In their status as heirs of God, the believers share with all the saints in the light the Triune God embodied in Christ as their portion. Acts 26:18 speaks of the forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Christ. We have not only the forgiveness of sins on the negative side but also an inheritance on the positive side. This divine inheritance is the Triune God with all He has, all He has done, and all He will do for His redeemed people. This Triune God is embodied in the all-inclusive Christ (Col. 2:9), who is the portion allotted to the saints as their inheritance (Col. 1:12). The Holy Spirit is the pledge, the guarantee, of this divine inheritance, which we are sharing and enjoying today as a foretaste and will share and enjoy in full in the coming age and for eternity (1 Pet. 1:4).
Believers are generally taught that the inheritance in Acts 26:18 is a heavenly mansion. But this inheritance is actually Christ as the embodiment of the processed Triune God. This Christ is the portion of the saints. In Colossians 1:12 Paul says that the Father has qualified us “for a share of the portion of the saints in the light.” This portion is the “lot,” the inheritance, of the saints. The inheritance is a lot, and this lot is a portion.
In the Old Testament the tribes of Israel each received an allotment, a portion, of the good land for an inheritance. The good land is a type of the all-inclusive Christ given to us as our inheritance. The Greek word rendered “portion” in Colossians 1:12 can also be rendered “lot,” referring to an allotment. When Paul was writing this verse, he no doubt had in mind the picture of the allotting of the good land to the children of Israel (Josh. 14:1) and used the word portion with the Old Testament record of the land as the background. God gave the children of Israel the good land for their inheritance. In Colossians Christ is revealed as our portion, our lot. Just as the land of Canaan was everything to the children of Israel, so Christ, the reality of the type of the good land, is everything to us. Therefore, Christ, the embodiment of the processed Triune God, is our inheritance, which we share with all the saints in the light.
As heirs of God, the believers will also be glorified with Christ (Rom. 8:17b). Christ is now in glory. Eventually we shall be brought into glory and be glorified with Christ. When we are glorified, the body of our humiliation will be transfigured into a glorious body (Phil. 3:21). At that time we shall be completely and absolutely brought into God Himself as our glory. Then we shall appear with Christ in glory (Col. 3:4).
Some of us may hold strictly an objective concept of glorification. According to this concept, those who have been saved and regenerated will suddenly be glorified. Supposedly, the glorification of the believers will take place instantaneously at the coming of the Lord Jesus. But although our glorification may appear to be a sudden occurrence, it will actually be the consummation of a process of gradual growth and development in life. Through regeneration the life of glory has come into us, and now we have a seed of glory within us. The life that we have within us as a seed is the life of glory. This is Christ in us, the hope of glory (Col. 1:27). Eventually, this seed will blossom, and thereby we shall be brought into glory. It will be like the transfiguration of the Lord Jesus (Matt. 17:1-2). When the Lord was transfigured on the mountaintop, it was not that the shekinah glory suddenly came upon Him from the heavens; it was that the divine glory shone from within Him. Likewise, the glory into which we shall be brought is the out-shining of the very glory that is within us right now. This means that Christ is not leading us into some objective glory but into the very glory that has been sown into us as a seed. Therefore, to be glorified means to have the glory that has been sown into us as a seed saturate our whole being. When we have been permeated and saturated with the element of glory, that glory will come out of us. This is what it means for us, the heirs of God, to be glorified with Christ.
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