The transformed believers are conformed into the image of the firstborn Son of God in His divinity to express the attributes of the processed God in the resurrected Christ. The attributes of God are the attributes that belong to God. When Christ was living on this earth, He expressed the attributes of God, which are love, light, holiness, and righteousness. I studied the Ten Commandments item by item. I did my best to find out what the Ten Commandments show us. Eventually, I found out that the Ten Commandments of the law show us a picture of God in four items. The Ten Commandments show us that God is love, God is light, God is holy, and God is righteous. These are the four basic elements—love, light, holiness, and righteousness—with which the Ten Commandments were composed.
When Jesus lived on this earth, He expressed God. First, He expressed God in these four items: in love, in light, in holiness, and in righteousness. By reading the four Gospels, we receive the impression that the One portrayed in the record of the four Gospels is high in love, high in light, high in holiness, and high in righteousness. Eventually, we must conclude that He Himself is love, light, holiness, and righteousness. He loves us; He enlightens us; He is holy, even the embodiment of holiness; and He is righteous, even the very composition of righteousness. When we see Him in such a way, we admire Him, and we also realize that we are very different from Him. We cannot love even our wife, let alone our enemies, but He loved His enemies (Luke 23:34). With Him there was no darkness. Wherever He went, there was light because He is light (Matt. 4:16; John 8:12). Wherever He went, there was holiness, and there was also righteousness. This is the expression of God in Christ's divinity. Christ can be so loving, so enlightening, so holy, and so righteous because He is God. In ourselves, we cannot be like Him; but in Matthew 5:48 He told us that since we are the sons of God, we can be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. We can be perfect because the Father has come into us.
The transformed believers are conformed also into the image of the firstborn Son of God in His resurrected humanity to express the virtues of the uplifted man in the resurrection of Christ. While Christ was on this earth, He expressed God in His divinity—in love, in light, in holiness, and in righteousness. Not only so; He also expressed the human virtues in His uplifted humanity. When Jesus was on the earth, He was very meek, and He was also humble. God does not need to be meek or humble. Meekness and humility are human virtues. Hence, Philippians 2:7 tells us that Christ emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave, becoming in the likeness of men. This is not divine, but human. Thus, on the one hand, Christ expressed God's divine love, divine light, divine holiness, and divine righteousness, while on the other hand, He expressed human virtues such as meekness, humility, obedience, and forbearance.
In 2 Corinthians 10:1 Paul said that he entreated the believers in the meekness and gentleness (or, forbearance) of Christ. Then, in 11:10 he said, "The truthfulness of Christ is in me." Meekness, forbearance, and truthfulness are three human virtues. God does not need to forbear. However, when Christ was on this earth, He lived as a man under all kinds of persecution and trouble. He was very meek, and He was continually forbearing, continually bearing people in a meek way. Moreover, in His dealing with people, He was always full of truthfulness. He did not express any kind of crookedness; rather, He expressed only truthfulness. He said, "Let your word be, Yes, yes; No, no; for anything more than these is of the evil one" (Matt. 5:37). But sometimes He did not answer yes or no. He always answered in a high way, in the way of life, in a way that expressed God (John 4:20-24; 8:3-9; 9:2-3).