Glorification

This morning, we're going to be finishing our study of the story of redemption, and I hope you have been enjoying it. I've really loved working through this again, and it is really something important for us. This material is pretty much exactly what we are teaching to our professional faith students at the moment as well. So they're working through this as we are working through this, and I really hope and pray that this is for the strengthening of all of us in our faith, and we need to hear these truths so often anyway that whether you are young in the faith or whether you are a grizzled saint in the faith, it is good to know. It's good to be reminded of.

We've looked in the past, as we finish this, we've looked at the story of redemption. Redemption meaning the activity of God where He graciously seeks to restore fallen humanity back to the intentions He has had for us from the beginning. We looked how God from the beginning, from the Bible says, before the foundations of the world chose, elected, and set His heart upon us, set His heart upon believers, and that He went from there to start this process of saving us by furthering a work of regeneration in us, making us alive to Him, making us alive to God, making us aware of our need of Him. We saw how He has then sought to convert our hearts through repentance and faith, not only make us aware of Him, but draw us to Himself through that. We saw that He in fact then saves us through what is called justification, the payment of our penalty.

We already spoke about this a little bit this morning. The payment of our shortcomings in His holy expectations of us. And then we saw how He adopts us into His family. Once He has paid for that penalty, once He has overcome that gap, that bridge, He has accepted us, adopted us into His family, and then in sanctification, which we heard about last week, He actually starts changing us to look like His family. He starts developing and changing us to look like His Son, our older brother, Jesus Christ.

And so that is so far the story, and today we finish this story, and like all good stories, the finishing, the ending is always the best. It always makes sense of the whole entire story and I hope this morning that you will understand that as well. I don't know if you guys watch a news program on ABC called The Weekly hosted by Charlie Pickering. Has anyone seen that? Yeah.

So a few of us, and it's sort of, I think, just coming out, so it's not very popular, but Charlie Pickering is a very intelligent guy, a comedian who hosts a show that's similar to the project on channel ten, sort of a bit of a funny look at the news, but Mister Pickering definitely has his values and his philosophy that he pushes. And this week, I don't know if you saw it, but he hosted and he interviewed very controversial liberal Christian, John Shelby Spong, Bishop Spong. And some of us may be aware of him. He's been around for a long time.

Mister Spong, Bishop Spong doesn't believe that Jesus is divine. Doesn't believe that Jesus was God. He believes most of the things we find in the Bible are actual fabrications made up. He doesn't believe in miracles. He doesn't believe in the afterlife, and this is not some academic or philosopher. This is a man who served as a Bishop in the Anglican Church of America.

And in this interview, I listened to him talk and share about, I guess, his understandings of what Christianity is, what his brand of Christianity is, and I tried to understand. I couldn't help but wonder what is his understanding? What is the purpose of his so called Christianity? What is it? At the end of the interview, in his words, he said that Christianity was this: simply a celebration of love, joy, and forgiveness.

That Christianity is a great philosophy and a great tradition that should reflect on these moral principles more and more and not seek to change other aspects of life. He's a very strong proponent of gay marriage, the LGBTQ movement. Now as a Christian, of course, I was deeply moved. I sort of have an immense joy for those things that he mentioned. I love that Christianity is about love and joy and forgiveness, but what I was still wanting to hear from Bishop Spong was an answer to the question: why?

Why Christianity then? Why would you still choose to call yourself a Christian when you rule out all of its central aspects: the death of Jesus, the final victory over sin and death, the reality of the resurrection. Why would you still choose to call yourself a Christian when there are hundreds of different religions, of different sects, different cults, different philosophies that also value love, joy, and forgiveness? Why? And the one thing I realised I deeply missed in Mister Spong's Christianity was this: hope.

Hope. I sensed an emptiness and a lingering sadness that morality was all his Christianity could amount to, morality. A tradition where love and forgiveness and even very nice things could be honoured in some weird way and worshipped almost by individuals. You see, we are unavoidably hope-based creatures. We humans are hope-based creatures.

It's what makes us tick, and every culture has this need. Every culture in some way represents and reflects this need. If you go and research it, every single human culture desires to define what hope is, what hope is for it. But Christianity claims very uniquely that this hope can only and will only be fulfilled adequately in a single reality: the resurrection. This is what we also call glorification, and this is what we're going to talk about this morning. It speaks about the exaltation of us as humans into a restored, perfected unity with God.

Unity with God, but also with others, and a unity with the world itself. An eternal life established in us through a physical, bodily resurrection from the dead. That is the Christian hope. And there are four aspects of this glorification which the Bible highlights, and we'll just go through them rather quickly. Firstly, our glorification is a full and final vindication of the believer.

