A number of you have outwardly been adjusted in your prayer, but I am concerned that you have not been transformed and conformed to the image of the firstborn Son of God. I am concerned that you may be outwardly behaving. To behave in this way is to pretend, and pretense is a lie with nice clothing. You may have a certain outward appearance as a cloak, but there is no real transformation taking place within you. We need to be transformed in our prayer, in the way that we worship, and in our meeting life. We need to be transformed in everything.
The New Testament requires us to be regenerated, to be renewed, to be transformed, and to be conformed to another One’s image, to the image of the firstborn Son of God. Who is this firstborn Son of God? He is the One who, as both God and man, has passed through death and resurrection. As the very God, He became a man, and He was a perfect man; but even this perfect man had to pass through death and resurrection. Death and resurrection transformed Him.
Before His incarnation Christ, the divine One, already was the Son of God (John 1:18; Rom. 8:3). By incarnation Christ put on an element, the human flesh, which had nothing to do with divinity. That part of Him needed to be sanctified and uplifted by passing through death and resurrection. By resurrection His human nature was sanctified, uplifted, and transformed. Hence, by resurrection He was designated the Son of God with His humanity (Rom. 1:4; Acts 13:33; Heb. 1:5). We need to be transformed and conformed to the image of such a One who has passed through death and resurrection to become the firstborn Son of God.
The Lord Jesus also told us that if we want to follow Him, we have to deny ourselves (Matt. 16:24). The self includes all of our seclusion, individualism, disposition, character, and peculiarity. The self is our entire natural person. We have to deny ourselves not only in prayer but also in everything. In the church life, a number of us behave and act according to what we are, and what we are is absolutely natural.
You might be a very nice person, but your niceness is an offense to the Spirit. You are nice, but you are not in the Spirit. You are nice, but you are nice in your self, in your natural life.
Some have been in the recovery for years, but there has been no real change within them. They may have changed a lot from being bad to being good. That was the change we saw. But this is not the change by transformation from the old creation to the new creation. We welcome the change that comes by transformation. But we do not welcome the change from being bad to being good. We need a change from the old creation to the new creation. We do not want a mere outward change. Transformation is something inward, dealing with the constitution of our being. Transformation implies a kind of metabolism; it is an inward change by the addition of a new element into the very essence of our being.
There are many things related to us and to our service in the church life which are not in the Spirit. They may be nice things and even good things, but they are not in the Spirit. We need transformation. Otherwise, the church life cannot exist as it should. What is existing among us to a great extent is something natural, from the old creation.
We may have many good things in the church life, but the Bible puts good together with evil in the category of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Both good and evil are of the same category, of the same tree. There is another tree which is so simple—the tree of life. Life is purely God, so the tree of life is the tree of God.
Paul told us that before he received the Lord, he had attained to the top of his religion (Gal. 1:14). He even said that he had become blameless with respect to the righteousness which is in the law (Phil. 3:6). Paul was blameless according to man’s judgment, but eventually he said, “I have been crucified.” Regardless of whether I am bad or good, “I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20a). Thus, in our prayer and in everything we do in the church life, we should have the assurance that it is not our doing, but the doing of another One, who has passed through death and resurrection and who is now living in us. This is what it means to live a life of transformation.
The vital groups have been in existence for nine weeks. Thus far, I have passed on mainly five things for you to seek after.