“The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. -Romans 8:16.
“and those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” -Romans 8:30.
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed (into) us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the Sons of God.” -Romans 8:17-19.
We who are in Christ Jesus, before the Church is raptured, are the Body of Christ. Glorification is our destiny when removed out of this earthly situation. We were made in God’s image and will be restored into a fullness of Christ’s glory when our body is glorified. This is what father Adam removed from us but what our second Adam, Jesus, restored … and “so much more” … through redemption.
He redeemed us with an individual purpose for each of us! The law of the Spirit operates to bring us into the specific purpose God intendes us to be in Him. We are Spiritual children, unable to grasp all God is, but God has given each of us a soul captive to our own desire but, by God’s mercy, able to penetrate God’s grace;
we must choose to submit to His divine purpose. God’s loving grace allows us to enter into His glorious person with increasing degrees of His glory.
The glory of God is an elusive thing for us to get hold of, let alone describe. The reason? It expresses the very Person of God, who He is. It describes the summation of his Being; the more we become like Him the closer we arrive at presenting his created visibly. He made us to be like Him, creating us in His righteous image and we corrupted His creation. So God, in His pure righteous agape Love, enriched His grace, creating new persons who can receive and return His Love. We will also be growing into the marvelous wonder of Himself, seeking to know Him in His love and grace.
Israel, in Isaiah 43:1-25, depicts this Love picture: “But now thus saith the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: ‘Fear not, for I have redeemed you: I have called you by my name, you are mine.’” In verse 4, “Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you, ..” Then in verse 7, “everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” All creation glorifies our Father God and we who are born twice penetrate His glory beyond finite measure or description. We are told to do all to the glory of God, and give glory to our Father in heaven. We have in 1Corinthians 6:20: “for you were bought with a price so glorify God in your body.”
While waiting for a late arrival at the airport recently, I was reading a meditation book on Colossians. Sam Storms tells us glory is not a “place” but an “experience.” He goes on to say:
“This is the promise of sharing in the glorified life of Christ. It is the promise of the eradication of evil and every fleshly impulse. It is the promise of everlasting deliverance from greed and pride and lust and envy and unforgiveness. It is the promise that our whole being: body soul, mind, spirit, and affections will experience and forever live in the power and purity of God himself.”
Storm’s description of glory can also be used to describe the law of the Spirit of Life operating in the Believer. The Holy Spirit of God is bringing about the sanctifying process of a believer called by God to be holy as He is holy; our soul changes from one degree of glory to another as soon as we are born from above; we have entered into the realm of tasting God’s glory.
Glory begins in temporal time when secular people are created Spiritually new. We become children of God thru Spiritual birth by God Himself. This is contrasted to being born in “flesh.” Jesus Himself makes this distinction when speaking to Nicodemus. We cannot become “spiritual” through effort, flesh produces “flesh.” The Spirit of God dwells within us for a purpose! It is Spiritually mandatory!
Paul also makes this clear distinction in Romans 8. We are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if the Spirit of God is dwelling in us. This is exactly the distinction Storm is making from Colossians 3:4, “When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” The word “glory,” used here, is not a place; it is a condition of who we are! God’s glory is in us and grows “into” us as we die to self. When Christ who is our Life appears, we will be in glorified bodies, glorified like He is! In the meantime, we have a task to do. Having Life in His name means manifesting thru His Life in us, His glory which is Christ in us! We have the mind of Christ.
When we are birthed new in Jesus Christ, we are not only justified, we are also glorified; the Greek aorist tense is used in this above passage. God’s grace is leading us into a fuller measure of His glory as we grow in grace and knowledge of Jesus Himself. “For this I toil,” Paul tells us, “struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.” We are in Christ, what a blessing! What a miracle! But there is another astounding miracle; it is Christ in US! The glory of God in Christ Jesus is also birthed in us because we are made one in His Spirit. We are called to glorify God in our body because God is in us, working out into us, making us who we now are in Him!
The GN Appendix A is six pages of scripture references stipulating or eluding to being in Christ Jesus. What we are talking about now, is not being in Christ, but Christ being in us! We are in Christ, there is no condemnation to them who are in Christ, but Christ is also in us, … changing us from one degree of glory to the next! Or as Paul puts it in Romans 8, “He who raised Jesus from the dead will also give Life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.”
