IV. THROUGH THE LORD SPIRIT
The transforming is through the Lord Spirit (2 Cor. 3:18b). The Lord Spirit is a compound title. This expression confirms that the Lord Christ is the Spirit and the Spirit is the Lord Christ. The Lord Spirit is a compounded person. He has been compounded with all of the elements of Christ’s person and work. Jesus was the complete God and the perfect man compounded together, so He was the compounding of divinity mingled with humanity. That was His first step of being compounded. The second step was His passing through death and resurrection. In this step He was compounded with His death and its effectiveness and with His resurrection and its power. In resurrection He became a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b), and today He is the Lord Spirit.
Our being transformed is through the Lord Spirit, that is, through the pneumatic Christ in resurrection and through the life-giving Spirit as the reality of the resurrection of Christ. Today this consummated, compounded Spirit is the life-giving Spirit, and this compounded Spirit within us is the resurrection. This means the resurrection of Christ lives in us, and this living resurrection is the pneumatic Christ. Pneumatic is an adjective form of pneuma. Pneuma in Greek means "the Spirit." The pneumatic Christ is the Christ who is the Spirit.
V. FOR THE GROWTH AND MATURITY
OF THE SEEKING BELIEVERS
The transforming of the sanctifying Spirit is for the growth and maturity of the seeking believers. This transpires by our pursuing Christ (Phil. 3:12). Today the people in the whole world are pursuing worldly pleasure and entertainment, but we are here day by day pursuing Christ. Day and night Christ is our goal. We pursue Christ by forgetting the things behind and stretching forward to the things before (Phil. 3:13). We even need to forget our experience of Christ in the past. We should not stay with our past experiences. We need to forget the many things behind us. One thing is before us; that is Christ. We are forgetting all the things behind, and we are stretching forward to possess the Christ before us.
We are pursuing Christ and stretching forward to reach the goal and gain the prize — the experienced Christ (Phil. 3:14). I recently received a letter from the parents of two of the full-time trainees, thanking me for training their sons. Actually, however, I am not here training people. I am ministering Christ to people and trying to take the lead to pursue Christ. I only care for Christ.
VI. FOR THE CONSTITUTION OF
THE MEMBERS OF THE NEW MAN AND
THE BUILDING UP OF THE BODY OF CHRIST
We are the members of the corporate universal new man with Christ as the Head and with all the believers as His members. These members are constituted by being transformed. This transforming is a constituting work day by day in big things and in small things. In this constituting work, the embodiment of the Triune God, Christ, is being added and wrought into our being every day in all things. This is not only for the constituting of the members of the new man (Col. 3:10-11) but also for the building up of the Body of Christ (Eph. 4:16).
(The Spirit with Our Spirit, Chapter 14, by Witness Lee)
