The seeker’s transformation in Song of Songs can be seen in the description of her in 1:10-11: “Your cheeks are lovely with plaits of ornaments, / Your neck with strings of jewels. / We will make you plaits of gold / With studs of silver.” The perfected ones coordinate with the transforming Spirit to perfect the lover of Christ by adding God’s divine nature (plaits of gold) into her. Then silver studs are added to bind the gold plaits together. Silver refers to Christ with His all-inclusive redemption in His death, His resurrection, and His ascension. His death is the redeeming, all-terminating, and life-releasing death; His resurrection is the all-germinating and life-dispensing resurrection; and His ascension is the all-transcending and all-attaining ascension. In His ascension He transcended Hades, the earth, the air, and even the third heaven. His ascension transcends everything that would frustrate us from going to God. We have to receive the reality of Christ in all these aspects.
First, the seeker in Song of Songs was likened by the Lord to a horse in Egypt (1:9), signifying the world; she is enslaved by Satan, signified by Pharaoh’s chariots. She is a mare among Pharaoh’s chariots for his worldly purpose. She is full of natural strength with a strong character, worldly, satanic, and for the world’s purpose. But then she is transformed to be a lily (2:1b-2). How can a horse be transformed into a lily? A horse is a strong animal, but a lily is just a little flower. God wants a lily rather than a horse. God does not want our natural strength. The lily does not have strength. The seeker being transformed into a lily signifies that she is now living a life trusting in God, not in her natural strength. She is also looking unto God with a single eye (eyes of doves), implying that she must also be a dove looking to God by focusing her eyes on one single goal (1:15b).
Her transformation is carried out by the transforming Spirit. The strings of jewels are a sign of the transforming Spirit. Thus, the seeker is perfected with the Triune God. Gold signifies God the Father in His golden nature; silver signifies Christ the Son in His all-inclusive redemption; and strings of jewels signify God the Spirit in His transformation. The perfected ones help the seeker to know God in His nature and to experience Christ in His death, resurrection, and ascension. This is to beautify the seeker in her submission to God through the transformation of the Spirit with the divine nature of God (plaits of gold) as ornaments in her expression (cheeks). The perfected ones also coordinate with the Spirit to beautify the seeker through the dispensing of the transforming Spirit with the divine life expressed as jewels in strings. Transformation is the working of the Triune God’s attributes into the seeking believers to become their virtues.
The perfected ones who have experienced this kind of transformation know how to perfect others. We all need to learn how to perfect others with the attributes of the Triune God. We need to know what the person before us needs. We should not look merely at a person’s mistakes. Instead, we should realize that they are short of God’s golden nature and life. They are short of Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension. They are short of the Holy Spirit’s work. We have to add all these things to them. We should not condemn others; instead, we should minister the life-supply to them. We need to impress them that in the proper church life we pay our attention fully to the Triune God: God the Father as the divine nature and life, God the Son as the divine element, and God the Spirit as the transforming One in His divine essence. This is to minister the Triune God to them.
Such transformation and perfecting can take place only in the proper church life. The Lord directs us to the proper church life for the purpose of producing the essence of the church to constitute the Body of Christ for the upcoming consummation of the New Jerusalem. The seeker did not know God’s economy and God’s purpose, God’s intention, but the Lord knows. In His private and spiritual contact with the seeker, God’s eternal purpose is implied. The Lord’s direction always implies God’s eternal purpose, that is, to accomplish the economy of God. The perfecting in the church life is for the building up of the Body of Christ in the maturity of the lovers of Christ for the accomplishment of the eternal economy of God.