Romans covers not only the attributes of righteousness and holiness, but also the attribute of glory. Glorification began at the time of Christ’s ascension, and it will consummate at His coming back. Christ’s ascension is for glory. Therefore, Christ’s death is for God’s righteousness, His resurrection is for God’s holiness, and His ascension is for God’s glory. When Christ comes back, the glorification of His saints will be consummated.
This thought is found in Romans 8. In verse 17 Paul says that if we suffer with Christ, we shall be glorified with Him. In verse 18 he goes on to say, “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the coming glory to be revealed to us.” The whole creation is eagerly expecting to “be freed from the slavery of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (v. 21). In verse 30 Paul says that those whom God has predestinated, called, and justified, He has also glorified. As we are being sanctified, we are also being glorified. With sanctification we enjoy a foretaste of glorification.
We have pointed out that glorification began with Christ’s ascension. As believers in Christ, we are ascended with Christ and seated with Him in the heavenlies (Eph. 2:6). Christ is both in us subjectively and in the heavenlies objectively. Christ has brought us into the heavenlies, and He has brought the heavenlies into us. When we realize the fact that we share in Christ’s ascension, we experience not only sanctification, but also glorification. To be in ascension is to be in glory.
We need the subjective experience of God’s righteousness, holiness, and glory. To be crucified with Christ is to experience righteousness, and to have Christ live in us is to experience holiness. According to His righteousness and through His holiness, the Triune God is dispensed into us in a full way unto His glory. This means that the result of God’s dispensation is glory. When people contact us or visit our homes, they should be able to sense that we have died with Christ and that Christ is living in us. If this is our situation, then we shall exhibit God’s righteousness, holiness, and even His glory.
How we praise the Lord for opening the depths of this book to us! In Romans 3 and 4 we see that Christ died for us and in Romans 6, that we died in Christ. This death was according to God’s righteousness and for His righteousness. In Romans 6 through 8 we see that we are being sanctified through the living, acting, moving, and working of the resurrected Christ within us. After the resurrected Christ germinates us and generates us, He sanctifies us. Sanctification includes transformation and conformation. As the process of sanctification takes place within us, we begin to experience God’s glorification. The issue of the dispensation of the Triune God into us is glory. If we daily take our stand of having died with Christ, we shall have the subjective experience of righteousness. Then if we allow Christ to live in us, we shall have the subjective experience of holiness. The result will be glory, the expression of God from within us.
Just as righteousness is God’s procedure and holiness is God’s nature, so glory is God’s expression. The ultimate goal of the dispensation of the Triune God is that God be expressed through the Body of Christ. When the Body of Christ has become the expression of God’s glory, that will be the time of full glorification. As Romans 8 reveals, the universe is eagerly awaiting this time, anxiously waiting to enter into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. In this glory God will be expressed in a full way. This will be the ultimate issue of the dispensation of the Triune God.
Every local church today should be a miniature of such a glorious expression of the Triune God. We in the churches should be able to say, “Satan, look at the church. Here you can see God’s righteousness, holiness, and glory.” When Satan sees this, he will be forced to admit that this is the issue of the dispensation of the Triune God. Because we all have died in Christ and are therefore righteous in the eyes of God, there is no ground for Satan to accuse us or to condemn us. Now Christ is living in us to sanctify us, to transform us, and to conform us to the image of Christ. The issue of this process is glory. This should be the testimony borne by every church in the Lord’s recovery. In every church there must be the base of God’s righteousness, the process of God’s holiness, and the goal of God’s glory. This is the dispensation of the Triune God according to His righteousness, through His holiness, and unto His glory as revealed in the book of Romans.