Romans 8, we dealt with it last week, speaks of a future judgment, a future time where God will come to judge humanity and ask the tough questions of our lives. But it says that there will be no condemnation and that no one will be able to bring a charge against a Christian because Christ has died for them and now stands as their advocate, their intercessor, their mediator. That no one can bring a charge against them, that they cannot be condemned. So our glorification is a full and final vindication of the believer. Secondly, in this glorification, the Christian will be made perfect morally and spiritually. Colossians 1:22 says this: "But now he who is Christ has reconciled you by his physical body through death to present you holy in God's sight without blemish and free from accusation."

We will be transformed to be spiritually and morally perfect. This perfection is also attained in part through the removal of temptation. We know in glorification, there will be a new heaven and a new earth where sin has been removed, the effects and the chaos of sin in our world is removed, and so there's not even the temptation that will be there for us. It will be completely taken away. Revelation 20, verses 7 to 10 tells us that.

Thirdly, glorification will bring a fullness of knowledge. You may have heard this. It's often read at weddings, 1 Corinthians 13, about love. Paul finishes that and says in 1 Corinthians 13, verse 12 that our understanding, our flawed understanding of everything, love, he says, we understand now in contrast to a perfection that is to come. He says in 1 Corinthians 13, verse 12: "Now we see but a poor reflection."

This world around us, we see as a poor reflection, like a mirror, a dull mirror, but then when Christ returns, when we are glorified, we shall see face to face. "Now I know in part," he says, "then I shall know fully, just as I am now fully known by God." Our present incomplete understanding of God, ourselves, and the world will be replaced, in other words, with a much fuller comprehension. The things that we don't understand, the trials and the sufferings that we have gone through, the good things and the bad things that we don't understand why and how, we will understand fully. So glorification will bring a fullness of knowledge.

And then fourthly, lastly, this glorification is fully evidenced in the physical resurrection of our bodies into a renewed, perfected existence, a new perfected body. Paul writes in Philippians 3, verses 20 to 21: "Our citizenship is in heaven," he says. "Our citizenship is in heaven. We belong to it, and we eagerly await our Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who by the power that enables Him to bring everything under control will transform our lowly bodies so that it will be like His glorious body." That's a very quick overview of glorification, of what will happen at the end of time when Jesus Christ comes to and returns, and He exalts us, and the Bible says we may be dead, we may be in the ground when He comes, and we will be raised up, or if He comes within our time, we will meet Him, and we will be transformed in an instant.

We will be glorified into these four aspects. But I want us to also really reflect and really drive down into this thing called hope of the resurrection, and I want us to read this morning from John 20 that gives us a glimpse of this, a majestic glimpse, like sort of looking through a crack in a door of just a foretaste of what it might be like. John 20, and we're going to read from verses 24 to 29. Just in context, what we see here is a meeting between Jesus and His disciples after He has been resurrected from the dead. This is after He rose from the dead.

Verse 24 of chapter 20 in the gospel of John: "Now Thomas, called Didymus, one of the 12, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, we have seen the Lord. But he said to them, unless I see the nail marks in His hand and I put my finger where the nails were and put my hand into His side, I will not believe it. A week later, his disciples, Jesus' disciples, were in the house again, and Thomas was with them this time.

Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, peace be with you. Then he said to Thomas, put your finger here. See my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.

Thomas said to him, my Lord and my God. Then Jesus told him, because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." There are certain things that Christianity, the Christianity of the Bible holds out. But this is the most important thing in Christianity: that God wins.

That God wins. That there will be final justice for all, that in glorification, at the end of time when He comes to judge the living and the dead, that the poor and the oppressed will become rich, more rich, more wealthy than they ever imagined, that the downtrodden, that the vilified, the marginalised will be lifted up, that the proud will be humbled. This is something that is so, so prevalent throughout Scripture. My question, if I was to speak to Bishop Spong this morning, would be to ask, why? Why to this day is it that Christianity still affects the masses, particularly the poor, so much even today, like it did two thousand years ago with the tremendous rise of Christianity over two or three generations? Why is it that Christianity still affects so powerfully the masses of the world, the two thirds of the world's population, places like Africa, places like Latin America, Southeast Asia? Well, people suggest, maybe Bishop Spong would as well, people suggest that it's because of a lack of education, that they are a superstitious culture not aware of higher education, but it's not that.

It's because of hope. Why is it? Why is Christianity growing exponentially in these places? Because they're the places that really know suffering. They're the places where they realise that fairness and goodness will never be theirs in this lifetime. No matter how hard they try, no matter what course they take, no matter who they speak to, justice will not be theirs.

And yet they know inherently that fairness should be theirs. They know inherently that something should come, something can come, and they look for answers to find this. And they hear it when the resurrection is preached. When the teaching of glorification of a time coming is shared with them. That's why in our countries like Australia where this hope is realised to a great extent, where hope has been placed in the here and now, the comforts of our life, the esteem of our peer groups, the fairness of our justice system, a government that listens to its people.

