NOT CONFORMED TO THIS AGE BUT
TRANSFORMED BY THE RENEWING OF THE MIND
FOR THE BUILDING UP OF THE BODY
In our experience the liberating Spirit becomes the transforming Spirit (2 Cor. 3:18). The Spirit's liberating work is also the Spirit's transforming work. Eventually we will be transformed into the image of Christ. This is why in Romans 12:2 Paul says, "Do not be fashioned according to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind." To be fashioned according to this age is to be conformed to the present course of the world. Instead of being conformed to the present age, we should be transformed by the renewing of the mind. The more we are transformed, the more we are delivered from the flesh, the self, and the world.
Are you clear about what the world is? Anything can become an item of the world to us, if that thing occupies us and preoccupies us. You need to be fully emancipated from every occupying and preoccupying thing. The time must come when you will be able to say, "Lord, I praise You that I have been liberated. I have been fully emancipated from every kind of preoccupation. On this earth there is nothing occupying me or preoccupying me." When this is your situation, you will have nothing to do with the world, yet you will still be living on the earth. You will continue to need food, marriage, clothing, housing, and transportation, but none of these things will occupy or preoccupy you.
If we see the vision of the world, we will realize that we should not love anything worldly. We should not love any occupying or preoccupying thing. Rather, we should give our love fully, wholly, and absolutely to the Lord. All our capacity is for Him. All the ground, all the room, in us is for Him.
We all need the vision of the world that we may see what the world is and how the enemy uses the world to keep us from realizing the Body. Only when we have been liberated from the world will we be fully built up to realize the Body life.
(The Heavenly Vision, Chapter 5, by Witness Lee)
