God predestinated us not only according to the good pleasure of His will, but also with a purpose, a plan (Eph. 1:11). It is according to His purpose that He predestinated us. His purpose was the plan which He made according to His will, that we might partake of His life and nature and have the position to enjoy and inherit all His riches.
God predestinated us unto sonship through Jesus Christ (Eph. 1:5). “Through Jesus Christ” means through the Redeemer who is the Son of God. Through Him we were redeemed to be the sons of God with the life and position of God’s sons. Eventually, we will be glorified with Him (Rom. 8:17b) and manifested with Him in glory (Col. 3:4).
Since God predestinated us unto sonship, He foreordained us to have His life, the eternal life (Acts 13:48). Once we believe in the Lord Jesus, we have this eternal life (1 John 5:12), and we are born of Him to be His children (John 1:12).
God chose and predestinated us according to His foreknowledge in order to conform us to the image of His Son (Rom. 8:29). Christ, the Son of God, is the mold. God has put us into Him (1 Cor. 1:30) to conform us to His image to be His many brothers, that He should be the Firstborn among us. Through this, the only begotten Son becomes the firstborn Son among many brothers. He is the firstborn Son, and we are the many sons to express God in a corporate way.
God predestinated us not only that we should be conformed to the image of His Son, but that we should also receive sonship (Eph. 1:5). By conformation we are brought into the reality of sonship. When we are born again, only our spirit is in the sonship, not our soul or our body. This sonship will spread outward from our spirit until it saturates our whole being. At the time of the Lord’s return our physical body will also be saturated with the sonship and be transfigured. This is the redemption of our body (Rom. 8:23). At that time we will be brought wholly into sonship. Every part of our being—spirit, soul, and body—will be in the completion of sonship.
Today we are undergoing the process of sonship. We have the Spirit of the Son and the life of the Son in us, sanctifying us, transforming us, and conforming us to the image of God’s Son. Furthermore, we have the position of the Son (John 20:17) that we may have the legal right to inherit all that God the Father is and all that He has. Eventually, we will inherit all that God is for eternity (Rev. 21:7).
God not only predestinated us to have eternal life, to be conformed to the image of His Son, and to receive sonship, but He also foreordained us to obtain His glory (1 Cor. 2:7) that we might 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 (Col. 1:27), and today we exult and boast in this hope of glory (Rom. 5:2). When this hope, Christ, is manifested, then we will 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 whole being will be the same as Christ is and be fully saturated with God’s glory. This is to be glorified, which is the ultimate consummation of God’s full salvation. It is also the ultimate goal to which God predestined us in eternity.
Although man’s fall was tragic, before the foundation of the world and in His sovereign ordination, God foreknew, chose, and predestinated a group of people to receive His salvation that His purpose in man might be fulfilled. According to His foreknowledge and His good pleasure, He chose us in eternity past that we should be holy and without blemish before Him. His selection is a selection of grace which was out of His love and through His mercy. Furthermore, according to the good pleasure of His will and according to His purpose, He predestinated us before the ages that we should obtain glory. This means that we should receive sonship through Jesus Christ to have the Spirit of the Son, the life of the Son, and the position of the Son, and to be conformed to the image of God’s Son. Eventually, our whole being with its three parts—spirit, soul, and body—will look exactly like Christ and be fully saturated with God’s glory. This is the ultimate consummation of God’s full salvation. It is also the ultimate goal to which God foreknew, chose, and predestinated us in eternity past.