## The Glorification/Sanctification of Man As I did with my last topic, I’m trying to take a collection of thoughts and verses with the purpose of linking them into one coherent thought, all while trying to process them myself. With this topic, I am seeking to make it clear that Truth exceeds human comprehension, so God elevates us from standard human to something capable of more. That God is higher in all ways than man is self-evident. Everything flows from God, so He is above all, spatially and spiritually, temporally and truthfully. A verse that most can call to mind in this order is found in Isaiah. > [!Bible] [Isaiah 55:8-9 - ESV](https://bolls.life/get-text/ESV/23/55/) > 8. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. > 9. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Not only are His thoughts higher, but His ways as well. So, it goes to say that if we align ourselves to His will, we are operating in a similar manner and therefore drawing closer to Him. If all things flow from Him, than He sits at the top. When we operate in a manner similar to Him, we are performing an act close to climbing. We are seeking Him. “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” - Matthew 7:7 Why do we find Him when we seek Him? Because the act of operating in God’s will is the practicing of His “ways”. If we live in The Way, than we are aligning ourselves to an uphill movement, towards Jesus’s face, and as Paul says about the Word: “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.” - 2 Corinthians 4:6 The light of glory shines to bring us to Him. He is the light on the hill we seek for, and the hill in this case is Mount Zion. The result of God’s higher ways is God’s higher knowledge, God’s higher thoughts. The goal of sanctification is to look more like Him, and He does not leave us without reward for our efforts. When we are alive in the life of Christ, we become more than we were. It requires us to see Him, so He opens our eyes as He did with Bartimaeus. We are trapped in our vessels, so He comes to live inside, breaking our calcified hearts to bind them up again. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” - 2 Corinthians 3:18 “Hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” - Romans 5:5 “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” - Ezekiel 36:25-27 To think that the extent of the transformation from unredeemed to saved is the mortification of sin is to take the blessing of the Holy Spirit for granted. As our spirit is aligned to His, we are undergoing a transformation. Transformation into what? To a being who partakes in God's glory to the point of ontological change. Our being is made new, and to what end? > [!bible] [1 John 3:1-3 - ESV](https://bolls.life/ESV/62/3/) > 1. See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. > 2. Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. > 3. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. We are being made into the same image from one degree to the next, constantly being reworked as an unfinished vessel in the hands of a masterful potter, who knows the time and place for every touch and impression. Thus, we are glorified through sanctification for the time being, one day to be placed into the oven and glazed with a supernatural body. “Behold! I tell 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 trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable,and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”” - 1 Corinthians 15:51-55 How does the bible describe this glorified state of man? It doesn’t seem to change our title in the universe besides what we have already become. Through the act of salvation and justification we move from death to life, from wrath to grace, and from orphans to sons and daughters. “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” - 1 John 3:2 John isn’t saying that we will cease to be the children of God, but instead that we will be built upon that foundation. Our role as the children of God for now is to be His people and emissaries amidst a fallen world, displaying what makes us different through the fruits of the Spirit and the works we perform due to the work He is doing through us. Jesus describes the preemptive process we are now undergoing as sanctification. The act of conforming to Him and looking less and less like what we were. Here it is in the high priestly prayer: “I have given them your Word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your Word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.” - John 17:14-19 Jesus is making it clear through His repetition that not only is this a judicial change in the eyes of God, but a literal and spiritual change. Through the Truth, we are made clean and better. We are made alien to the world. We are made set apart, holy. It is our job as His holy nation, as Peter calls us, to represent Him among the nations, and serve as a shadow of what we will be in the end. Paul gives us a glimpse of the purpose of the full work of glorification in his letter to the Romans, and to help illustrate that, I’m going to change one word from this verse.: “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory with the children of God.” - Romans 8:20-21 That verse is powerful, right? The whole creation shudders in anticipation for its freedom, glory, and the children of God. But which word did I change? “That the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory OF the children of God.” It seems the finished product that is the glorified children of God will be the catalyst of the rest of creation’s freedom. We are not only co-workers with God now, but forevermore! Our perfection is the beginning of the rest of the Heaven and Earth’s moving from corruption to perfection. Perfection - Without flaw; like God; Exactly as intended. To be without flaw, you would have to remain that way, otherwise you come with the flaw known as corruptibility. Thus, God is truly perfect because He is without flaw, and unable to be stained. He is the opposite of unclean, always. He extends that perfection to us in a similar manner that the seraphim did with Isaiah. “Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: ‘Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.’” - Isaiah 6:6-7 Isaiah had to be cleansed to remain in the presence of God and for God’s words to be on his lips. We think back to Ezekiel, and we remember that He has cleansed us with water, and as the fulfillment of that prophecy, through the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the blood of Christ. He has chosen to begin the steps it takes to for us and all of creation to be exactly as intended, perfect. We know that Moses couldn’t approach God because he would be eradicated by the glorious presence of YHWH. From here on out, that presence will be referred to as glory. Yet to be perfect is to be like God, and therefore, we would share in that characteristic. So we as children of God, will emanate glory in a similar way, like a flashlight. The Spirit being our batteries, and our form being the bulb. That glory will act as the agent of creation….and that’s about as much as we know about that. “What we will be has not yet appeared” - 1 Jn 3:2 and “secret things belong to God” - Deut. 29:29. Yet it’s not like the bible doesn’t tell us plenty. So to get back on track, creation waits because we are not perfect. Even so, we are being conformed to perfection from one degree to another throughout our walk. Sanctification is the ripening of fruit that begins as a bud and finally bursts from a flower. God chooses to grow us as a plant, and like grain He matures us: “And he said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.” - Mark 4:26-29 Lo and behold, “The fields are ripe for harvest.” - John 4:35 Now we see that we are not even close to glorified, for if we were glorified we would not be struggling in the war against sin as so many of us are. For now we have knowledge “in part, but then (we) shall know fully.” - 1 Cor. 13:12, and knowledge seems to be the catalyst in our transformation, which we have been graciously given in abundance through the Word. The Bible’s main purpose is to serve as our Truth and is our primary source of communication with God. He speaks through the Word, we ask Him questions, and He teaches us through the Spirit indwelling within us. We will be perfect at the coming of Jesus on the day of Christ, yet for now, we are allowed a taste. A taste of this glory does not complete us, except in love. We are perfected in love, because He first loved us, and that love overflows through us and towards our brothers and sisters. The taste of glory we have now makes us radically, spiritually, and truthfully different than natural man. “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” - 1 Corinthians 2:14 The natural man “does not accept...God” because “he is not able”. Just so you know, we were all natural men, until Jesus raised us to life. Now we are already more. The Spirit worked in you to create something living from a corpse. He began the work to make you “exactly as intended”. So now we have been broken off from those chains and lifted into a whole new identity! God intended for us to be beautiful, but Adam and satan cause death for the whole of our kind. We were as intended in the garden, and became lower than angels. The children lower than the messengers. So Jesus began a work to make us better than originally intended, through the power of the blood of God, and He succeeded. A work was begun in us that served as the match to light the forest fire. You are a child of God. God isn’t finished with you yet, but you are not abandoned in this vessel, and you are never alone as long as the One who is always working is still at work. There’s plenty more to be said, but the conclusion should be the same as the first. READ YOUR BIBLE! It’s not a metaphorical thing when it says you are being filled with light, transformed, fed. It is the agent of your elevation in this life, and it is the best way to love God in your private times with Him, then you should love your neighbor as yourself if you want to love Him even better. Never one without the other however. Sanctification is the perfection of love in you, beloved. Go out and love our God and learn to listen when He is teaching you. I’m figuring that one out daily.