In this message we come to the third step of the sanctifying Spirit. The first step is regeneration and the second step is renewing. Now we come to the transforming of the sanctifying Spirit.

The Bible is a whole revelation of God, unveiling God's economy. God in His economy desires to gain the Body of Christ to be the very organism of the Triune God. If we are going to understand regeneration, renewing, and transforming, we have to realize that all these steps are for God to carry out His economy for the producing of an organism.

For the carrying out of His economy, God created man, but man became fallen. Then God came in not only to redeem the fallen man but also to regenerate the rotten man. This regenerating means a lot. It means that Christ had to die on the cross to terminate the old, rotten man, to redeem the created man back to God, and to put this redeemed man into Christ. In Christ there is the process of death and resurrection throughout our Christian life. We are passing through death and resurrection all the time. This is God's ordained way. We have been redeemed back to God and put into Christ to go through a process of death and resurrection all the time.

This process begins with regeneration and continues through renewing and transforming until it reaches the goal, which is the last step of the sanctifying Spirit's work to transfigure our rotten, evil body (Phil. 3:21). Then we will have the consummating glorification. At that time there will be a Body in the universe before God. That will be the kingdom age with the New Jerusalem as its center. Eventually, after passing through the kingdom age, we will arrive at the fullness of the times (Eph. 1:10). The fullness of the times is the consummation of the ages. That will be the completion, the consummation, of God's carrying out of His economy in the new heaven and new earth with the New Jerusalem in eternity future. The transforming work of the sanctifying Spirit is for this goal.

We are regenerated and now we are being renewed day by day (2 Cor. 4:16). Transformation comes out of the renewing. Romans 12:2 says that we are transformed by the renewing. We were regenerated in our spirit. But we are still old in our soul and rotten in our body. So we need the further work of the transforming, sanctifying Spirit to renew our entire soul, our mind, emotion, and will. When our soul is fully renewed, we will arrive at our maturity and be prepared for our glorification, the transfiguration of our body.

This procedure, or process, implies the working of the death of Christ and the resurrection of Christ. Through the working of the death and resurrection of Christ, we are day by day renewed to be transformed. This goes on and on without ceasing from the day we are regenerated until the day we become matured. To be matured simply means we are ready to have our body transfigured that we may be glorified. Then God's work in us for the producing of His organism will be consummated. Now we know the proper position of transformation in the work of the sanctifying Spirit.

Transformation is a step on the way of God's process of us. In this transforming work, we pass through the death of Christ, which deals with and terminates all the matters of the old creation. Then we pass through the resurrection of Christ, which supplies us with all the riches of the element of Christ, who is the embodiment of the Triune God. Death takes away and discharges the old element, and resurrection supplies us with the new element, the riches of Christ, who is the embodiment of the Triune God. Now this element is constituted into our being. In this constitution is the mingling of the Triune God with His saved humanity. This is the Body of Christ, the organism of the processed Triune God.

Such a thing has been missed entirely by today's Christianity. Christianity's theology today is too traditional and objective. But the Scripture reveals to us a divine revelation, not a traditional theology. This divine revelation is very subjective to us. God wants to work Himself into us. In order to work God into us, Christ had to go through death to terminate the old creation and enter into resurrection to produce the new creation. The old element is discharged and the new element is supplied. This new element is Christ, the embodiment of the Triune God. The sanctifying Spirit transforms us by constituting the processed Triune God into us, the redeemed and regenerated humanity. The issue of this is the Body of Christ, the organism of the Triune God. All these things we are sharing here are part of our new culture. Hence, we need a new language full of new terminology.