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Scripture Reading: 11, Rom. 8:28-30; Phil. 3:21
In this chapter we will cover the last two items of God’s saving in the life of Christ: our conformation to the image of the Son of God and our glorification. These two items are unveiled in Romans 8:28-30—in the middle, not at the end, of Romans. However, these two will be the final, consummating items of God’s full salvation. Hence, these two items are presented to you in the last chapter of this book.
The full salvation of God as revealed in the whole book of Romans has a particular purpose, that is, to make us sinners His sons so that we may be His corporate expression. He is the mysterious God and He is invisible, but He has a desire, as His good pleasure, to have Himself expressed through man. First, He was expressed in His incarnated Son, Jesus Christ. Then He desires to enlarge this individual expression into a corporate one by making us, His chosen and called people, His many sons so that His only begotten Son could be His firstborn Son among many brothers to express Him in a corporate way. Hence, we, the many brothers of Christ, need to be conformed to the image of Christ, the firstborn Son of God.
Christ was the only begotten Son of God from eternity past until the time that He was resurrected in His incarnated and crucified body. In His resurrection with His humanity He was born (Acts 13:33) to be the firstborn Son of God (Heb. 1:6; Rom. 8:29). As the only begotten Son of God, He is God, the second of the Divine Trinity, having divinity only; as the firstborn Son of God, He is the God-man, the embodiment of the Triune God, possessing both divinity and humanity, bearing the image of the God-man, of God mingled with man, to manifest God through man, to express all of God’s attributes in man’s virtues.
For us to be conformed to the image of the Son of God is to be conformed to the image of Christ as the firstborn Son of God (v. 29), the One who possesses both the divine nature and the human nature and who bears the image of God mingled with man, with God’s attributes expressed in man’s virtues. When we are conformed to the image of Christ as the firstborn Son of God, we bear the image of divinity mingled with humanity, the image of His all-inclusive death, and the image of His resurrection and ascension. When we experience this aspect of being saved in the life of Christ, we become persons full of the proper human life with the expression of the divine life in resurrection and ascension.
The New Testament charges us strongly to express the firstborn Son of God with His divinity and humanity. We must have our human virtues filled up with the divine attributes. Then what we express will be human yet divine, divine yet human.
This kind of conformation saves us from the expression of our natural life. When we experience being conformed to the image of Christ as the God-man, we will be persons who are in the death of Christ, under the death of the cross, being conformed to the image of Christ, not to the fashion or image of the world or of our natural life. In order to have such an expression, we must have the application of the cross. The cross terminates our natural man. For Christ as the firstborn Son of God to live a human life, full of the expression of the divine attributes, He needed the death of the cross and resurrection. The expression of Christ as the firstborn Son of God requires the death of the natural life and the power of resurrection in the divine life. When our natural life is crossed out, divinity in the power of resurrection will be expressed. This expression is the image of the firstborn Son of God, and this is the image to which we must be conformed through death and resurrection. This was Paul’s aspiration in Philippians 3:10 when he said that he wanted “to know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.”
In order to be conformed to the image of the Son of God, we need the inward transformation by the renewing of the mind (Rom. 12:2a) with the element of the divine life. The divine life is the element with which we are transformed. Transformation is the addition of some new elements and the discharge of the old elements. It is a metabolic process. The main thing in this process is the element of the divine life. Therefore, we must learn to go along with the element of the divine life, the inward metabolism, the inward transformation, in order to be conformed by God to the expression of His firstborn Son, Christ.
Romans 8:28, which says that “all things work together for good to those...who are called according to His purpose,” unveils that it is by God causing all things to work together for our good that we are conformed to the image of the Son of God (v. 29) and are thus saved from the expression of our natural life. By His sovereignty God causes our environment to fulfill the purpose of His calling, that is, to conform us to the image of Christ as the firstborn Son of God. Our environment and our circumstances work together with the divine life within us for our conformation to the image of Christ. Whether we think our marriage is right or wrong, the wife or husband we have today is the right one for us. A brother may think that if God had given him a better wife, he would be a better person. In this way he may blame God for his being in a poor condition because of the “poor” wife that the Lord has given him. Yet we must realize that all things, including our spouse and children, are the environment that God uses to conform us to the image of the firstborn Son of God.
