In order to be our life God was incarnated to accomplish redemption for us. He died and resurrected, and in resurrection He was transfigured to become a life-giving Spirit that He might enter into us. In this way He regenerated us, and we received Him as our life within. After this what we need to do is to allow this life to transform us from within. This transformation is entirely a matter of spiritual metabolism. We thank the Lord that we are all in this process of transformation. However, this transformation has a goal. What is this goal? It is to be conformed to the image of the firstborn Son of God. In this chapter we want to consider the matter of conformation.
Conformation is the effect of transformation in life (2 Cor. 3:18), with the firstborn Son of God, the God-man who joins God to man, as the mold (Rom. 8:29). Conformation is the end result of transformation. It includes the changing of our inward essence and nature, and it also includes the changing of our outward form, that we may have the same image of Christ, the God-man, in glory.
God’s firstborn Son, the God-man who joins God to man, is the mold to which we are being conformed. We are His mass production. Both the inward and the outward changes in us, the product, are the results of the operation of the law of the Spirit of life (v. 2) in our being.
The goal of God’s salvation in life is to conform the believers to the image of the firstborn Son of God (Rom. 8:29).
To be conformed to the image of the firstborn Son of God is to be conformed to the image of the God-man, who is the union of the processed Triune God with the transformed tripartite man. As the only begotten Son of God before His incarnation, Christ had divinity but not humanity. He was self-existing and ever-existing, as God was. His being the firstborn Son of God, having both divinity and humanity, began with His resurrection.
This God-man is a joining of the processed Triune God with the transformed tripartite man. He is both God and man. Now God has been processed, and man has been transformed. By joining these two together, Christ becomes the God-man to whose image we are being conformed. When we are conformed to the image of God’s firstborn Son, we are conformed, on the one hand, to the glorious image of God as the Word who became flesh, and on the other hand, to the lowly image of the man in whom God was embodied (Phil. 2:7-8). Thus, we live the God-man life, a life in which the divine attributes are expressed in human virtues.
From the beginning Christ existed in the form of God, having the essence and nature of God’s glorious being. When He became in the likeness of men, entering into the condition of humanity, He was found in the lowly image of a man who embodied God. On the one hand, as God He was glorious; on the other hand, as a man He was lowly. Christ joined these two aspects together. When He was on this earth, sometimes He was glorious; that was His being God. Other times when He spoke, people might not have seen much glory there, but the words they heard Him speak were truly glorious. If we read Matthew chapters five through seven or John chapters fourteen through seventeen, we can sense that this Man, the Lord Jesus, is so great. His wisdom and His utterances are indescribable. We can only say, “Glorious! Glorious! Truly glorious!” He spoke as a man, yet what was expressed in His words was glory. Was Jesus the Nazarene speaking there? Yes, He was the lowly Jesus of Nazareth, yet His words, which were the words of God, were full of glory. His words were great, high, and glorious, yet they were uttered by a humble, lowly, and small Jesus. How marvelous this is!
Such is the image to which we are being conformed. In this image there is man, and there is also God; there is glory, and there is also lowliness. By ourselves we cannot make it. We need this wonderful One to save us by being our life. He can conform us to such an image that we may live such a God-man life, a life in which the divine attributes are expressed in human virtues.
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