Hymns, #948, #949, and #972 are all on Christ as our hope of glory. Stanza 1 of Hymns, #948 says, “Myst’ry hid from ages now revealed to me, / ’Tis the Christ of God’s reality. / He embodies God, and He is life to me, / And the glory of my hope He’ll be.” The chorus reads, “Glory, glory, Christ is life in me! / Glory, glory, what a hope is He! / Now within my spirit He’s the mystery! / Then the glory He will be to me.” Stanza 2 says, “In my spirit He regenerated me, / In my soul He’s now transforming me. / He will change my body like unto His own, / Wholly making me the same as He.” Stanza 3 says, “Now in life and nature He is one with me; / Then in Him, the glory, I will be; / I’ll enjoy His presence for eternity / With Him in complete conformity.”

Hymns, #972 is on the central thought of God. Stanza 1 says, “Lo, the central thought of God / Is that He be one with man; / He to man is everything / That He might fulfill His plan.” Stanza 9 says, “God in man and man in God / Mutual dwelling thus possess; / God the content is to man, / And the man doth God express.” Today God is in man, and man is in God. God and man thus possess a mutual dwelling. God is man’s content, and man is God’s expression.

Now we know that God’s desire and His intention are to be man’s life. The central thought of God is that He be one with man; He wants to be everything to man that He might fulfill His plan. Therefore, He Himself became a man through incarnation to accomplish redemption. Then He entered into resurrection and released His divine life. In His resurrection He became a life-giving Spirit. This life-giving Spirit comes into us and regenerates us. After He regenerates us, He dwells in our spirit, and from that time on He wants to spread out daily from our spirit. He wants to permeate all the parts of our soul, including our mind, emotion, and will, and thus transform our whole being into God: our mind transformed into God’s mind, our emotion transformed into God’s emotion, and our will transformed into God’s will. Thus, we become God-men. But there remains a part of us which is still not transformed, and that is our body. After we are saved, the part that is the most troublesome to us today is our body, and this is the part that is the most difficult to deal with.

However, the Lord has given us a promise, and this promise is that He will come to transfigure our body. This is the third part of transformation, which is to bring our body into glory. Glory is God expressed. Therefore, to be brought into glory is to be brought into God Himself that we may fully enjoy God. This is the peak, the consummation, of transformation, in which we are transformed to such a degree that we are the same as God. Except for the fact that we have no part in God’s person, that is, the Godhead, we are exactly the same as God in His life, His nature, and His outward expression, His glory. This is clearly revealed in God’s holy Word.

Today God is a mystery in us, and in the future this mystery will be the glory. God is in our spirit, and our spirit is full of God. The God who is in our spirit is permeating our soul daily, spreading out from our spirit day by day. He does not reason with us. When we agree, He comes; even when we disagree, He comes. He is not only permeating our whole being but is also spreading outward from our spirit. The God who indwells us does not reason with us. He is the only One who is; we are not. We must decrease, and He must increase. Not only so, after He comes, He would not let us go; He wants us to stay with Him. God is in our spirit, and every day He also works to occupy our mind, our emotion, and our will. He is within every part of our being. Therefore, we have a hymn that says, “Thy Spirit, Lord, in mine, I pray, / O’erflow my being as a flood, / That every part with glory shine / And everywhere be Thee and God” (Hymns, #489, stanza 8). This means that we have God in our spirit, and our entire soul is also occupied by God. Hence, we are God-men. What we still lack today is the transfiguration of our body. However, we have a glorious hope, that is, that one day He will come to transfigure our body so that we may enter into God fully. Then from the inside to the outside we will have the life of God, the nature of God, and the glorious expression of God. Moreover, we will be in God. This is the central revelation of the holy Scriptures.

In this conference, my only burden is to show you God’s salvation in life. The first step of God’s salvation in life is to regenerate us. The second step is to transform us in our soul. The third step is that He will conform us from within to the image of God’s firstborn Son. This firstborn Son of God is mysterious. He was God, who came into humanity, put on humanity, and died on the cross to terminate everything negative and release His life. Then He resurrected and became a life-giving Spirit. This life-giving Spirit now comes into us. He is the firstborn Son of God, and God is conforming us to the image of this firstborn Son of God. In God’s firstborn Son there is God and there is also man; there is death and there is also the effectiveness of death; there is resurrection and there is also the power of resurrection. He has everything in Him. This all-inclusive One now lives in us. Do we want God? He is here. Do we want uplifted humanity? It is also here. We who have God and allow God to transform us within are truly the men above all men. Not only do we have God, but we also have the uplifted humanity. Every believer is a Christ-man, and a Christ-man is a God-man. In our spirit is God, and in our soul-our mind, emotion, and will-is God. Our whole being is God. Now we are waiting for the fourth step of God’s salvation in life, that is, the transfiguration and glorification of our body.
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