God has a purpose to consume our sinful body. If we are too comfortable and if everything is satisfactory to us, be assured that we will sin more. Being consumed restricts us from sinning. Our sinful body and its animating soul cooperate to do bad things. The soul is animating our body. Without the soul, the body is dead. The soul actually is the doer to animate the evil body. That is why God raises up circumstances to consume us. He may use our weakness and sickness to consume us.
This consuming is always realized and accepted by us through the killing of the death of Christ. Second Corinthians 4:10 speaks of our "always bearing about in the body the putting to death of Jesus." The putting to death is the killing. We need the killing of the death of Christ. We have a particular roommate because we need to be killed. A wife gets a particular husband because she needs to be killed. According to God's ordination, there is no divorce. We must take the putting to death of Jesus, the killing of Jesus. Then we will be renewed and transformed.
The fine work carried out by the transformation of the sanctifying Spirit in us eventually works out our glorification (2 Cor. 4:17; Rom. 8:18). The extent to which we experience the Lord's glory depends on how much consuming we have gone through, how much we have suffered. Our sufferings mean a lot in God's purpose. All our sufferings are a help to our being glorified. Glorification is the result that comes out of our being consumed, our suffering. Romans 8:18 indicates that if we are going to be glorified, we have to suffer. To suffer is a condition, a spiritual term, God made with us. We have to pay the price of suffering for glorification.
This is all involved with the matter of renewing. Among God's people, the suffering ones are new. Those who are always enjoying riches, good health, and a wonderful situation are doing well in a material and physical way, but spiritually they are old. The suffering ones day after day become something else because they are being renewed. We must go through the killing, the putting to death, of Jesus so that we can enter into His resurrection.
The renewing is accomplished in the spirit of our mind (Eph. 4:23). Our spirit is spreading into our mind. Romans 8:6 says that we need to set our mind on our spirit. Eventually, our spirit enters into our mind. Our spirit entering into our mind and our mind being set on the spirit are one thing. This means our mind and the spirit now are one. It is in such a spirit that we are renewed all day. All day we have to set our mind upon the spirit, and we have to have a strong spirit to invade our mind, to enter into our mind, so that our spirit and our mind are one. Then the spirit will take the lead, not the mind.
The renewing of the sanctifying Spirit consummates in the maturity of our new man. Colossians 3:10 says, "And have put on the new man, which is being renewed unto full knowledge according to the image of Him who created him." This is a very rich, all-inclusive word. On the one hand, we put on the new man; on the other hand, the new man is being renewed. This results in full knowledge according to the image of Him who created us. The new man was created in our spirit and is being renewed in our mind unto full knowledge according to the image of Christ. This renewing is according to the image of God, so it shapes us into the form of God. The renewing eventually will result in our conformation, causing us to have God's appearance.