God’s eternal purpose is to work Himself into us and make us the same as His Firstborn Son. The Firstborn Son of God is the standard model for God’s economy. This standard model has both divinity and humanity. Originally, He was the Only Begotten Son of God. As the Only Begotten Son of God, He was the embodiment of God, for all that is in the Godhead was embodied in Him (Col. 2:9). He was also the expression of God (Heb. 1:3). As the embodiment and expression of God, He became incarnated, bringing divinity into humanity and joining humanity to divinity. But before the incarnation, divinity had never been joined to humanity. Since the day of His incarnation, there was in this universe a wonderful Person who was both human and divine.
The Lord Jesus lived on earth for thirty three and a half years. On some occasions He exercised His divinity, but most of the time He lived out His humanity. People mostly saw Him as a man, as a proper, perfect, and extraordinary man. His extraordinary quality was His divinity. One day, He went to the cross to put away sin. At the same time, He destroyed Satan, the source of sin. As the Lord destroyed sin and Satan, He tasted death (Heb. 2:9), and by tasting death He swallowed it. Through the Lord’s all-inclusive death, every negative thing in the whole universe, including sin, Satan, and death, was terminated and made a history. After His crucifixion, the Lord rested for three days. According to the Bible, while He was resting in the grave, He took a tour of Hades, offering it the opportunity to do everything to Him and proving that it could do nothing with Him. After His rest and His tour, He walked out of Hades and arose from the tomb, coming forth in His resurrection. By His resurrection, He was born with His humanity into the divine sonship and became the Firstborn Son of God. The most striking thing about Christ as the Firstborn Son of God is that with Him all the negative things, including sin, Satan, and death, have become a history. He is a person who has divinity mingled with an uplifted humanity and who has humanity that is one with divinity. Ultimately, He entered into glory, even into glorification. Being in glorification is superior to being in glory, because being in glory does not require a process, whereas being in glorification does. The Lord Jesus, as the Firstborn Son of God, has passed through a process to enter into glory. That was His glorification.
As the Only Begotten Son, Christ was already in glory. That did not require glorification. However, once He was on earth in His humanity, He needed to be glorified. Therefore, as John 17:1 reveals, during the last night of His life on earth, He prayed, “Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son that the Son may glorify You” (Recovery Version). Since He was already in glory, why did He still need to be glorified? Although He was in glory as the Only Begotten Son, since He had put on humanity, the human part of His being had to be glorified, to be processed into glory. In His resurrection Christ entered into His glorification (Luke 24:26).
Few Christians realize that ultimately in the New Testament the word perfection means glorification. Regardless how perfect you may be, if you have not been glorified, you are still not adequate. The book of Romans reveals that in the economy of God we have firstly justification, then sanctification, and finally glorification. Romans does not mention perfection. Both glorification and perfection, however, are found in Hebrews. Hebrews 2:9-10, which says that Christ, the Captain of our salvation, has been crowned with glory, refers to both perfection and glorification. His perfection was His glorification, the very glorification revealed in Romans 8. According to Romans 8, the last step of God’s salvation is to glorify us, and according to Hebrew 2, it is through the Captain of our salvation that we are being brought into glory.
On the throne, as well as in our spirit, there is a glorified Man, a Man who has been fully perfected. Some saints, such as John Wesley and those with him, practiced what is called sinless perfection. According to the concept of sinless perfection, if you do not lie or lose your temper but love others and are humble, you have attained perfection. But this is a very low concept of perfection. I would ask you to compare this with the perfection of the glorified Jesus. The perfection of the glorified Jesus is that of divinity mingled with a humanity that has been tested, resurrected, uplifted, and glorified.