Well, Christianity isn't needed in this sort of place. Hope is what we already have. And so the greatest thing we can, the most logical thing we can expect and we can want is morality. Turn the other cheek. Forgive others.

Do unto others as you would have them do to you. And here is the point. Believe it or not, the resurrection was not preached in the beginning of the churches as some symbolic representation of morality, like we must always keep our hope. Resurrection is some spiritual thing that happens where, you know, the dead in us, the sadness in us can die, and hope can be reborn in us. No.

Even in those days, the resurrection was preached as a hard, bare, terribly irritating, paradigm-shattering, horribly inconvenient truth. A fact that you had to believe, and a fact that if you believed it, changed your entire life. You know what facts are like, don't you? Facts are hard. There is a fact.

I don't know. The sky is blue. The pews are actually, I don't know what colour they are. Orange? Brown?

There's a fact. If you don't like it, you'll get irritated because it's still there. It's in front of you. You have to do something with it. The passage we read this morning in John 20 talks about the eyewitness account of Jesus coming to His disciples, in particular, Thomas, the sceptic amongst the group.

He came and he made Thomas touch Him. He said, put your hand here in the spear hole above my hip, the nail marks on my hand. In fact, the gospel of John says there were three times, or at least it records three times where Jesus came to meet with His disciples in very real ways. Another time, Jesus ate with them. He ate fish and bread to show them that His body is real.

It's not some ghostly, ethereal thing where he might swallow a piece of fish and it falls down to the ground because He doesn't exist. Some sort of ghost. No. He's real, physical. It was no hallucination.

It's no vision. It's not some sort of ghost. And why did Jesus do this? Because believing in the resurrection, believing in the resurrection was just as hard then to believe as it is to believe now. But the message of Christianity, the gospel that was proclaimed then, is that people had seen it.

People had experienced it, and therefore they could not remain the same afterwards. The physical resurrection of Jesus became the springboard of the Christian church. It was the single reason why these disciples became apostles. It changed them. They said because He lives, so we too will live.

For them, Christ's resurrection proved the future glory of every believer, and it shows us three very significant things about this future of glorification. Firstly, it shows that this hope is personal. This hope is personal. You see, things haven't changed too much. Even in those days, there were Greek philosophies very similar to ours.

We had the Epicureans who didn't believe in anything spiritual at all. We live, we die, and so we may as well live really well. That's what they were accused of. That's why we talk of epicurean tendencies as people that love food, love, you know, the sensation of eating well and having great wine. They're Epicureans because they say, let's eat and live well now because tomorrow we die and then it's all over.

We had the Epicureans, didn't believe in anything after death. Then we have the Stoics who are like the eastern philosophies of today that said that when you die, you continue to exist, but not as a personal self. You become part of a greater existence. You become part of a substance of the world. Like we sort of hear maybe in the Lion King, the circle of life, the cycle of life.

You are planted in the ground. You decompose, and you give nutrients again to a tree. And so they said to Stoics, there's no reason to be afraid because you do, in some sense, continue on. These aren't new. But without the Holy Spirit, our deepest desire still is, the deepest desire of the human heart still is, our desire to be loved and to love in return.

We want to be loved. We want to be with our loved ones. And the one thing we do not want to do and do not want to lose is our loved ones. When we lose that, there is something in us that screams, that's unfair. That's unfair.

That's painful. That's just not right. The one thing we do not want to do is lose loved ones. You see, apart from the Holy Spirit, what most people know, the thing that gives me meaning in this life is love. But death is the thing that takes it away.

And eventually, it takes you away from your loved ones, and you're saying that there's nothing to be afraid of. You may be thinking that when I die, I don't know anything, or when I die, I may become a part of an impersonal universe, but Jesus Christ shows up in John 20 and says, guys, it's me. It's me. The one that you saw had His hands pierced. The one whose side was pierced.

The resurrection says of your future, says of your glorification that it will be deeply personal, that something will remain of you, and something of your believing loved ones will also remain. So our hope is very personal. The second thing we see is that our hope is very certain. Here's what I mean by certain. What good is it to be told that you have a personal future, that there is a love that you will receive that is without parting, surrounded by love, but you can't be certain of it?

What good is it to know of a personal existence like that when you can't know it? Martin Luther put it this way. He says that our life and suffering in it is intolerable if you are not sure of your salvation. When Jesus comes to His disciples after His resurrection, every time He greets them, He greets them with these words: peace. Peace.

And the apostle John includes this phrase to make this point, that the resurrection and that His appearance, His proving of the resurrection as an existence gives us, or should give us, unconquerable peace. Unless you are sure that in spite of all your flaws and all the troubles in your life, if you're not sure that God hasn't given up on you, suffering for you will be intolerable. But the resurrection says that we can be certain of a future hope. Why? Because it is a down payment of an overwhelming treasure.

