According to the revelation in the New Testament, in the progressing stage of God’s full salvation, which is the stage of transformation, the first matter is for the believers to be in the dispensing of the Divine Trinity to experience and enjoy the processed Triune God. At the same time, the believers experience God’s redemption continuously in forgiveness, cleansing, sanctification, justification, and reconciliation. For the divine conformation, the believers enjoy the dispensing of the Divine Trinity in the divine transformation. In this lesson we want to begin to consider the dispensing in the divine transformation for the divine conformation.
Enjoying the Father in the Father’s love, enjoying the Son in the Son’s grace, and enjoying the Spirit in the Spirit’s fellowship is the dispensing of God (2 Cor. 13:14). This enjoyment of the processed Triune God is for transformation, which issues in conformation. Transformation is a matter of essence, whereas conformation is a matter of shape. Christ has a shape, an image, and we need to be conformed to His shape.
Transformation is not outward correction or adjustment; rather, it involves the element of Christ’s divine life being added into our entire being so that Christ’s image may be expressed outwardly. Second Corinthians 3:18 says, “We all with unveiled face, beholding and reflecting like a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit.” This is Christ increasing in our entire being, replacing what we are so that He increases, and our natural life decreases. The old element of our natural being is discharged while the resurrected and glorified Christ as the life-giving Spirit is increasingly added into us to replace the natural element. This process is organic and metabolic. It is organic because it is related to life; it is metabolic because it is related to the process of discharging an old element and adding a new element. Metabolism involves three matters: first, supplying a new element; second, replacing an old element with the new element; and third, discharging or removing the old element so that something new may be produced.
This kind of transformation, this kind of metabolism, is from the Lord Spirit. The Lord Spirit is the transforming Spirit, producing a metabolism in us so that our whole being, including our life, nature, element, essence, shape, and outward expression, is totally transformed.
Second Corinthians 3:17 says, “The Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” According to the context of 2 Corinthians 3, this freedom is from the bondage of the letter of the law in the Old Testament, that is, the written regulations in the Old Testament. In Paul’s time, the Judaizers and those influenced by them were bound by the traditional regulations of the law. But this verse clearly shows that the believers in the New Testament, by the Spirit of the Lord, the pneumatic Christ, have been freed from the bondage of the law; that is, we are freed from its ordinances, ceremonial forms, religious teachings, and traditional doctrines. We are no longer bound by circumcision, dietary regulations, the Sabbath, and other Old Testament ordinances; we are wholly freed to let the Spirit of the Lord transform us. The Lord is the Spirit, and He is freedom to us. In Him there is no bondage, no Sabbath, no circumcision, and no dietary regulations. In Him there is complete freedom. He is our freedom. Whenever our heart turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away, and the Lord who is the Spirit frees us from the bondage of the letter of the law.