At this point I want to introduce a new word — sonized. After passing through all the tests and after being resurrected and uplifted, the humanity of Jesus was “sonized.” This means that it was brought into the divine sonship. Although Christ was the Son of God, before His resurrection He was clothed with humanity, which was unrelated to that sonship. One day, He brought this humanity into, through, and out of death, and it was resurrected by the power of the divine life according to the Spirit of holiness (Rom. 1:4). Through this process, His humanity was sonized into God’s divine sonship. Thus, with His resurrected and uplifted humanity He was born in resurrection as the Firstborn Son of God. This is the meaning of Acts 13:33: “God...hath raised up Jesus again; as it is also written in the second Psalm, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.”
Such a sonized One is now the standard model. This standard model has attained perfection—a perfection with divinity, with an uplifted humanity, and with all negative things having become a history. We need to lift up our eyes and gaze at this standard model. As we look at Him, we behold His divinity and His sonized humanity. All the negative things are now on the other side of the river and have become a history. But the standard model is in glorification and exaltation on the golden side of the river, where there is no sin, death, Satan, or any other negative thing. Now there is a Man in the glory, a Man in perfection. What kind of perfection can compare with this? The so-called sinless perfection is in the basement, while this glorious perfection is in the Holy of Holies.
What is perfection? Perfection is glorification. In this perfection is the Man who has divinity, who has a humanity that has been sonized as the Firstborn Son of God, and who is now in His glorification. With Him, all the negative things are a history, having been left on the other side of the river. This is perfection and this is glorification. In the New Testament, glorification is the equivalent of perfection. Christ, the standard model, is now in such a perfection, and we are on the way.
When this standard model was resurrected, being born in His humanity to be the Firstborn Son of God, He included us (1 Pet. 1:3). When He was sonized in His humanity, in His resurrection, we were born as sons of God. We need to forget time. There is no clock in heaven, and there will be no watches in eternity. Although we may not be able to understand this, we should simply accept it. According to the pure word of the Holy Bible, when Christ was resurrected, He imparted Himself into us as life, and we were reborn. After imparting Himself into us as life, Christ entered into perfection, into glory, where He is now interceding for our glorification.
Christ is interceding for us to be saved to the uttermost. Although I have heard many messages saying that Christ is interceding for us, I have not heard one message which said that Christ is interceding for us to be brought into perfection. Many pastors use Romans 8:34 and Hebrews 7:25 concerning Christ’s interceding to comfort those who are in difficulty. But Christ is not interceding merely for us to have comfort. Such a concept of His intercession is too low. Christ is interceding for us to be glorified and to be saved into His perfection.
What does it mean to be brought into Christ’s perfection? It is to eliminate all the by-products of death, to swallow up all vanity, corruption, groaning, and decay. Christ is interceding that this work may be accomplished. His intercession on the throne motivates the life seed that He sowed into us at the time of His resurrection.
Suppose you have overcome every sin. You are peaceful, comfortable, and have no trouble with anyone or anything. If you would have attained such a height, do you suppose that you would be happy, content, and satisfied? I certainly would not be. What is the good of only overcoming sin and having no difficulties? If we only have this, we are, at most, just like a piece of blank white paper. Is this the meaning and goal of our life? This kind of perfection is meaningless. The perfection revealed in the New Testament, however, is to have our whole being processed into Christ’s glorification, to have our entire being permeated and saturated with His uplifted and glorified being. Overcoming sin, having patience, loving others — all this is in a different category of perfection from that revealed in the New Testament. Christ is interceding that the life which He has sown into our spirit may be motivated to grow, develop, and saturate all our inward parts, until we are completely permeated with His glorified and uplifted being. When this is completed, that will be the day of the redemption of our body, of the manifestation of the sons of God, and of the freedom of glory for the whole universe. In that day there will be no more groaning, vanity, bondage or corruption. This is glorification.
