In the completing stage of God’s full salvation, the stage of glorification, the believers will be glorified. God has predestinated and justified us, and now He is conforming us to the image of His firstborn Son. Eventually, we will be fully glorified. Concerning this, Romans 8:29-30 clearly says, “Those whom He foreknew, He also predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the Firstborn among many brothers; and those whom He predestinated, these He also called; and those whom He called, these He also justified; and those whom He justified, these He also glorified.”
When Paul speaks of predestination, calling, justification, and glorification in this portion of the Scriptures, he uses the past tense: predestinated, called, justified, and glorified. This indicates that every item in these verses, including even glorification, is an accomplished fact. Although we think that glorification is something that will happen only in the future and that in our experience we still have not been glorified, the Bible says that we have already been glorified. Paul speaks in this way because even though as created beings we are subject to time, God is not. He is the God of eternity. With Him there is no time factor. Therefore, in the sight of God, we have already been predestinated, called, justified, and glorified. These matters were accomplished in eternity. This also indicates that our glorification is secured and ensured in the eternal God.
In God’s sight we have already been glorified. Nevertheless, according to our experience glorification will take place in the future. 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. For God to glorify us means that He causes the glory that has been sown into us to saturate our entire being and to be 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.
For the believers to be glorified is to receive the incomparable glory. In Romans 8:18 Paul says, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the coming glory to be revealed upon us.” We have not yet been glorified and cannot imagine what this incomparable glory is, but we strongly believe, according to the revelation of the New Testament, that the glory we are to receive in the future is incomparable. Present sufferings mean nothing in comparison to the coming glory.
We have been predestinated to be glorified. This is our future. Today Christ is living in us as our hope of glory. Colossians 1:27 says, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Glory in this verse is “the glory” in Greek and denotes Christ, who is God’s expression, the effulgence of God’s glory (Heb. 1:3). Hence, this glory is not a thing but a living person, the indwelling Christ, the all-inclusive embodiment of the processed Triune God. Through regeneration Christ as the glory came into us, and now we have the seed of glory in us as our hope of glory. When Christ returns to glorify us, this glory will come out of us and will be manifested to the fullest extent. Hence, the glory is a hope; it is 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. In Colossians 3:4 Paul says that when Christ our life is manifested, then we also will be manifested with Him in glory. When Christ comes again and is manifested, we will be glorified in Him, and He will be glorified in us, that is, in our redeemed and transfigured body (Rom. 8:23; Phil. 3:21; 2 Thes. 1:10). 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.
Today this glory is still a hope to us because it has not come out of us. Since the seed of glory has been sown into us, we hope to see it blossoming. On the one hand, Christ will come from outside of us; on the other hand, He will come from within us. One day, at His return, Christ as the glory within us will come out of us and be fully manifested. He will be glorified in us, and we will be fully in the expression of the Triune God.
In the completing stage of God’s full salvation, the believers reach the goal of God’s predestination. This goal is our glorification. God has predestinated us for this goal. Hence, God’s predestination is our destiny. Our glorification will be our participation in the goal of God’s predestination (1 Cor. 2:7). We are vessels of mercy, which God 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 “also will be manifested with Him in glory” (Col. 3:4). At that time, God’s glory will not only have spread from our spirit into our soul but will also be expressed through our body. The three parts of our being—spirit, soul, body—will be the same as Christ is and will be fully saturated with God’s glory. This is our participation in the ultimate goal to which God has predestinated us in eternity.