We are regenerated in Christ in resurrection (1 Pet. 1:3); in this rebirth the divine transfer takes place and transfers us out of Adam into Christ. Through regeneration God transferred us. Once we were in Adam, but today we are in Christ.
We were chosen by God the Father to be holy to partake of His holy nature and predestinated unto sonship to possess His divine life (Eph. 1:4-5). We participate in the holy nature of God and the divine life of God. We need to realize that our position is crucial. If we are in Adam, we are finished. If we are in Christ, we have God’s nature and possess God’s life.
We are judicially redeemed, forgiven, justified, and reconciled to God (Eph. 1:7; Rom. 3:24; 5:10a). All of this took place according to God’s righteous, legal requirements, so it is judicial.
We are organically regenerated to be the many sons of God, the many brothers of Christ, for the constitution of the church, the Body of Christ (1 Pet. 1:3; Rom. 8:14, 29; Eph. 1:22-23; Rom. 12:5). We are the sons of God and the brothers of Christ for an organism to satisfy the Triune God. This organism is the Body of Christ.
We are sanctified by the Spirit of life with the element of the divine nature (Rom. 15:16), renewed from the oldness of our old man by the Spirit of life (Rom. 12:2b; Titus 3:5), transformed by the Lord Spirit with the life element of Christ (Rom. 12:2b; 2 Cor. 3:18), conformed through transformation in life to the image of the firstborn Son of God, making us the many God-men, the mass reproduction of Christ the God-man, the prototype (Rom. 8:29), and glorified to be completely redeemed in our body, the framework of our entire being, for the full enjoyment of our divine sonship (Rom. 8:30, 23). We have received the divine nature, but the divine nature has to work within us by the Spirit of life to sanctify us into God’s holiness. Being holy is connected to God’s nature. If we do not have the divine nature of God, we can never be holy. God’s divine nature is the element of sanctification, and this element is wrought into our being by the Spirit. Then gradually we become holy as God is in His nature. Thus, we become God in His nature and in His life, but not in His Godhead. Regeneration, sanctification, renewing, transformation, conformation, and glorification are the steps which accomplish the very great career on this earth of making man God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead. This is for the full enjoyment of our divine sonship.
We are delivered out of the evil kingdom of Satan, that is, the authority of darkness (Col. 1:13a), freed from the warring, subduing, and killing power of sin (Rom. 6:7; 7:11, 17-23), freed from the yoke of slavery of the law (Gal. 5:1), and freed from the vanity of the old creation and the slavery of corruption (Rom. 8:20-21). We are fighting with sin, so there is a war going on, raging all the time. Sin is warring against us, subduing us, and killing us. But in Christ, we are freed from this sin. We are also freed from the yoke of slavery of the law. The law decreed by God through Moses enslaves us. Only in Christ can we be freed from that slavery.
We are freed from the vanity of the old creation. This is Paul’s expression in Romans 8. The old creation is vanity. Eventually, the entire old creation will pass away. This is why Solomon said that everything under the sun on this earth is vanity of vanities (Eccl. 1:2). Whatever we have is a part of the world, the world is the old creation, and the old creation is vanity. But in Christ we have been freed from this vanity. Today we are no longer in vanity. The world, the old creation, is vanity, and Christ is the reality. We are also freed in Christ from the slavery of corruption. Everything in the world is under corruption. Every new thing eventually decays. That is the slavery of corruption. To become old is a part of the slavery of corruption.
We are made a royal priesthood and a holy nation (Rom. 15:16; 1 Pet. 2:5, 9), the overcomers over Satan (Rev. 12:11), the overcomers over the world (1 John 5:5), more than conquerors over the environmental troubles (Rom. 8:35-39), and the kings to reign in the eternal life forever (Rom. 5:17, 21). This is all in Christ.