Now we come again to the law of life. The law of life is working Christ, the standard model, into every part of our being, saturating our inward parts with all that He is. This is what the New Testament calls transformation. Romans 12:2 says, “Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind, that you may prove by testing what the will of God is, that which is good and well-pleasing and perfect” (Recovery Version). How can our mind be renewed? Only by the working of the law of life which saturates us with what the standard model is and makes us a reproduction, a reprint, of Him. Furthermore, 2 Corinthians 3:18 says, “But we all, with unveiled face beholding and reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit” (Gk.). This is the issue of the working of the law of life within us. Eventually, as Romans 8:29 says, the working of the law of life will conform us to the image of God’s Firstborn Son. All the brothers of the Firstborn will be conformed to Him. The Firstborn Son of God, the standard model, is today in perfection and in glorification, but we are not yet there. We are on the way and under the process. As the Firstborn Son intercedes for us, His interceding will motivate our inner life seed to develop, grow, and permeate our being so that we may be transformed and conformed to His image and ultimately be brought into His perfection and glorification. This comes from the working of the law of life.
While the law of life is working within us, we have a deeper consciousness of life. His intercession very effectively motivates our inner seed. How do we know that our inner seed has been motivated? By our inner sense, our inner consciousness. Although you may feel too tired to attend a particular church meeting, the seed within will not let you sleep. By the inward “pum, pum, pum,” the energizing of the heavenly intercession, you realize that you must go to that meeting. Sometimes, when we are attracted to the worldly things, the inward “pum, pum, pum” gives us no rest, and we find ourselves doing what the Lord desires. What a mercy this is! I have the full assurance that in the coming years the heavenly “pum, pum, pum” will accomplish a great deal in the Lord’s recovery. We will never be satisfied with what we have seen in the past. This ministry will be higher and richer. The Lord will use the churches and the messages to gather together His true seekers to be His testimony to the whole earth. Everything in the Bible concerning the church will be fulfilled before the Lord comes back. Deep within, we all have the sense that nothing but this standard model can satisfy us. We cannot be happy unless we are saturated with Him. This is a strong proof that He is interceding for us to be glorified, to be brought into His perfection.
God’s eternal purpose is to have a group of sons as His corporate expression. Firstly, His Only Begotten Son passed through the process and entered into glory, having been fully perfected to be the standard model, the Firstborn Son of God, for God’s expression. Since the time of Christ’s ascension, God has been working to have a mass reproduction of that standard model, His Firstborn Son. During the centuries, few Christians have seen this, and as a result, the Lord has been delayed. Although there are millions of Christians on earth today, there are not many reproductions of the standard model. In His recovery, the Lord is reproducing the standard model, working desperately among us to make every one of us the same as the Firstborn Son. This is what it means to be perfected. For perfection, we need divinity, an uplifted, resurrected humanity, and the terminating crucifixion. Our perfection must include the terminating crucifixion of Christ, for His all-inclusive death puts all the negative things on the other side of the river as a history. We also need to have every inward part of our being permeated with all that He is. Even the smallest part of our being must be saturated with Him. All these are the elements of our perfection. When all this has been wrought into us, we shall have a thorough transformation and be completely conformed to His image. This is glorification, perfection, and the reproduction, the reprint, of the model Son.
The crucial point in all this is the law of life, the working of the divine life within us. The law of life, which is the innate, automatic working of the divine life, is doing a perfecting work within us, gradually infusing us with divinity, eliminating all the negative things, and imparting all that Christ is into our being. In other words, by the law of life the Lord is renewing us, transforming us, and conforming us to His image. When this process has been completed, He will come to redeem our body, transfiguring our vile body into a glorious one (Phil. 3:21). We are now under the process of the working of the law of the divine life.
The law of life is now working to renew us from within. Ephesians 4:22-24 tells us to be renewed in the spirit of our mind that we may put off the old man and put on the new man. According to Ephesians 2:15, the new man is the church. To put on the new man is to put on the church. The new man is the practical church life, the corporate reproduction of the standard model. We are now in the process of being renewed in the spirit of our mind, and gradually we are putting on the new man. This renewing of the mind and putting on of the new man, the church, is the issue of the working of the law of life.