And that changes the way we understand what happens in our life, the good or the bad. It changes us. Let me explain it this way. There's two men, identical in every way, and they are given a job to do. They are to create widgets.

And it's a menial, mundane work of ten hours a day with thirty minutes for lunch only, six days a week, day in, day out putting widgets together. They are in identical situations apart from this. One man is offered $10,000 for the year. The other man is offered $10,000,000. The one man will dread his life.

The one man will despair in his work. The other man will rejoice in his life. In fact, he may even enjoy his work. What we believe about our future completely transforms and determines the way we experience our present. What we believe about our future transforms the way we experience our present.

The resurrection of Jesus is a giant down payment slapped across history that indicates for all people to see that your future is certain. If you place your trust in Jesus Christ, your future is certain. And then lastly, the future hope is unimaginably wonderful. Here's where Christ's resurrection offers something very unique. Every religion, no, not every religion, many religions offer some kind of spiritual bliss, some kind of spiritual future.

So it could be Nirvana, it could be Valhalla, it could be Shangri-La. But even in these religions that offer this, they only offer consolation for what was lost. It says you may have experienced great tragedy now, but here, enjoy 72 virgins. Or Nirvana will say you've experienced great tragedy in your life, but now enjoy having no emotions or desires, so you won't feel good. It's a consolation for what you have lost. You have an eternity of neutrality, but the resurrection of Christ doesn't simply promise consolation.

It promises a restoration for what you've lost and perhaps something that you always knew you needed and didn't have. You will have a body that you somehow knew you didn't have but wanted, a health, a strength, a hope for something that you missed, and someone born with a disability, someone who becomes disabled, someone with a lifelong illness, even a terminal illness. For those people, this is a great hope. The resurrection is not only a consolation, but a restoration, a receiving of a body or a receiving of a nature that is morally perfect, that is virtuous in every sense, a character, a personality, a goodness that you never had but you've always wanted. And I think every one of us, if we are completely honest with ourselves, knows that there is something in us that is weak. There's a weakness in me for anger.

There's a weakness in me for insecurity. But the resurrection holds out hope that I will be kind, that I will be secure, that I will be compassionate, that I will not be angry anymore, but will be perfectly patient. The resurrection promise is that you don't just get your life back. You get the life that you've always wanted. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is walking proof that you will miss out on nothing.

Nothing. It's all coming, and it's going to be unimaginably wonderful. And there's no religion, no philosophy, and no human being who can offer this kind of future. And as Christians, our hope for the future is based on the real event of the resurrection, the eyewitness account of something that blew people's minds and changed human history. And so this morning, if you're sitting here and you're not sure about this Christianity thing, and if you're not sure about this resurrection thing, and if you're not sure about the claims of the Bible, let me ask you this.

Wouldn't you want this to be true? And even if you don't like certain aspects of the Christian faith, would you not want or hope for this sort of restoration? In this life, we will groan and we will suffer because we sense the terrible incompleteness of this life, yet there is a sure hope, the Bible says. And the doctrine of glorification promises that something better lies ahead. We will be everything God intended us to be, and everything we know that we aren't quite yet.

And although our glorification may only come to us through death, for some of us, maybe for all of us, if we look to Jesus, we see life. If we look to Jesus, we see life, and we see the perfect, complete life. Let's pray. Lord, I am reminded of this great hymn: "When I stand before the throne, dressed in beauty not my own.

When I see Thee as Thou art, love Thee with unsinning heart, then Lord shall I fully know, not till then, how much I owe." Lord, we owe such a great debt to You. And Lord, our gratitude, even our worship and our singing and our joy will not be able to satisfy this debt. Not even in an eternity of rejoicing over this truth. Father, thank You.

That in this story of redemption, it ends well. Lord, we are so aware that we need hope in our lives. We are so aware that we need something to drive us. We are so aware that we cannot go through the trials, the difficulties, the ups and the downs of life without a sure knowledge that there is something that awaits us, more glorious than we have now, something that we imperceptibly and yet perceivably know to be true. And we need more than what we have.

Lord, we know that earth is not our home. Lord, we know somehow that we are just passing through. Lord, we long for that day where we shall know fully just as we are fully known. We long for the day where we shall see Your glorified face, face to face. And Lord, we envy Thomas, who in his doubt was granted the great privilege of touching You, seeing You, holding onto You.

But we are also strengthened and encouraged this morning by those words that You said to him: "Blessed are those who do not see and yet believe." Father, I want to pray this morning especially for those of us who are or know of people struggling with terminal illness, whose mortality is very real to them this morning. I pray, Lord, for their comfort, for their peace. I pray, Lord, that they may know that there is a joy that is far beyond expression even now. And that in the resurrection, the down payment of the greatest treasure has been made.

Thank you for this truth, God. Amen.