Message Six

Christ as the Captain of Salvation
Leading God’s Many Sons into Glory

Scripture Reading: Heb. 2:10-11, 16-18; Eph. 1:4-5

1. God’s eternal goal is to bring His many sons into glory:
   1. Glory is the expression of God, God expressed— Exo. 40:34.
   2. God’s eternal purpose is to express Himself in a corporate way through His redeemed people— Gen. 1:26; Eph. 3:21.
   3. The New Jerusalem, having the glory of God, is the corporate expression of God:
      1. God as the light shines in and through the Lamb as the lamp, eventually shining through the entire city, causing the city to bear the appearance of God Himself—Rev. 21:10-11, 18, 23; 4:3.
      2. When we look at the New Jerusalem, we see the expression of God—the light in the lamp shining through the jasper.
2. Christ is the Captain (Author, Originator, Inaugurator, Leader, Pioneer) of our full salvation into glory—Heb. 2:3, 10:
   1. As the Captain of salvation, Jesus was perfected through sufferings—Heb. 2:10:
      1. To make Jesus perfect was to make Him perfect in terms of qualification.
      2. It does not imply that there was any imperfection of virtue or attribute in Jesus, but only that the completing of His experience of human sufferings was needed to make Him fit to become the Captain of our salvation.
      3. Jesus was the seed of the divine glory, falling into the earth to die and growing up to blossom in glory in resurrection—John 12:23-24; Luke 24:26; 1 Cor. 15:36, 43a:
         1. By His growing up, His whole being, including His humanity and His human nature, was brought into the glorious expression of God.
         2. He crossed the death river, the ultimate river, and entered into glory, the reality of the expression of God’s divine being.
         3. He is the man in the glory, the man in God’s expression, even the man who is God’s expression, God’s glory.
         4. As the Captain, the Pioneer, the Forerunner (Heb. 6:20), He took the lead to enter into glory, and we, His followers are taking the same way to be brought into the same glory, which was ordained by God for us—1 Cor. 2:7; 1 Thes. 2:12:
            1. 1) He has gone ahead of us to lead us to cross through the waters of suffering and enter into the region of glory, God Himself expressed.
            2. 2) This is the real goal of crossing the river, the real goal of being a Hebrew— 1 Kings 8:10-11.
   2. The Captain of salvation, the man in the glory, the man who is God’s glory, is the seed of glory within us—Col. 1:27; 1 John 3:9:
      1. Our Savior took the lead to fight through into glory; His whole life was a fighting process for glory—Luke 12:49-50.
      2. The growing of the seed of glory within us is a fighting process.
      3. Glory is the blossoming of the divine element from within us.
      4. The glory into which we shall enter is the glory of the divine element that has been sown into us as a seed—2 Thes. 1:10.
   3. We are saved into glory, the expression of God, through the process of suffering—Heb. 10:32-35; 2 Cor. 4:16-18:
      1. The crossing of all the rivers brings us into glory, the glory that is God Himself expressed.
      2. All of our sufferings help us along the highways to Zion to transform us from glory to glory so that we can become His glorious bride—Psa. 84:5-7; 2 Cor. 3:18; Rom. 8:17-18, 21; Eph. 5:27.
   4. Christ as the Captain of our salvation fulfills His duty to lead us into glory by being our High Priest to minister God into us—Heb. 2:16-18:
      1. This kind of ministry is a succor, a helpful rescue, in which Christ gets into us, puts us upon Him, bears us, and carries us—Isa. 40:31.
      2. When we enjoy this succor, we participate in God’s element and are brought into the expression of the glorious God.
3. Christ as the Captain of salvation leads God’s many sons into glory, the corporate expression of God, by saving them organically through sanctification—Heb. 2:10-11; Eph. 1:4-5; 1 Thes. 5:23; Rom. 5:10:
   1. The divine sanctification for the divine sonship is the center of the divine economy and the central thought of the revelation in the New Testament.
   2. The divine sanctification is the holding line in the carrying out of the divine economy to sonize us divinely, making us sons of God that we may become the same as God in His life and in His nature (but not in His Godhead), so that we may be God’s expression:
      1. The seeking sanctification, the initial sanctification, is unto repentance to bring us back to God—1 Pet. 1:2; Luke 15:8-10, 17-21.
      2. The redeeming sanctification, the positional sanctification, is by the blood of Christ, to transfer us from Adam to Christ—Heb. 13:12.
      3. The regenerating sanctification, the beginning of dispositional sanctification, renews us from our spirit to make us, the sinners, sons of God—2 Cor. 5:17; John 1:12-13.
      4. The renewing sanctification, the continuation of dispositional sanctification, renews our soul from our mind through all the parts of our soul to make our soul a part of God’s new creation—Rom. 12:2b; Eph. 4:23.
      5. The transforming sanctification, the daily sanctification, reconstitutes us with the element of Christ metabolically to make us a new constitution as a part of the organic Body of Christ—2 Cor. 3:18; 1 Cor. 3:12.
      6. The conforming sanctification, the shaping sanctification, shapes us in the image of the glorious Christ to make us the expression of Christ—Rom. 8:29.
      7. The glorifying sanctification, the consummating sanctification, redeems our body by transfiguring it to make us Christ’s expression in full in glory—Phil. 3:21; Rom. 8:23.
4. The divine sanctification is carried out by the sanctifying Spirit in our spirit—Rom. 15:16; 8:4; Eph. 5:26.