In the last two messages we saw that God’s eternal purpose is to impart Himself into us as life in Christ through the Holy Spirit. The Scriptures tell us that we Christians are predestinated by God to be conformed to the image of His Son, Christ (Rom. 8:29). When we receive Christ as our Savior, we have Him as our very life; the Spirit brings Christ into our spirit to be life to us and regenerate us. Regeneration means that we receive another life—a life other than our natural life. Although we possess a natural life by our first birth, we receive another life, the divine life, by receiving Christ as Lord and Savior. This divine life is the very Christ Himself. Now we are mingled with God, and God is mingled with us. We are one with God; we are no more merely human beings but human beings mingled with God. God is within us as our life; the very Triune God in Christ as the Spirit is indwelling our spirit (v. 11). Now we and God are one spirit (1 Cor. 6:17). This is a wonderful, divine mystery. The people of the world can never understand this. Their thought is that we Christians embrace a certain kind of religion. They do not realize that we have the very God Himself in Christ indwelling us.
We are all familiar with the word regeneration. We know that when we received Christ, we were regenerated; we were born again (John 3:3). Our second birth was not of the flesh but of the Spirit (v. 6). This birth did not originate from the life of our parents but from the life of God. Now as real Christians, who have been born again, we have two lives. We have the human life and the divine life. From our parents we have the life of Adam, while from God we have the life of Christ. Therefore, through regeneration we have a divine birth.
In this message, however, I want to present another word: transformation. Perhaps we do not have much appreciation of this term. However knowledgeable most Christians are of regeneration, transformation is a word which is not familiar to them. This word is used twice in the New Testament, referring to a metabolic change in a believer. It is used once in 2 Corinthians 3:18 where Paul tells us that we are being transformed into the image of Christ. The second time it appears is in Romans 12:2, where Paul charges the believers to be transformed by the renewing of their mind. The expression transformed by renewing is a lovely term. To be transformed is a very crucial matter that we need to experience after we have been regenerated. Although we are indeed regenerated persons, we need to realize that we are now in the process of being transformed.
Transformation involves a change from one form into another. It is to be shaped into a certain form through the addition of the divine substance. Therefore, we may say that we are being transformed into the form of Christ. Suppose a typical American, who possesses an American mind, emotion, will, temper, and habit, is regenerated. Now that he has been regenerated, he is no more merely an American; he is even the more a Christian. On the one hand he is an American, while on the other hand he is a Christian. However, at first he appears to be only a gentleman with an American form. God’s intention is to transform him from an American form to the form of Christ. It is the same with a Chinese gentleman. Although he may be Cantonese by nature, suppose this person also becomes a Christian. Born with a Cantonese mind and exhibiting a Cantonese temper and habit, he is totally Cantonese, yet he is now a regenerated Christian. He, too, must be transformed, not from the Cantonese form into the American form but from the Cantonese form into the form of Christ. No matter how different we are, we have all been regenerated by the same Christ and with the same life. However different in form, we all need to be transformed from the natural and original form into one form—Christ Himself.
Although we have the life of Christ, it is doubtful that we have the form of Christ. If we are asked whether or not we have the life of Christ, we will surely answer yes. But our thinking, temper, and habits may be natural and not bear the expression of Christ. Our way of living may be ten percent Christ and ninety percent Cantonese. We need to ask ourselves whether or not we have the form of Christ. Praise the Lord, we do have the life of Christ! But if you ask me how much of the form of Christ I have, I may answer that I am only partly in His image. An amount of the Chinese form may still remain with me. Therefore, there is much need of transformation. To be regenerated is solely a beginning; it is the start of our Christian life. There is a process after regeneration called transformation. We have been regenerated, and now we are in the process of transformation. Ultimately we will be brought into glorification.
Although we have been regenerated with the life of Christ, we may not have that much of the form of Christ. We have the life of Christ, but we are not like Christ in the way we think, in the way we love things, in the manner in which we choose things, and in the way we conduct ourselves. Many of us are still mostly American or Chinese in form. We do not manifest the form of Christ but another form. I have met a good number of real believers in Japan, for example, and I stayed with them for a number of days. However, when I was with these lovely brothers all the time, I had the registration that they were more Japanese than Christian. I realized that although they had the life of Christ and were regenerated, they were short of transformation. They were very good and nice but very lacking in the form of Christ, that is, in the reality of Christ within, which is expressed outwardly.