This vessel of clay in which we dwell has not become holy but we are, if we are in Christ. Our frail house of flesh has become the “Temple of God” because God is now in residence thru His Holy Spirit. He Himself is joined to our spirit. Within our Holy Temple, Living water is producing His Life source within us to be our Life source; it is Jesus Himself welling up to eternal Life in us. We are called to drink His water, consume His grace, effecting a glory change from one level of glory to the next. We are sinners because we fall short of His glory but now, in us, He is giving us Himself, glorifying Himself and us, giving us Life in His name!
Our physical body of flesh is the dwelling place of The Holy Spirit of God! God saved us through death on the cross; His shed blood is our sacrifice for sin, but He did much more than die for us. He conquered death through His resurrection from a gruesome physical death, creating a new Life in His name and, by grace, gifting it into us!
He took care of our sins but he did “so much more” … by creating us new in His resurrected Self, Jesus now gives us His resurrection power. We can now put to death sin residing in our mortal flesh thus increasing His glory with His resurrection power!
Our body is not yet glorified, but we are! We are created new in Christ Jesus, the old is gone and the new has come. Inside this body of flesh resides a new self we are called to put on, that is, we are to take who we now are in Christ Jesus, using the resurrection power of Christ, “putting on” His Life into our flesh. God’s glorified work continues to be displayed in us through Him.
Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Isn’t it interesting that when we are operating out of the flesh, God is patiently dwelling in His Temple (our flesh body) forgiving us, wooing us back into Him thru our Spirit. The Law of the Spirit of Life continues to be operational while in this fleshly boot camp, we continue learning who we really are in Christ Jesus!
We are reminded of Elijah who faithfully confronted Ahab, bringing fire down from heaven to consume the sacrifice, killing all the prophets of Baal, He then runs because Jezebel came back to town!
But what did God do? He brought him food, water and rest in the shade of God’s own provisions even as he was running away. God met Elijah at Mt. Horeb and simply asked what he was doing here? Three times He asked. Then, God merely reminded Elijah of his power, in the wind, in the earthquake and in the fire. He didn’t show Elijah His glory like He did to Moses, but He did give Him His mercy and love.
A couple years ago we were invited by the Brethren Church of Ethiopia to come and work with Ethiopian believers who were becoming local church pastors.
I had a 16 hour direct flight from DC – Dulles to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, arriving on a Sunday morning. I expected time to get myself together before meeting Monday morning with a group of pastors in a classroom setting. Upon my arrival, my host was waving frantically as I emerged from the airport. He was anxiously yelling at me to hurry up!
A car and driver were waiting and whisked me away as soon I was through the exit gate. I was late for a church service where I was to preach?? I was not prepared to fill a Sunday morning pulpit and I didn’t carry a sermon in my back pocket. Fortunately, the church was about an hour north of Addis. While carrying on a conversation with my host and driver, I was thumbing thru my Bible. What was I going to do for a sermon? I didn’t know, but I had an amazing peaceful calmness inside of me!
The church was packed, over a thousand people were there. The chairs were full and people standing up in the back and along the right side in this large auditorium. At the end of my short sermon, my host asked me to preach the very same sermon at his home church in Addis the following Sunday! I spoke from 2Corinthians 4:7 as a text but I didn’t know what I preached.
I had a presence and a confidence within me I couldn’t explain. The Spirit of our Lord was within me throughout this trip and a following one months later. The glory of the Lord was manifested as He used me in circumstance after circumstance. It doesn’t have to be a physical display as frequently seen in the Old Testament. The glory of the Lord is within us, even in unworthy vessels of clay! It is an experience!
The next time I preach from this passage it will be about the glory of God in us:
“For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
God’s glory is His power demonstrated in our behavior. It is His created Life being demonstrated in our mortal flesh! God redeemed us so that He could use us to minister in His name to others. We have a culture of grace; it is a relationship in Christ between our Father God and us, His children.
We learn to Live His Life in our vessel of clay rather than the self still in our flesh. The flesh is no longer in control, we are! Jesus Christ is in us and we are created new, a Spiritual person in Him. Grace is a relationship!
“But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.” -2Corinthians 4:7-12.
