Sunday Recap
By Pastor Chad
This Sunday morning we concluded our series on “The Story of Redemption” by focusing on “The Story of Glorification.” Paul writes in Philippians 3:20-21, “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.” Scripture uses the word “save” in the past, present, and future tense. In other words, we “have been saved,” “are being saved,” and “will be saved.” Glorification is the future part of our salvation. It is the final stage in the process of our salvation; it is how God will complete His good work in all who call upon the Lord.
Drawn from Philippians 3:20-21, I highlighted several aspects of glorification in my message on Sunday. To start, how does this impact us now? If this is something that is going to be completed in the future, then what does that have to do with me now? For one, glorification is a reality that will not be fully realized in this life; however, it should be believed as if one is experiencing it now. The awareness of the future glory you will experience is the awareness of your status as royal sons and daughters of the King. Paul says our current “citizenship is in heaven.” Therefore, we should live as we are called. We should live as if the kingdom has been realized now.
Second, glorification will be completed at the Second Coming. Paul writes that “we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” This doctrine is essential to the faith: we must believe and anticipate the second coming of Jesus. Scripture says that he is coming again (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). And that he will come as he left – bodily and visibly for all to see. So what we generally call the Second Coming isn’t a mere fantasy or silly belief. It is what Christians have held for 2000 years. And it is the great hope for which we all long. We do not necessarily know how, but we know the final outcome. We know that when Christ returns those who are dead will be resurrected as Jesus was, and will inherit a glorified body.
Last, glorification is the culmination of what God has started at regeneration. The act whereby God “will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body.” When Christ returns he will resurrect our lowly, frail bodies; he will reconstitute our bodies into a glorified state. What exactly this will look like we do not know, but we know that we will be in a state that will last for all of eternity.
Glorification is the final stage in which the Father completes his work. To be sure, when a Christian dies, he or she goes to be with our Lord in the blissful state of heaven; that, however, is not one’s final destination. Let’s just be blunt here: heaven is not the final home for Christians. There is still more that God is going to do. You will not live forever in a disembodied state. Your final state of existence will be in a resurrected, glorified body that resembles the beauty of our Lord.
And, oh my friends, we cannot even imagine the wonder, the glory, the magnificence of our final state of glory. For it is a mysterious state that even the most talented of our artists could never do justice. It is a blissful existence of which our imaginations struggle to comprehend. When God found us, we were dead in the grave of our sin. He awakens our dead bodies, calls us out of the grave of sin, and gives us new life. In the process of sanctification, he grafts new flesh and sinews to our emaciated beings. Our spiritual life on this earth is the process of building us back to what he originally desired. At glorification, however, God will finish what he started when he called us from the grave of sin.
As I have stated throughout this sermon series: your salvation is not simply a one time event. Ultimately, our salvation is a process in which God is doing something in us, through us, with us, and to us. It begins at regeneration and justification. It ends in glorification. Glorification is the stage in the process of our salvation that ultimately gets us back to what God originally intended. It is that step in our salvation, to which we now long, and for which we have been saved.