I have to begin my message with what some of you may regard as a disconcerting confession. Here it is: I have no idea what I’m talking about when I speak about glorification. That isn’t because I haven’t carefully examined the many biblical passages that address this issue. It isn’t because I haven’t devoted hours to studying and thinking on this topic. What I mean when I say I have no idea what I’m talking about is that I have absolutely no idea what it will feel like not to be able to sin. I have no personal experience with this, and my theology tells me that neither do you.

The simple fact is that together today we are approaching a subject that none of us has ever tasted or seen or felt or experienced in any tangible way. I can tell you, as I will in just a moment, what the Apostle John means when he says that when we see Christ we will be made “like him.” But I have no idea what that feels like. I’ve never met anyone who was “like” Jesus Christ in the sense that they were utterly devoid of any sinful impulse or entirely capable of resisting every temptation to transgress. I haven’t tasted it, sensed it, seen it, felt it, known it, or in any meaningful sense experienced it.

Let me explain what I mean by using the words of one of the most popular hymns by William Cowper. You all know it well: “There is a Fountain Filled with Blood”.

“Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood shall never lose its power

Till all the ransomed church of God be saved, to sin no more.

Be saved, to sin no more, be saved, to sin no more;

Till all the ransomed church of God be saved, to sin no more.”

Now, what does that mean? What does it mean to be “saved to sin no more”? As I said, I know what that means exegetically and theologically. I believe it as a promise of God to all his children. But I have no idea what that means experientially.

So my task in the next few minutes is in one sense extremely easy and in another sense extremely difficult and beyond my ability or that of any one else to achieve in full. The easy part is looking at certain biblical texts that assure us that a day is coming when we who know Jesus Christ as Lord will be “saved to sin no more.” I can do that. The difficulty lies in then trying to explain to myself and to all of you what it means to be free from the abiding presence of “flesh” and the often-enslaving power of sin.

A Biblical Survey of the Truth and Certainty of our Glorification

“Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess. 5:23)

I don’t want us to get sidetracked by a debate over dichotomy and trichotomy. If you aren’t familiar with those terms, trichotomy asserts that we are comprised of three distinct parts or facets: body, soul, and spirit. Dichotomy asserts that we are comprised of two parts or facets, the material and the immaterial, or the body and the soul. Soul and Spirit, according to dichotomists, are used interchangeably in the Bible. I am a dichotomist, but if you embrace trichotomy that is fine.

It is common in Scripture for an author to accumulate or pile up terms to express completeness. We see this in Mark 12:30 where Jesus declared: “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (so also Luke 10:27). No one concludes from this that we are comprised of four separate parts: heart, soul, mind, and strength (quadchotomists!). Likewise, in Matthew’s version we read: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matt. 22:37). Why don’t trichotomists argue that the three parts or faculties of a human being are “heart” and “soul” and “mind” rather than “body” and “soul” and “spirit”?

What then does this text does tell us? It would appear that the point in Paul’s mind is to pray for the comprehensive or exhaustive work of God in purifying or sanctifying our entire being. He prays that God would sanctify us “completely”, by which he means every facet of who we are as physical and non-physical beings: our spirit and soul and our body. In light of the other texts noted above he could as easily have said, “May the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole heart and mind and emotions and body and understanding and strength be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The sanctification of the believer began with God’s sovereign election. In 1 Thessalonians 1:4 Paul gives thanks to God for having “chosen” the Thessalonians. Divine election is the first stage of being set apart or sanctified by God. This was followed by their having “received the word” of the gospel. They believed because they were chosen. In turn, as we have seen all through 1 Thessalonians, the Holy Spirit is empowering the Christian believer to “walk in a manner worthy of God” (1 Thess. 2:12), one expression of which is their sexual fidelity (1 Thess. 4:1-8).

Now, at the close of the letter, he intercedes for them that the God of peace, the God who is faithful to his promises, would consummate their sanctification by eradicating sin from their entire being and keeping them secure and blameless when the Lord Jesus returns. How can we be confident that God will do this? We know and trust that he will because, as Paul says in v. 24, “he who calls you is faithful”! See Phil. 1:6.

This doctrine that is the focus of our attention is also known as glorification. In 2 Corinthians 3:18 Paul says that we “are being transformed into the same image [that is, the image of Christ himself] from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor. 3:18). The implication is obvious: progressive sanctification will not continue without end. There is a conclusion to our consecration. This progressive transformation from one degree of glory to another will one day reach its consummation. On that day we will be fully glorified and altogether shaped and fashioned forever in the likeness of Jesus.

This is surely what is in view in Paul’s anguished but hopeful cry in Romans 7:24 – “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom. 7:24). The question clearly suggests that a day is coming when “deliverance” from one’s sinful flesh would actually occur, and Paul evidently knew the answer to his own question, for just a few verses later, in chapter eight, he declares that “the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs – heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Rom. 8:16-17).

In the verse that follows, Romans 8:18, he says this: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:18). He then explains that the natural creation itself will one day “be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21). And yet again, in v. 30, we read that “those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified” (Rom. 8:30).

This is surely what Paul had in mind in 1 Corinthians 13:12 when he said that “now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12). Think about what Paul is saying. When Christ comes and the “perfect” arrives, which I understand to be the final state of moral and metaphysical perfection in the New Heavens and New Earth, we will “know fully”. This doesn’t mean we will become omniscient. But at the core of glorification will be the absence of any false views of God. No heresy will exist in heaven. No misconceptions or distorted images of who God is will linger in our hearts. There will be no misinterpretations of Scripture.

