ROMANS UNWRAPPED 149

5) GLORIFIED:

"And whom He justified, them He also glorified"  Romans 8v30. 

The use of the past tense here is awesome.   Paul is describing something which is yet future, since only one human being has been glorified, that is Christ Himself.   All believers will be glorified in a future day, but Paul uses the past tense to declare the absolute certainty of it and the practical reality of it in the mind of God.   So far as God is concerned we are already there.   This is why in Ephesians 2v6 he can say that we are all seated together with Christ in heavenly places; or in Philippians 3v20 that we are the citizens of heaven; or that we are (present tense) come to Mount Zion, unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to myriads of angels, a full gathering and to the church of the Firstborn written in heaven.   Hebrews 12    Here is the absolute certainty of the end product of what God has done.

Now we have to think of what being glorified means; it is the opening of a flower in the sunlight; it is the inward excellence made visible; it is a state of great splendour, magnificence, and prosperity; it is ultimate dignity.   The O.T. word for glory comes from the root of the word weight, in a figurative sense.  Glory is weighty in the sense of great influence of great standing and of unlimited ability.   It means honour, distinction, bestowed by common consent and acknowledged by all around.   Unfortunately this is the least expounded of all the aspects of God's salvation and it should be the most expounded, for it is the greatest incentive to good living in all our lives.  

We look first at bodily glory; the work of redemption is not complete until our bodies are glorified (listen to the language of Romans 8v23 and Ephesians 1v14).   In Philippians 3v21 our bodies are described as "our vile body" or better the "body of our humiliation."   The same verse says these bodies are to be changed and fashioned like unto the body of His glory.   We will have a body fitted for heaven with the same capabilities as the risen glorified Lord Jesus Christ.   The details of this can be grasped by looking at Christ on the mount of transfiguration and also studying His movements in the forty days after His resurrection and onto to His ascension.  

• He could change His appearance from ordinary to awesome and vice-versa at will.  -   Matthew 17; Mark 9; Luke 9.   His face and raiment were shining and glittering with an unmistakable aura flashing like lightening.   Millions of believers are going to be like that!
• He could suddenly appear and disappear  -   Luke 24 and John 21.
• He could appear in another form  -    Mark 16 and Luke 24.
• He could suddenly vanish out of sight  -   Luke 24.
• He could walk through closed doors  -   John 20.
• He could provide cooked food, fish and bread, from nowhere  -  John 21
• Finally, He could travel through the vast distances of space between earth and heaven without the aid of a spaceship!  -  Acts 1 and other scriptures.

Paul describes the glorification of the human body in 1st Corinthians 15v42-54.   There he says things like this  "it is sown in corruption it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body."   Again in the same passage he says  "as we have borne the image of the earthy so we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.   Now this I say brethren that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither does corruption inherit incorruption:   behold I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed, in a moment in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible and we shall be changed.   For this corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality."

The same will apply to our souls and although redeemed by the work of Christ at the cross, adjustments will need to be made and this will all happen at the judgement seat of Christ, when all wrongs will be put right, all misunderstandings will be corrected, all failures banished, all regrets finished and all tears wiped away.   This is because we have a wedding to attend, and in Revelation 19 the announcement is made of the marriage of the Lamb and the comment is "His wife has made herself ready."   Revelation 19v7    This is the fulfillment of the great work of redemption described by Paul in Ephesians 5v 25-27   "Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it; that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that He might present it to Himself a glorious church,  not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish."   That is the glory to which all Christians are headed, and it is now a fact in the mind of God. Nothing but perfection will do for God's beloved Son.

In closing Paul mentioned in Romans 8v 21 about  "the liberty of the glory of the sons of God."   This refers to the freedom from all the consequences that sin brought in, freedom from the ruling power of sin, freedom from the tendency to sin, freedom from the awful results of sin and freedom from the debilitating effect of sin in human lives.    Because of our limited understanding, the bible does not tell us much about heavenly glory, possibly because we could not take it in; it presents it in terms of what is not there, concerning the undesirable things of this earth, like pain and suffering and tears and death and illness etc. etc.   It is left to our imagination just what it will be like, but it is described as glory.  

WHOM HE JUSTIFIED, THEM HE ALSO GLORIFIED!