God’s Complete Salvation: refs. include Watchman Nee and Witness Lee

The two aspects of God’s complete salvation

The eight items of God’s organic salvation

Conformation

Key verse: 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;”

The believers’ conformation to the image of Christ is the capstone of their transformation in the divine life, the step by which they are qualified to participate in God’s divinity in full. God predestinated us to be conformed to the image of His Son so that He might be the Firstborn among many brothers (Rom. 8:29). For us to be conformed to the image of God’s firstborn Son means that we express, or live out His image. When the believers are conformed to His image, living it out in their daily life, then the world will see Christ as the Firstborn of God expressed in all His brothers. All will bear the same image. Through this conformation to His image, we will be the “reprints” of Christ that we may be exactly like Him in life and nature, but not in His Deity (1 John 3:2). He is the wonderful prototype and we are His mass reproduction.

To know how to be conformed to the image of God’s Firstborn, we must first examine how this One lived on earth. As the Son of Man, Christ lived daily under the shadow of the cross, denying and crucifying His self, His human life and nature. The crucified life that He lived on earth became a pattern, a “mold” for us. In our daily living we should also be conformed to this mold of His death (Phil. 3:10). To be conformed to Christ’s death is not a matter of our human endurance. We do not need to learn to try our best to endure; instead, we simply need to die (1 Cor. 15:31). Practically, the way to die is by praying unceasingly. Therefore, if we want to experience being conformed to the image of God’s Son, we need to be daily conformed to His death in all things by enjoying the resurrection power of Christ (Phil. 3:10).