Romans 8:29 and 30 say, “Whom He foreknew, He also predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He should be the Firstborn among many brothers; and whom He predestinated, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.” God has predestinated and justified us, and now He is conforming us to the image of His firstborn Son. Eventually, we shall have full glorification.
Since glorification will take place in the future, we may wonder why Paul in Romans 8:30 uses the past tense and says “glorified.” Although in our experience we have not been glorified, the Bible says that we have been glorified already. Everything mentioned in 8:30 is an accomplished fact-predestinated, called, justified, and glorified. The reason Paul speaks this way here is that, although we are subject to time, God is not. He is the God of eternity. With Him, as the eternal God, there is no time. Therefore, in the sight of God, we have already been glorified. With God everything is timeless. In His sight our predestination, calling, justification, and glorification are eternal matters. Hence, our glorification is secured and ensured in the eternal God Himself. Nevertheless, according to our experience, glorification will take place in the future.
Romans 8:30 does not say that we shall be put into glory; rather, this verse indicates that we shall be glorified. Glory is the expression of God. Christ, the hope of glory (Col. 1:27), has been sown into us as the seed of glory, and this seed will grow until it reaches the stage of blossoming, at which time the glory will come out. For God to glorify us means that the glory which has been sown into us saturates our whole being and is expressed through us. When our entire being has been permeated and saturated with the element of glory, that glory will come out of us. This is what it means for the believers to be glorified. When we experience this glorification, we shall be in the expression of the processed Triune God.
The believers will be glorified with the incomparable glory. In Romans 8:18 Paul says, “I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the coming glory to be revealed to us.” Here we see that the coming glory is incomparable. The present suffering means nothing compared with the coming glory. Because we have not yet been glorified, we cannot imagine what this incomparable glory is. Nevertheless, according to the revelation in the New Testament, we may be assured that this glory will come not objectively from without but subjectively and organically from within us.
Colossians 1:27b speaks of, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Here Paul says not only that Christ dwells within us, but also that He dwells within us as our hope of glory. In Greek “glory” in this verse is “the glory.” Christ is the mystery (v. 26) which is full of glory now. This glory will be manifested to its fullest extent when Christ returns to glorify His saints. Hence, it is a hope, the hope of glory. Christ Himself is this hope of glory.
Christ can be our hope of glory because He dwells in our spirit to be our life and our person. According to Colossians 3:4, when Christ our life is manifested, we shall be manifested with Him in glory. He will appear to be glorified in our redeemed and transfigured body (Rom. 8:23; Phil. 3:21; 2 Thes. 1:10). When Christ comes, we shall be glorified in Him, and He will be glorified in us. This indicates that the indwelling Christ will saturate our entire being, including our physical body. This will cause our body to be transfigured and to become like His glorious body. At that time Christ will be glorified in us. This is Christ in us as the hope of glory.
Colossians 1:27 indicates that the glory with which we shall be glorified dwells in us right now. This glory is not a thing-this glory is a living person, the indwelling Christ, the all-inclusive embodiment of the processed Triune God. This very Christ is now the seed of glory within us. As the blossom of a carnation flower is in the carnation seed, so our glorification is in Christ as the seed of glory dwelling in us. Eventually, the growth of this seed will issue in the “blossom” of the believers’ glorification.
Every believer in Christ, without exception, is like a carnation seed. 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. The Christ who is God’s expression, the effulgence of God’s glory (Heb. 1:3), is the One who has come into us to be our hope of glory. In the past we may have realized that Christ is the eternal life in us. Now, with Colossians 1:27 as the basis, we need to see that the Christ who is in us is also the hope of glory. Our hope of glory is the indwelling Christ Himself.
This glory is still a hope to us because, as yet, it has not come out of us. Since the seed of glory has been sown into us, we all hope to see it blossoming. One day, at the right time, Christ will come to be glorified in us. This means that He will come out of us. On the one hand, Christ is coming from without; on the other hand, He is coming from within us, for He has been sown into us as the seed of glory. This seed will grow until it reaches the stage of blossoming, and then the glory within us will come out and be expressed. When we experience this glorification, we shall be fully in the expression of the Triune God.
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