come out but in a kind of poor condition. But if you add the proper amount of fertilizer, the fruit comes out in a richer way. That is a picture of transformation. The principle of transformation can be seen in God’s creation. Without transformation there is no growth in life. Growth in life means to pass through death and to enter into resurrection. In the spiritual realm the death and resurrection are Christ’s, and the element is Christ Himself. His death and resurrection bring Him into us as the new element to transform us. In this transformation there are the metabolism, the mingling, the constitution, and the organism, which is the Body of Christ.
The transforming is through the Lord Spirit (2 Cor. 3:18b). The Lord Spirit is a compound title. This expression confirms that the Lord Christ is the Spirit and the Spirit is the Lord Christ. The Lord Spirit is a compounded person. He has been compounded with all of the elements of Christ’s person and work. Jesus was the complete God and the perfect man compounded together, so He was the compounding of divinity mingled with humanity. That was His first step of being compounded. The second step was His passing through death and resurrection. In this step He was compounded with His death and its effectiveness and with His resurrection and its power. In resurrection He became a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b), and today He is the Lord Spirit.
Our being transformed is through the Lord Spirit, that is, through the pneumatic Christ in resurrection and through the life-giving Spirit as the reality of the resurrection of Christ. Today this consummated, compounded Spirit is the life-giving Spirit, and this compounded Spirit within us is the resurrection. This means that the resurrection of Christ lives in us, and this living resurrection is the pneumatic Christ. Pneumatic is an adjective form of pneuma. Pneuma in Greek means “the Spirit.” The pneumatic Christ is the Christ who is the Spirit.
The transforming of the sanctifying Spirit is for the growth and maturity of the seeking believers. This transpires by our pursuing Christ (Phil. 3:12). Today the people in the whole world are pursuing worldly pleasure and entertainment, but we are here day by day pursuing Christ. Day and night Christ is our goal. We pursue Christ by forgetting the things behind and stretching forward to the things before (v. 13). We even need to forget our experience of Christ in the past. We should not stay with our past experiences. We need to forget the many things behind us. One thing is before us; that is Christ. We are forgetting all the things behind, and we are stretching forward to possess the Christ before us.
We are pursuing Christ and stretching forward to reach the goal and gain the prize—the experienced Christ (v. 14). I recently received a letter from the parents of two of the full-time trainees, thanking me for training their sons. Actually, however, I am not here training people. I am ministering Christ to people and trying to take the lead to pursue Christ. I only care for Christ.
We are the members of the corporate universal new man with Christ as the Head and with all the believers as His members. These members are constituted by being transformed. This transforming is a constituting work day by day in big things and in small things. In this constituting work, the embodiment of the Triune God, Christ, is being added and wrought into our being every day in all things. This is not only for the constituting of the members of the new man (Col. 3:10-11) but also for the building up of the Body of Christ (Eph. 4:16).
