SECOND CORINTHIANS 5:5-6
Second Corinthians 5:5 and 6 show [the Triune] God having wrought us for our transfiguration; the Spirit having been given to us as the pledge; and we, at home in the body, being away from the Lord [the Son]. The word "wrought" is a difficult word to define. God has wrought us for our transfiguration. The word "wrought" means fashioned, shaped, prepared, or made fit. God has wrought, fashioned, shaped, prepared, made us fit, for the very purpose that our mortal body might be swallowed up by His resurrection life. This will be our transfiguration. The word for "wrought" in the Chinese translation means to sow a seed into the soil and to water it that the seed may grow up to be a plant to blossom and to bear fruit. In order for the seed to fulfill its purpose of blossoming and bearing fruit, I have to work on it. First, I put it into the soil. Then I water it so that it can grow. This makes it prepared to be in a proper form so that it can carry out my purpose. In like manner, God has wrought us for our transfiguration.
When we repented, believed in the Lord, and called upon His name, we were regenerated. The Triune God was put into us. From the moment we were regenerated, God began to fashion us, to work us. God wants to use us to fulfill His purpose. This is why we are still under God’s working, God’s fashioning, God’s shaping. We will be under God’s working until the day that we will be fully matured. The apostle Paul was eventually matured and ready to be transfigured. We need to allow God to work us until our mortal body is swallowed up by His resurrection life. God needs to work us, to prepare us, to fashion us, and to fit us for His purpose.
To work a piece of metal is to shape it by hammering it with tools. Then the metal is wrought. However, there is nothing organic about working a piece of metal. God’s working us is fully organic. To sow something is organic. Watering helps this organic seed to grow as it gains the increase of the inner life. A piece of iron can be shaped and formed, but that is not organic. God’s shaping us is organic by the growth in life. He shapes us by transforming us with the element of life. A piece of iron cannot be transformed. We can change its form, but that change is not transformation. Transformation is not merely an outward change but a change from within metabolically and organically. As the divine life grows and increases within us, we are transformed inwardly and organically. God is working us with Himself as the organic element added into our being that we may be transformed, not only in form but also in nature metabolically and organically. His divine life is added into our being, and His life element is changing us as it is increasing within us. Then we will be shaped, formed, and fitted so that we can be transfigured.
Different fruits have different kinds of shapes. An apple, a banana, and a coconut all have different shapes. The shapes of such fruits are not arrived at by outward regulation. We do not need to make a round box to shape an apple. Instead, as the life of the apple grows, it spontaneously becomes formed into its life shape. When we plant a seed and water it, the life within it grows. Eventually, the life’s growing shapes the fruit into a certain kind of appearance. Therefore, the shape, the form, comes into being, not by outward regulation, such as hammering, but by the inward growing with the life element. Each kind of fruit has its own shape according to the very essence of its element. Similarly, we have the divine life, and this divine life has its own shape.
In 2 Corinthians 5:5 and 6, Paul’s thought is that we were made in the image of God, and God has added Himself into our being as a growing element. Now God is working us so that we may grow. The growing of this divine life within us will shape us into a certain form that fits our coming transfiguration. The teaching of 2 Corinthians is altogether a shaping teaching, a forming teaching, a working teaching. God is working us to shape us, to form us, so that we may be fit for the up-coming transfiguration. Today we are here under His shaping, His working.
The entire book of 2 Corinthians is a "working book." God is working us all day by day throughout our entire lives. He is working us in the same way that a farmer works a little plant day by day. Eventually, the plant blossoms and bears fruit. The Triune God has wrought us for our transfiguration. At our transfiguration our entire being will be saturated with Christ. God has given us the Spirit as the pledge, the earnest, the foretaste, the guarantee, of this wonderful and marvelous part of His complete salvation for us in Christ. The pledge guarantees us that we will be transfigured. We will be transfigured by resurrection life swallowing the death in our mortal body (1 Cor. 15:54). Actually, our new body will be our old body which has been transfigured with the divine element under the divine working.
Presently, we are at home in the body and away from the Lord, the Son, until the day when He returns and we are raptured to meet Him. Then we will all be home together with Him. Our home is the Triune God (Psa. 90:1). By the divine element of the Triune God, we have been regenerated. We are now growing day by day with this divine element. Eventually, this divine element, which is actually the Triune God Himself, will be our eternal dwelling place in our transfiguration.
(Living In and With the Divine Trinity, Chapter 7, by Witness Lee)
