"process" is not just some events going on without particular significance. God in Christ was first processed to enter into us, to make His home in our heart, to saturate us with Himself.
"predestination": God's determining in the eternity past, our eternal destination.
Ephesians 1: 5 Predestinating us unto sonship through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will,
He chose us, and predestinated us. our goal is to become the New Jerusalem, the wife of the redeeming God.
Romans 8:29 Because those whom He foreknew, He also predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the Firstborn among many brothers;
God has foreknowledge. so He foreknew us and predstined us to be conformed to His Son. on the one hand, we have been predestinated unto sonship; the New Jerusalem is a composition of all God's sons. but the Lord needs a group of people, now on the earth, who are willing and ready to pass through the process they need, to be conformed to the image of His Son.
2 Corinthians 4: 4 In whom the god of this age has blinded the thoughts of the unbelievers that the illumination of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, might not shine on them.
Colossians 1:15 Who is the image of the invisible God, the Firstborn of all creation,
what does it mean to "be conformed to the image of His Son". if we read these two verses in the New Testanent, Christ is the image of God, the expression of God. we cannot be conformed to the only Begotten Son in the Godhead. God sent His Son by incarnation, to be a human being, to be knows as the Son of Man. and in His resurrection, His humanity was made divine, brought into the divine sonship. our Lord became a Son in a second way, the Firstborn Son, among many brothers. there are millions of believers who are transformed and glorified, to be the same as the Firstborn Son, but not in Godhead. our destiny is sonship, to be conformed to the image of the Firstborn Son. this is our eternal destiny. when will this conformation take place? this conformation requires our cooperation, not initiation. there is a process of conformation. we should feel comforted that God has destined this for each of us, the believers.
what is the process? the process is, God became a man, the Son of Man; the Son of Man, in resurrection, became the Firstborn Son of God. as the Firstborn Son of God, our Lord is the prototype for a mass reproduction of Himself, the many sons, the many brothers. Christ, the Firstborn Son, as the prototype, is right now, dweeling in us as the life-giving Spirit. we are one spirit with the Lord, with the Lord Spirit. the Christ in us is the prototype. He wants, now, to take a life long process, that will conform us, shape us to His own image.
we need to also see the battle. God wants to conform us. but the enemy Satan, in our soul wants to corrupt us to express Satan, the self. so the Spirit must transform our soul. but transformation is not the goal. the way the soul is dealt with is to allow the Lord to have access into our being, and form Himself within us. Maturity in the growth of life means being conformed to the image of the Son of God. now what shall we do? how shall we respond to the Lord? if we realise that we are not robots, but we are living being who can make the decision. when the Lord wants us to do certain things that will enable Him to carry out the transformation, we consecrate our whole being to the Lord, and tell Him, "Lord, You have right to do whatever is in Your heart concerning me, whatever You have planned. I just present myself to You, that the Father's will can be done in my life." day by day, we open our being to Him; we turn our heart to Him, giving the Lord access to every part of our being. then the Lord begins to move, to sanctify us, to renew us, to train us more and more to respond the sense of life within, throughout the day. so on our part, our responsibility is to respond to the Lord, to cooperate with the Lord. our wise God knows every fiber of our being, what our compacity is, what kind of dispostion we have. He knows in a tender-hearted way, and arranges our environment in a particular way for us to be transformed and conformed.
Romans 8:34 Who is he who condemns? It is Christ Jesus who died and, rather, who was raised, who is also at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.
Romans 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.
right now, our Lord is interceding for us. He is our High Priest, always interceding for us, for our families, for those we are burdened for. what is this Spirit interceding for? for our conformation, praying for us, for what we need to experience. what follows after the Spirit's interceding? it is "all things work together for good" this good is our being conformed to the image of the Son. God does work all things together for good, but only to certain believers, to "those who love God". do we love God as God? to love God is to realise that, when God functions as God, He does whatever He wills. He is the sovereign God. we all need such a realisation. God is my God. He is righteous, and everything He does is right, and for our good. we need the Lord to pour out the love in our heart, that we will love God as God.
Romans 8:37 But in all these things we more than conquer through Him who loved us.
Romans 8:38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor things present nor things to come nor powers
Romans 8:39 Nor height nor depth nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
the Lord loves us, and His love stirs up the victorious overming life of the resurrected Christ in our spirit. this is the love of the Father, poured out into the hearts of His many sons, through the process of transformation and conformation.
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