Christ as redemption takes care of our future. Christ as righteousness saved us in that when we believed in Christ and were justified in Him, we were regenerated in our spirit. Christ as sanctification is now transforming our soul, thereby making us holy, yet our body still remains unsaved. In the future our body will be redeemed in Christ; that is, Christ will be our redemption. One day our body will be transfigured into the same body of glory possessed by Christ (Phil. 3:21). This is the redemption of our body, the full enjoyment of our sonship (Rom. 8:23). In this way we enjoy God’s full salvation.
Christ as the redemption to us from God will transfigure our body of humiliation through His divine life into the body of His glory. Everything that God glorifies must first be redeemed by passing through the judgment of the cross. Everything in us that is of the natural being, the flesh, the self, the world, sin, the old creation, and Satan must be crucified and judged by God before we can be redeemed and glorified. First, there is redemption, then glory. We are all still in the old creation and in the natural life. Therefore, we need to take the judgment of the cross in order that we can receive Christ as our redemption and be qualified to enjoy God’s glory. This is both for our living today and for the redemption of our body in the future, when our whole being will enter into God’s glory and will express His glory and radiance forever.
Redemption includes three matters: being brought back to God, terminated, and replaced. When God redeems us, He terminates us, replaces us with Christ, and brings us back to Himself. First, when we enjoy Christ as our portion, we will experience Christ as our redemption and thus will be brought back to God. In our experience we may go astray from the Lord. But when we enjoy Christ and thereby become righteous and sanctified, we are brought back to God. Second, redemption also includes termination. The Christ who dwells in us, supplies us, and becomes our nourishment also terminates us. The more we call on the Lord’s name, the more we will realize how much we are still in the old creation, and the more we will hate ourselves and confess that we need to be terminated. Third, redemption includes being replaced by Christ. When Christ terminates us, He replaces us with Himself. This is transfiguration. This is more than sanctification, which separates us and makes us different from others. This is the actual process in which our element, our old constitution, is terminated and replaced with a new element, a new constitution—Christ Himself in resurrection. When we are replaced, we are reconstituted with Christ. The future redemption of our body will be the transfiguration of our body, but today we may experience Christ as the One who transfigures our inner being. Thus, Christ not only will be our transfiguration in the future; He also is our present transfiguration, redemption, of our inner being.
With regard to everything in our daily life, we need to be brought back to God, terminated, and replaced with Christ. In the church life we also need redemption because we are still very natural in many matters, such as our preference or care for the saints. In the church life we need to be brought back to God, terminated, and replaced with Christ. In all things we need to be righteous, sanctified, and redeemed. When Christ becomes wisdom to us from God in our daily experience, eventually in everything He will be our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption.
According to 1 Corinthians 1:30, it is of God that we are in Christ. Whatever we believers, as the new creation, are and have in Christ is of God, not of ourselves. It is God who put us in Christ, and it is God who made Christ wisdom to us. How can God in Christ be transmitted into our being so that we may have Christ as our power and wisdom? This is because God has put us into Christ, transferring us from Adam into Christ (2 Cor. 5:17) through Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection (Gal. 2:20) and by our believing and being baptized (John 3:15; Gal. 3:26-28). Christ could not become wisdom to us before we were in Him. But when we believed into Christ and were baptized into Him, God put us into Him, and then Christ became wisdom to us.
Although we never thought or even dreamed that we could be in Christ, one day through the gospel God called us and caused us to believe in Christ and to be baptized into Him. In so doing, God put us into Christ. To be baptized is to be put into Christ, the embodiment of God, and in Christ we believers have all been baptized into the Triune God. From that time onward, the heavenly, spiritual, and divine transmission has begun to unceasingly transmit all that God is and has into our being in order to make us one with Him. Just as we enjoy the constant supply of electricity transmitted from a power plant to our home, we may also always enjoy the rich supply of Christ as wisdom transmitted from God into our being.
Every day Christ, the power and wisdom of God, is being transmitted from God the Giver to us the enjoyers (Eph. 1:19-22). Without the transmission of Christ as power and wisdom to us from God, we have no power or wisdom. At times we may be weak, in sin, and in darkness, and thus be temporarily cut off from this transmission, but whenever we turn to the Lord and confess our sins, we are forgiven and are connected again to the transmission. As the transmission resumes, we enjoy Christ as our power, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. We must learn to remain in this transmission all the time. Our enjoyment of this continual transmission is the way to enjoy Christ.
Paul’s word in 1 Corinthians 1:30 concerning our being in Christ is related to the divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity. On the one hand, God has put us into Christ positionally. This makes it possible for us to experience the divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity. On the other hand, the more God in Christ has dispensed Himself into us, the more we are transferred into Christ experientially. Although through Christ’s redemption God has already transferred us from Adam into Christ, according to our actual experience we have been transferred into Christ only in part. From the standpoint of our position, we have already been transferred into Christ as the result of God’s work, and we are now in Christ. But experientially we are not yet wholly in Christ. Therefore, God is continually seeking to dispense Christ into our being in order that we may be transferred into Christ experientially more and more.