We are exploring scripture’s framework for our spirituality. Being “in Christ” conveys meaning it sometimes take years to understand. We acquire spiritual senses not possessed by natural persons when we become 2 Corinthians 5:17 Christians. Seeing ourselves spiritually helps discern natural things of the “flesh” so we can deal with them spiritually.
The scripture speaks not only of spiritual growth in naturally polluted habitats, but also our hope and glory in Him. Hope and glory are often thought of as waiting for us after physical death. While this is true, it isn’t the whole scriptural story.
Hope and glory are linked like two companions always traveling together. It is like having spokes in a wheel, one is always there with the other. Spiritually speaking, glory has to exist before hope can exist. Scriptural glory comes out of God’s existence while hope is man’s expectation of God’s glory. Glory is of God while hope speaks of man.
Hope used in scripture is not a whimsical desire as found in Webster’s dictionary. In scripture, hope is an expectation of Jesus in our experience. Does that sound mystical? To an unbeliever it is but to us who are in Christ, it is temporal reality.
The scriptural expectation of hope rests in part on a level of glorification through new birth already experienced. Hope references a spiritual experience already savored but not fully tasted. A 2 Corinthinas 5:17 person has experienced something inexpressible. Being born a second time is having a brand new life!
Glorification is entering into a God authored experience revealing something about the super-natural character of God Himself into our spiritual or physical experience. Glorification is a realization of hope.
Glorification of God means conveying something of God’s magnificence at a human level. In the Old Testament it was typically conveyed physically. A graphic example is Ezekiel’s vision during the Babylonian captivity. Here is a sample of Ezekiel’s text out of chapter 1,
As I looked, behold, a stormy wind came out of the north, and a great cloud, with brightness all around it, and fire flashing forth continually, and in the midst of the fire, as it were gleaming metal. And in the midst of it came the likeness of four living creatures. … As for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance was like burning coals of fire, like the appearance of torches moving to and fro among the living creatures. And the fire was bright, and out of the fire went forth lightning. And living creatures darted to and fro, like the appearance of a flash of lightning.
… I saw a wheel on the earth besides the living creatures, one for each of them. As for the appearance of the wheels and their construction: their appearance was like the gleaming of beryl. And the four had the same likeness, their appearance and construction being as it were a wheel within a wheel. When they went, they went in any of the four directions without turning as they went. …
At the close of this first chapter we read this: “Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And I saw it, I fell on my face, and I heard the voice of one speaking”, Ezekiel 1:28b.
In chapter 8 we find “the glory of the Lord” as described in the first chapter speaking to Ezekiel in a vision about the coming judgment upon Israel. In chapter 9 we have the “glory of the Lord” rising up from the “Cherub on which it rested.”
“The glory of the Lord” visibly sat on the ark of the covenant between the two Cherubim in the Holy of Holies both in the Tabernacle in the wilderness and the Temple in Jerusalem. The departure of God’s glory from the Temple is described in Ezekiel 10. It also left the Tabernacle when the Ark of the Covenant was captured, 1 Samuel 4:21.
The glory of God was demonstrated by manna from heaven, a pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day. It was illustrated by sour water turning sweet and water gushing from solid rock. The power of God manifested by this physical demonstration in the OT is the same power that raised Jesus from the dead and creates new life in us by new birth. But there is more! It is also the power sustaining spiritual life in the believer.
God is totally beyond our capacity to capture in our mind. But who He is, is who we are going to see. Peter, James and John saw it briefly in Jesus when He was talking to Moses and Elijah on the mount of transfiguration, Luke 9:32. This glory is included in our inheritance as saints and children of God.
The exaltation of Christ has already occurred as both Son of God and Son of man. He took our humanity with him into His place at the right hand of God. The elevation of humanity into heaven by Jesus provides our pathway to inheritance of His glory in him. The glory of the Lord in the Old Testament is ascribed to our resurrected Lord who not only has defeated death but glorified humanity by His exaltation to the right hand of the Father as the Son of Man as well as the Son of God.
In 1Peter one we read we have born again to a living hope for an inheritance that is imperishable kept in heaven for us. In Ephesians one we read about the greatness of His power to us who believe is His glorious inheritance in us, the saints. The working of His power in us grows our faith because He is not only in us but we are also in Him.
We saw Jesus appearing to the disciples and explaining to them His humanity after the resurrection, “See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.” Then Jesus demonstrates His humanity by eating a piece of broiled fish in their presence. Another time after the resurrection, Jesus met the disciples on the beach (before He had His talk with Peter) having breakfast with them. Later, Luke tells us in Acts one, when He finished speaking to the disciples, a clouded lifted Jesus up out of their sight. Two angles appeared and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” It is clearly intended that we should understand Jesus took with Him into heaven the humanity He took on by coming to earth as the “Son of Man”.
The cement that links hope and glory together is faith. Faith, according to Hebrews 11:1, is the evidence of something that is not yet seen. In other words, we have the tangible evidence of what has not yet appeared. This describes exactly what a believer experiences when he is born a second time and it describes the truth the scripture reveals about who we are in Christ and who we shall be in Christ.
Christ is out living Hope because the glorification process has already begun in us if we are in Him.