Conformation is to be conformed to the full-grown image of the firstborn Son of God, who is the first God-man, as the prototype for mass reproduction. He is God mingled with man and man mingled with God to live a God-man living that expresses all the attributes of God as human virtues for the expression of the divine glory in humanity, whose ultimate consummation, whose maturity in the divine life, is the New Jerusalem (Rom. 8:29; 1:4; Eph. 4:14; Rev. 21).
Glorification is to be saturated with the divine glory from within in the maturity of the divine life and to be glorified from without by and with the divine glory as the finalization of God’s judicial redemption of the believers’ body and the top portion of the divine sonship in God’s organic salvation (Rom. 8:30; Heb. 2:10; Phil. 3:21; Eph. 4:30; Rom. 8:23).
Ephesians 4:30 says that we have been sealed with the Holy Spirit “unto the day of redemption.” Redemption here refers to the redemption of our body. The Holy Spirit as the seal in us is sealing us continually with the element of God until our body is redeemed, that is, transfigured and glorified. This means that glorification is a matter of saturation. We may liken the Holy Spirit to ink that permeates and saturates the pages of a book. We all have been “inked” by the Holy Spirit, and year after year and day after day His “inking,” His dispensing of the divine life, is gradually saturating us until we are glorified. We have been “inked” by the Holy Spirit, who is God’s glory. We have therefore been “inked” by God’s glory, and the “inking” of God’s glory is causing His glory to permeate us until it saturates our entire being. If we see this, we will realize that glorification is not merely objective but very subjective.
The time of full saturation will be the time of the redemption of our body. We have been regenerated in our spirit and we now are being transformed in our soul, but our body is still the old creation. For this reason our old body needs to be redeemed. The last stage of redemption, the redemption of our body, will be the top portion of our sonship.
If we do not properly control our body according to the divine attributes expressed through the human virtues, our body becomes an ugly thing. As an elderly person I am quite weak in my body, and this bodily weakness troubles me. I can still move and work, but daily I am suffering because of my physical weakness. Inwardly I say, “Lord Jesus, one day I will be glorified. Then I will be delivered from this old body, which does not have any share in the divine sonship.”
The sonship is of the Spirit, and the Spirit is saturating us with the sonship until our body is saturated with the sonship. Then we will experience the full sonship, the full “sonizing,” the redemption of our body. We still have a part-our physical body-which has not been “sonized,” so we are waiting for the day when even our body will become part of the divine sonship.
We must be reminded all the time that Christ accomplishes God’s organic salvation not by Himself as the Christ in the flesh but by Himself as the life-giving Spirit.
We also have to remember that all the items of God’s organic salvation are carried out not by Christ’s earthly ministry judicially and objectively but by His heavenly ministry organically and subjectively. There is a great difference between Christ’s earthly ministry and His heavenly ministry. Today we are not being saved judicially and objectively by the earthly ministry of Christ in the flesh. We are being saved organically and subjectively through the heavenly ministry of the Christ who is the life-giving Spirit. To experience this organic salvation, we all need to enter into the mystical realm of Christ’s heavenly ministry.
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