In this message we come to a point that is greatly missed and neglected by today’s Christianity. This point is transformation. Romans 12:2 says, “Do not be fashioned according to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind.” Then 2 Corinthians 3:18 says that we are to be transformed into the image of the glory of Christ by the Lord Spirit. The One who transforms us is the Lord Spirit, the very God who is today the Spirit. The Lord Spirit is a compound divine title like the Father God.
When I came to the United States, my burden was with three main items. The first item was the all-inclusive Christ. The first conference of the Lord’s recovery in the United States was on the all-inclusive Christ, based upon three verses from Deuteronomy 8 (vv. 7-9). Eventually, I told people that this all-inclusive Christ is today the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). The second item with which I had a heavy burden to tell God’s elect was the truth concerning the human spirit. The third item was transformation.
I spoke on the all-inclusive Christ during the last seven days of 1962. The next day, January 1 of 1963, I was brought by a brother to Whittier to share with a group of seeking ones there. My burden was to share the truth and experience of transformation. Today I am still speaking on transformation. Stanza 6 of Hymns, #548 says: “Transformation is my need, / To be broken more indeed, / That the clay may change in form, / To the treasure to conform.” We were made as an earthen vessel, but this vessel should be transformed in its appearance. Transformation is not a kind of outward reformation or correction. Transformation is a metabolic change in the substantial form.
In the previous message, we saw that in the universe today two worlds are going on. One is Satan’s cosmos, Satan’s satanic system, to systematize all the fallen people into his hands to form his kingdom. Even the United Nations is a great part of the cosmos of Satan. Satan built up his evil world by seducing man whom God created for God’s purpose. Adam accepted Satan, so Satan as sin came into Adam to be Adam’s nature. Romans 5 says that sin came in through one man (v. 12). Satan, sin, and the fallen man are now one. In the Bible the fallen man is called the flesh. Genesis 6 says that all men became flesh (v. 3). Satan, sin, and the flesh are the satanic trinity. They are three-in-one. These three coordinate together as one to build up Satan’s evil kingdom.
The first appearance of this kingdom was Babel, which was established by Nimrod. Nimrod was a Cushite, and Cush is today’s Ethiopia. God came in and scattered the rebellious ones at Babel, but He had not yet terminated the evil cosmos of Satan. Later, Egypt rose up to be a world power. The children of Abraham, God’s chosen people, went down to Egypt and stayed there for more than four hundred years. History tells us that they were also under the domination of Medo-Persia, Greece, and eventually Rome. Even today the whole world is under Romanism. While Satan is building up the world, his cosmos, by his satanic trinity (Satan, sin, and the fallen man), God is working in His Divine Trinity to build up another world. Satan’s world is altogether physical; God’s world is altogether private and spiritual. These two worlds are still going on.
Among the many people who became flesh are those chosen and predestinated by God before the foundation of the world. These people are God’s elect. God did not do anything to visit man in a direct way for the first four thousand years of man’s existence. It was two thousand years from Adam to Abraham, and two thousand years from Abraham to Christ. Then God suddenly came to visit man by incarnation. God came to the fallen race, including His fallen elect, in a very personal and affectionate way. He left His throne in the heavens and laid aside the form of God, temporarily and secretly hiding His divinity, to become a humble man by the name of Jesus.
God visited His elect in His human living for thirty-three and a half years. The Creator, the Almighty God, was on this earth living in His human shell as a little man to visit many people. He visited Peter, John, His mother, His mother’s sister, His cousins, and His fleshly brothers. He was very personal and affectionate. They did not realize who He was or what He was doing in His visitation. One day He went to the cross to terminate the old creation including the fallen humanity, the flesh. Through His death the physical Jesus was finished. The physical Jesus was God becoming a man for thirty-three and a half years. The Jews thought that Jesus was finished, but after three days this finished Jesus came out in resurrection in a transformed form. The first one to be transformed was Jesus. He was transformed from the physical form to the spiritual form.
On the evening of the day of resurrection, He came to His disappointed disciples. Although the doors were shut where the disciples were, Jesus suddenly appeared in their midst. He also did this again eight days later (John 20:26). Did He appear to the disciples physically or spiritually? This is a mystery. He was able to come into an enclosed room, but He also told Thomas to touch His hands and His side. Is He physical or spiritual? We can only say that He is the wonderful One. But after His ascension, He does not visit His seekers physically. We can testify that we were visited by Him spiritually.
Jesus was physical before the day of Pentecost, but the Christ who was preached beginning from Acts 2 became spiritual. The twenty-two Epistles from Romans through Revelation do not teach a physical Jesus; instead, they teach a spiritual Christ. This spiritual Christ is for producing His members by transforming sinners into spiritual men for the raising up of the churches. The churches are a bridge to bridge God’s transformed people from the physical side to the spiritual side.
Today the churches have a physical form and a spiritual reality. Ephesians 1 speaks of “the church, which is His Body” (vv. 22b-23a). The essence of the church is the Body of Christ. When a man dies, his corpse remains but the essence of his person is gone. He is here in his corpse physically, but he is gone in his essence, his spirit. Likewise, the church has two sides: the physical side and the spiritual side. The physical side is the church as the house of God, and the spiritual side is the Body of Christ. First Timothy 3:15 speaks of the church as the house of God physically speaking, and Ephesians 1:22-23 reveals the church as the Body of Christ spiritually speaking. It is not the church which will consummate in the New Jerusalem. Instead, the Body of Christ, as a precursor of the holy city, will consummate the New Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem is altogether not a physical city but a spiritual, organic constitution.
Before we were saved, we were merely physical beings in a physical world, but one day Jesus visited us privately in a spiritual way. We received Him and He regenerated us privately, secretly, and spiritually with God’s divine life. From that day we became spiritual, but just partially, in our spirit. The rest of our entire being still remained untransformed in the physical world. Stanza 2 of Hymns, #750 says: “God hath us regenerated / In our spirit with His life; / But He must transform us further— / In our soul by His own life.” After regeneration God works to transform our untransformed part, our soul.
Transformation is the cross of Christ crucifying our entire being. This cross is particularly crucifying our untransformed parts. We all have our particular natural disposition and character. I am a quick person, and my quick temperament needs to be crucified. When I have to wait for my wife, the “quick me” is crucified. I have been crucified by Christ practically for about seventy years, but my quick temperament is still here.
Every man’s self is his center. Everyone is self-centered. When we are put in a prominent position or are noticed by others in the church life, we are happy. This is because we are so self-centered. When others do not give strong “amens” to our sharing in the meetings, we are offended. We do not feel that the meetings are so good, because everyone else gets strong “amens” but us. This illustration shows how much we need to be transformed.
To be transformed is a metabolic matter. When the food that we eat is metabolically digested and assimilated by us, we are transformed in a physical way. We are what we eat. This is an illustration of our spiritual transformation with the life of God as the element. Metabolism needs some element, and this element is God Himself through Christ in three steps: in Christ’s death, in Christ’s resurrection, and in Christ’s ascension. We have the divine life of God, but this life has not been worked into our being to make this life a part of our being.