Being born a second time, God creates Christ in us, a miraculous wonder!! It is deeper than the Grand Canyon! It is the glory of God manifested within us by God Himself through His Holy Spirit. It is also much more than this because not only is Christ in us but we also are in Christ; they are not the same thing and yet … they are!!
We teach children Christ died for us and will come into our hearts forgiving our sin but how wonderous is it that we are literally placed in the resurrected Jesus having access to His resurrection power ruling over sin in our vessels of clay. Jesus not only comes into our hearts, He places us in Him so that we have His resurrection power in our salvation.
“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” -2Corinthians 4:16-18.
Our Lord Jesus is righteous; He will, in His purity judge us and hold us accountable for the stewardship of His Life in us. This is why we need to realize how important it is to consume grace walking in His Light. Ours is an awesome opportunity; we are given the freedom to Love God, allowing His Love to display glory in us. We become conscious of His glory by His resurrection power working in us.
Jesus is looking for born again overcomers. He has given us His resurrection power to Live His Life in His name! This produces His shekinah glory, His living presence! It is a combo of two things, 1. The death of sin, redemption by blood, and 2. Life in His name; it is Justification and glorification (Romans 8:30, above)!
“But as it is written: ‘Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.’ But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. These things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them because they are spiritually discerned. But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.”
We are all created for the purpose of glorifying God. We are instructed to do all to the glory of God; give glory to your Father in heaven; “for you were bought with a price so glorify God in your body.” We are commanded to have the mind of Christ within us and because Christ is now in us, with His resurrection power, we can glorify God and have the mind of Christ!
The glory of God in us is accomplished because Jesus suffered on our behalf. He did His part and now He asks us to share in His sufferings. There is a price to be paid for us to grow in His glory. For us to know Him intimately, we need to know ourselves intimately. This means putting to death whatever hinders God’s glory in us!
Our spirit has been regenerated but our mind, heart and will to choose has to be transmuted from its learned human values and habits. Our soul has learned fleshly ways and beliefs but it is intricately united to our Spirit which is totally created new in Christ Jesus. Our soul, that is our will to choose, our heart and mind, have been totally set free from the bondage of darkness, sin and the flesh of our body. His glory is knocking on our door to produce the miraculous reality of Him!
We now have the resurrection power of Jesus because we have become spiritually one with Him, our identity is no longer in our fleshly soul, it is now in our Spiritual Spirit newly created in Jesus, our second Adam. Our identity has been taken out of Satan’s domain and staked down into the kingdom of Christ’s righteousness. This is not whom we become, it is who we are now, in our flesh, created in Christ Jesus.
Our vessel of clay has not been regenerated, but our spirit has! Our soul and body have been freed from the bondage of sin but the resurrection power of our Life comes through our spirit. Our personal identity has become Spiritual through the union of our spirit with the Holy Spirit of God. Our identity has completely changed. We are in Christ … and … Christ is in us!
God’s grace to us, and in us, speaks of His faithfulness revealing His glory. Through grace we begin to understand who we really are in Christ Jesus. Only by God’s grace we see categorically who we really are but accepting in our heart with the passion of deep love depends on our fellowship with our indwelling Holy Spirit. In order to be, in order to work out in our actual fleshly experience the very person God has already made us to Spiritually be, takes amazing, infinite grace, producing in us, His glory. This is the deep agape Love God has for us, that He has provisioned us also to Love Him.
Paul exhorts Timothy in his last letter before his death, “Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.” This is exactly where we are, in Christ Jesus, the source of grace, and we need to grasp it, we need to consume it! We need to be strong in the grace of our resurrected Jesus.
“Thou, therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.” -2Timothy 2:1 KJV
The glory of God is produced in us as we put to death what is earthy in us. Paul tells us to reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive unto God.
The Holy Spirit, resident within our mortal flesh (Spirit-spirit), is providing Life, growing the image of God … and “so much more.” The righteousness requirement of the law is satisfied in Christ Jesus via grace. Our restoration to fellowship is satisfied by being born into God’s family.
The purpose of created life was and is the Glory of God portrayed and enjoyed! Our second birth created us into a Spiritual person in Jesus. Grace created the restoration of God’s intended purpose and “so much more.” This is what Jesus meant in His prayer to the Father, “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one ….”
The glory road has been paved in grace for our finite experience in a vessel of clay!