The Plan of Glorification

The fall of man was an inevitable consequence of God giving man free will. This is not because God caused it to be so, but instead it is because God cannot create that which is equal to – little lone greater – than Himself from nothing (Nehemiah 9:6, 2 Samuel 22:32). Not even the greatest angel ever created could claim equality to God. Only God’s promises and teachings are flawless and proven true. Only His ways are just, free from injustice or partiality, and always consistent with His nature. God’s nature is love, mercy, and truth—qualities that are not merely attributes of God but His very essence of perfection. God alone is unchanging perfection. (Numbers 23:19, Mark 10:18, Psalm 18:30, 2 Samuel 22:31, Deuteronomy 32:4, 1 Corinthians 1:9, etc…)

With all this said however, it is not to say that what God creates ex nihilo is flawed or imperfect; for all that God creates is created in accordance with His perfect purpose and design.

God is Omniscient, He does not guess or anticipate but instead He knows all things past, present and future. He knows all possible realities, both created and uncreated. God knew when, where, how, and why Man would fall to sin. God is a God of purpose, a God of plans and – before creation itself – God had both a purpose and a plan for:

1. The creation of Man (created ex nihilo, created very good)
2. The fall of Man
3. The redemption of Man (through faith in Christ)
4. The glorification of Man (the perfection of man through unification and conforming of believers in Christ. Christ becomes our perfection)

Before the beginning of time itself, God had elected (chosen) Himself to become flesh and to pay the price that His justice demanded for the sins of the human inhabitants of this world. God’s plan was not merely to restore mankind to a pre-fallen state so that the same inevitable consequence could be repeated.  Instead, God’s plan was to use the fall as the means to create a new creation, to transform that which was created ex nihilo and at its best was very good, into that which will be perfect. A transforming power that is not merely an imputation or putative state of perfection but instead an event of glorification in conforming the bride (the Church) to the image and inseparable love of Christ  – the Bridegroom (2 Corinthians 5:17). 

This is the mystery Paul describes in Ephesians 5:31–32: the future union of two free, though unequal, partners and where the two become one in a covenant of love (Romans 8:9). This process of transformation should not be understood as a blending of the divine and the human, nor as the loss of distinction between them. Even the phrase “one flesh” does not imply that either person loses his or her individual identity. A man does not become a woman, nor a woman a man when untied as one in holy matrimony. This transformation does not mean that we will become Christ, that we will become God, gods or goddesses. There is only one God and there will never be another.

While we know that God has created all that has been created, we know not the technical details of how He created, Job 38:2-41.  Likewise, neither may we comprehend – certainly I do not – the technical details of how God will from believers into a new creation, but God says that He will. Scripture clearly says that which was created very good, that which fell to sin, that which was separated from God, that which was redeemed by Christ, that which is being perfected will become a new creation. A new creation  inseparably from God, perfected and glorified in Christ. This is not a plan B instituted after the fall of man, but instead this is the plan and always has been the plan that God instituted before creation itself. This is the plan, that it was necessary that for a little while we are created a little lower than the angels, so that there will come a time when we as believers will become greater than the angels, having a perfection that will allow us to draw closer to our perfect God than would have otherwise been possible even for the angels. In our glorification, we will experience the glory of God beyond anything even the angles could begin to imagine.

This study – if you wish to follow – will include:

1. Understanding the perfect nature of God:
   1. His natural attributes (What God is)
   2. His moral attributes (Who God is, His Character)
   3. How His natural attributes and moral character work together, not in conflict one from the other but in perfect harmony.
2. Understanding the Angels, which will perhaps illustrate:
   1. The greatest being that God could create ex nihilo,
   2. That despite their current ability to draw closer to the full glory of God than man, they are still limited in how close they can stand in the full glory of God.
   3. Why fallen Angels cannot be redeemed.
   4. Perhaps giving answer as to why man was created for a little while, lower than the angels.
3. Understanding the Genesis account of creation:
   1. By concentrating on the events of each day. God could have just as easily created all that He created simultaneously in the blink of an eye. The purpose of 6 days goes beyond simply patterning a work week that we should follow to providing and highlighting important detail for our understanding the million dollar question of why did God create us as He did.
   2. Understanding the inevitable fall of Angels and of Man. That anything created ex nihilo – that is given to have free will – cannot be perfect as God is perfect and will always have the potential to fall.
4. Understanding the love of God in choosing and Electing Himself (Christ) – before creation itself – to be our savior, our redeemer.
   1.  His desire for and inclusiveness of His grace
5. What is meant that we are already being perfected
6. What is meant (and what it does not mean) that we will be glorified and perfected in Christ

Glorification in Perfection

Both the Old and New Testaments teach that God is the God of glory, that Jesus Christ is the Lord of glory, and that God will share His glory with His children through glorification. Salvation, already begun in the present, will reach its fulfillment in eschatological glory.

One important New Testament theme is perfection, though it is often neglected. Several related Greek terms—teleiotes, teleiosis, teleo, and teleios—help frame this idea. In brief, the motif of perfection may be outlined as follows:

• God has an intended goal (telos) for His people.
• That goal includes the perfection (teleios) of the individual believer.
• This requires a perfecter (teleiotes) who must Himself be perfected and so become perfect.
• In this way, He can perfect (teleo) those who come to God and bring them to perfection (teleios).

In this life, “perfection” refers to spiritual, moral, and doctrinal maturity. In the life to come, it also refers to the completion of salvation. In this way, God’s intended purpose (telos) reaches its fulfillment.

Useful material on perfection is relatively scarce, largely because debate over the extent of sanctification in this life often overshadows the subject. As a result, perfection as a dimension of salvation—and as an eschatological theme—is frequently neglected. Yet the theme presents God’s goal (telos) for His people: through the Perfecter, believers grow into spiritual, moral, and doctrinal maturity in this life and reach the completion of salvation in the life to come.

The doctrine of perfection may be summarized as follows:

• Having been perfected through His own experience (see Hebrews), Christ is both the Perfecter of believers and their perfection. He is the leader (arxegos) of believers because He first attained perfection (Hebrews 2:10). He did so by entering fully into the conditions of human existence (Hebrews 2:12–18), learning obedience through suffering (Hebrews 5:7–10), and finally enduring death itself. Raised from the dead, He stands as the perfect fulfillment of all that the Old Testament promised: the true and perfect Moses, Aaron, priest, temple, sacrifice for sin, and Savior of all who come to God through Him.
• In this life, Christ gives believers His perfection while also calling them to maturity. His bestowed perfection is equivalent to salvation (soteria; Hebrews 2:10; 5:9), so in this sense Christ Himself is the perfection of believers. As the perfect One present in both the believer and the Church, He leads His people toward glory by calling them to faith and growth in Christian maturity. Yet this present growth points forward to a future, completed perfection. For that reason, passages such as Philippians 3:12 and Hebrews 10:14 anticipate the character of final glorification.
• In the ages to come, maturity gives way to full perfection. This belongs to the structure of glorification, and in that sense perfection and glorification coincide. John 17:23 and Hebrews 2:10 both point to this final completion, in which believers are brought into perfected unity and glory through Christ.