Concerning God’s full salvation, Romans 8:29 unveils that God predestinated His chosen people to be conformed to the image of His firstborn Son. The next verse, verse 30, also unveils that God calls, justifies, and will glorify His predestinated people. Both our conformation to the image of God’s Son and our glorification are the consummation of the purpose of God’s predestination concerning His people. This indicates that God’s conforming us and God’s glorifying us are two aspects of the same step of God’s saving us in the life of Christ. God’s conforming us is His fashioning us in the life of Christ so that we may bear the image of Christ as the God-man to express Him as the embodiment of the Triune God, and God’s glorifying us is His saturating us with the splendor of the life of Christ so that we may be soaked with His glory to express the processed God. Both are for the expression of the Triune God, which will be consummated at the consummation of our Christian life when Christ will appear the second time. This is to make us like Him not only in our spirit and soul but also in our body and to bring us into His divine glory (v. 18; Heb. 2:10; 1 Pet. 5:10).
God’s conforming us to the image of Christ and God’s glorifying us with His divine glory are a process in the growth of Christ’s divine life, not merely an operation by Christ’s power as unveiled in Philippians 3:21. While we are experiencing all these items—the reigning in Christ’s life over all the insubordinate things, the subjective sanctification in our disposition by the indwelling Spirit, the freeing from the bondage of sin by the law of the Spirit of life, the dispensing of the Triune God into our tripartite being, the renewing in our mind and the transformation in our soul, being built up in the organic Body of Christ, and the living of the proper church life in a locality—God is actually conforming us gradually to the image of His firstborn Son, the God-man, Christ. Not only so, while we are experiencing these items of life in the life of Christ, God is actually also saturating us with the splendor, the glory, of the life of Christ. Such a process of conforming us to the image of Christ and saturating us with the splendor of Christ’s life will proceed all the way through the whole course of our Christian life until we become mature in the divine life.
God’s glorifying us is also considered by the apostle Paul as the transfiguration of our body (v. 21). This is carried out in the virtue of the divine life, to save us from our body of humiliation. Our body will be transfigured by the power, the virtue, of the divine life. The divine life is within us today transfiguring us. Actually, transformation is a form of transfiguration. When the inner life transforms us from within, this is a kind of saturation. This saturation is a kind of transfiguration. When the divine life saturates our entire being, it transfigures us, changing us metabolically. This metabolic change is not merely an outward change in form. It is brought about by a new element being added into our being. This new element discharges the old element. Thus, we are changed and transformed. Such transformation takes place by the life saturation, the life power, the virtue, of the divine life.
The transfiguration of our body is also considered by the apostle Paul as the redemption of our body (Rom. 8:23). This is carried out through the indwelling Spirit as the firstfruits, which is the foretaste (vv. 11, 23a). The indwelling Spirit transforms us by saturating us all day long. This saturation is the sealing, the “inking,” of the Spirit (Eph. 1:13). The Holy Spirit seals us with the divine ink, and the Spirit Himself as the ink carries out a continuous inking within us. This inking transfigures us, and one day the form of our body will be changed to the uttermost. That day will be the day of the redemption of our body, the day of the glorification of our body. That day has not yet come, but today we have the indwelling Spirit as the firstfruits, the foretaste, of God as our portion. Day by day something within us is sealing, inking, and saturating us. The Spirit seals us unto the day of redemption (4:30), unto the redemption of the acquired possession (1:13-14), unto the redemption of our body. The Spirit’s sealing is for and issues in the redemption of our body. In this sense, the redemption of our body will not be something that happens in a sudden way, as if by accident. Today we are under the inking, the saturating of the inner life, by the indwelling Spirit. Thus, bit by bit, we are being redeemed. One day our entire being will be fully redeemed. The matter of our rapture, the redemption of our body, is a matter of maturity. We have the divine life, and we are growing in the divine life. The full maturity of the divine life in us is the redemption of our body.
The transfiguration of our body is by the saturation of our body of humiliation with the glory, the expression of the divine splendor, of the divine life in Christ (Rom. 8:30c). Glory is the expression of the divine splendor of the divine life. We have the divine life within us, and this divine life has its splendor. In the Bible this splendor is called glory. When we are glorified, we will be saturated thoroughly with the splendor of the divine life. This glorification is the transfiguration of our body, the redemption of our body.
Our glorification, the transfiguration of our body, and the redemption of our body are also considered by the apostle Paul as the completion of our divine sonship. When we are glorified by God and our body is transfigured and redeemed, we will be manifested as the sons of God to the fullest extent. Because our whole being, including our outward body, will be saturated and permeated with the divine splendor, everyone will see that we are the sons of God. This is the completion of our divine sonship. God’s glorifying us, the transfiguration and the redemption of our body for the completion of our divine sonship, will be the consummate step, the final step, of our being saved in the divine life of Christ. In this way the book of Romans comprises all the items of God’s redemption and God’s saving in His full salvation.
