When we have been glorified, we shall participate in the goal of God’s predestination. First Corinthians 2:7 indicates that God has predestinated us to obtain His glory that we may express Him. God’s glory is God expressed. We are vessels of mercy which He has before prepared unto glory (Rom. 9:23), and He has called us into this glory (2 Thes. 2:14; 1 Pet. 5:10). Christ Himself is our hope of glory, and today we exult and boast in this hope of glory (Rom. 5:2). When this hope, Christ, is manifested, we shall also be manifested with Him in glory (Col. 3:4). That will be the redemption of our body, the transfiguration of our body. At that time God’s glory will be expressed from our spirit to our soul and through our body. The three parts of our being will be the same as Christ is and will be fully saturated with God’s glory. This is what it means for the believers to be glorified, which is the ultimate consummation of God’s full salvation. This glorification is also the ultimate goal to which God predestinated us in eternity.
In the completing stage of God’s full salvation, the believers will reach the goal of God’s predestination. This goal is our glorification. God has predestinated us for this glory. Hence, God’s predestination becomes our destiny. In the future the believers will enjoy their eternal destiny-glorification-as the goal of God’s full salvation.
First Peter 5:10a tells us that the God of all grace has called us “into His eternal glory in Christ.” “In Christ” indicates that the God of all grace has called us through all the processes of incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension to accomplish the complete and full redemption so that He may bring His redeemed people into an organic union with Himself. Thus they may participate in the riches of the processed Triune God as their enjoyment. All the steps of the divine operation are in Christ, who is the embodiment of the processed Triune God becoming the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit as the bountiful life supply to us. It is in this Christ, through His all-inclusive redemption and based on all His achievements, that God can be the God of all grace to call us into His eternal glory and to perfect, establish, strengthen, and ground us in the Triune God as the solid foundation, thus enabling us to attain unto His glorious goal. What a miracle that fallen sinners can be brought into God’s eternal glory!
In 2 Thessalonians 2:14b Paul tells us that God has called us through the gospel “unto the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The glory of the Lord is that He is the Son of God the Father, possessing the Father’s life and nature to express Him. To obtain the Lord’s glory is to be in the same position as sons of God to express Him.
In John 17:22 the Lord Jesus said in His prayer to the Father, “The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, even as We are one.” The glory which the Father has given the Son is the sonship with the Father’s life and divine nature (John 5:26) to express the Father in His fullness (John 1:18; 14:9; Col. 2:9; Heb. 1:3). This glory the Son has given to His believers that they also may have the sonship with the Father’s life and nature (John 17:2; 2 Pet. 1:4) to express the Father in the Son in His fullness (John 1:16).
The glory of the Lord Jesus is that the Father has given Him the Father’s life and nature for Him to express the Father. This is the glory the Son has given to us. This means that the Son has given us the Father’s life and nature so that we may be able to express God the Father. What a glory! God has called us unto the obtaining of this glory, the glory of the divine life and the divine nature to express the divine Being.
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