Although this may sound odd to you, may I suggest that this glorification, of which the apostle speaks, never ends. Let me say that again: glorification never ends.

I don’t mean that it will never be reversed, although that’s true. There will never be the slightest diminishing or regression or reversal or loss of the purity and holiness and likeness unto Jesus that we gain at the resurrection of our bodies. What I mean is that although glorification will happen in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, it will also eternally grow and expand. The condition of our body, soul, and spirit, although entirely free from sin as a result of the event of glorification, is not the final expression of what we will experience throughout eternity. Let me say that again: glorification is a singular event that happens in a moment in time. But I want to suggest that there is a very real sense in which it is also an eternal process, a never-ending, ever-expansive, incremental increase in our knowledge and experience of God and thus also in our joy or delight in him.

It is true that when we are “glorified” we will forever cease from sin and disease and death. But that does not mean that all we could possibly know about God and his redemptive purposes in Christ will be ours at a single point in time, as if to suggest that we won’t “learn” in the New Heavens and New Earth. At the moment of glorification all false ideas about God and his ways will be eradicated from our brains. But that doesn’t mean that all possible true ideas about him are instantly imparted to us. In fact, I would argue that to suggest otherwise borders on blasphemy. To contend that we will, at the moment of glorification, instantaneously and forever know everything about God that can be known is to reduce God to the level of the Devil. It is to suggest that there is a limit to what is true about God and thus a limit to what we his creatures can know of him.

We must remember that God is infinite. It means that there is no limit to God, in the sense that what can be known of him and his character and his ways can never be exhausted. Everything else in this universe is quantifiable. Everything that is created can be counted. That is to say, there is a finite number of quarks in material reality. There is a finite number of grains of sand on the seashores of the earth and on every planet in the cosmos. There is a quantifiable number of stars in the galaxies above. Everything that has been created is finite (i.e., limited).

But the Creator is not. God cannot be quantified. The truths about him cannot be counted. God cannot be exhaustively known. That is why I can say that, in a very real sense, glorification never ends. Our transformation never ceases in the sense that we will continue to learn and expand in our knowledge of God and thus too in our delight and joy in God, all of which will lead to ever-increasing dimensions of change and growth and understanding.

Still in 1 Corinthians, Paul exuberantly declares “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” (1 Cor. 15:51-52). But the change is not merely physical. It is moral as well. Our bodies are to be transformed from perishable and corruptible into imperishable and incorruptible, but this extends as well to our minds: how we think; it extends to our wills: what we choose; it extends to our affections: what we desire; it extends to our emotions, what we feel and experience; it extends to our tongues: what we say; and to our hands: what we do.

Paul speaks again to this idea of glorification in Philippians 3. “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself” (Phil. 3:20-21).

Many of you live in constant frustration because you hate your body. You are dissatisfied with your appearance, your size, your color, your hair. You think you’re either too tall or too short, too thin or too fat, too weak or too strong. Worse still, you hate what your body does and how it feels. You despise disease and weakness and fatigue and pain and lust and greed and discomfort and death. Does this rob you of life and joy and service? Or does it cause you to fix your eyes on the heavens and the return of Christ who will finally, fully, and forever change your body into one that is fit for the glories of heaven and the kingdom of God?

Never forget that we will live for eternity in a body, a glorified and redeemed body, but no less a body. Our existence will not merely be spiritual but gloriously physical forever! Our hope, as Paul states it in Philippians 3:21 and in 1 Thessalonians 5:23, is that Christ “will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.”

It’s often hard to be happy when you hurt. Some of you are feeling that right now. But in heaven, with new and glorified bodies, you will never be out of breath; there will be no fatigue, pain, discomfort, chronic aches or itches. There will be only pure physical pleasure with no bodily obstacles to diminish our ability to see and feel and hear and touch and taste and smell the glories of paradise. Now, on earth, physical pleasure often competes with spiritual happiness, but in heaven they are one! The physical and emotional and intellectual pleasures of heaven will infinitely exceed the most ecstatic of physical and sensual pleasures on earth.

In the age to come, once sin is eradicated from our souls and bodies, there will be new faculties of mind to think and to comprehend the majesty of God. There will be new senses that enable us to see and feel and hear and taste the limitless beauty and sweetness of all that Jesus Christ is.

There will be no bodily lusts to defile your heart, no physical fatigue to cloud your mind, no wicked impulses against which you must fight, no dullness of spirit to hold you back, no lethargy of soul to slow you down, no weakness of will to keep you in bondage, no lack of energy to love someone else, no absence of passion to pursue what is holy. Insofar as our bodies will be glorified in heaven and thus delivered of weakness and frailty and obscurity and our senses all heightened and magnified and their capacity to see, touch, feel, hear, and smell greatly increased and no longer hindered by disease or distraction, our experience will be indescribably joyful.

And what precisely is the practical benefit of thinking on these things and fixing the eyes of our hearts on the heavens from which Christ will return? As John said – “Everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure” (1 John 3:3). More on this passage in just a moment.

In Colossians 3 Paul assures us that “when Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (Col. 3:4). According to this text, Christ, who is our life, will one day “appear”. That is typically taken for granted among Christians. We refer to it as the Second Coming. But we fail to consider that “when” he appears “then” (note the explicit temporal connection in Paul’s language) we “also will appear with him in glory.”

Let’s put this passage together with two others. According to Romans 8:18 we will “see” that glory. Paul says it will be “revealed” to us. But in another sense, we will “be” that glory. But in what sense? And in “being” that glory how do we keep the focus on Christ and not ourselves? Look again at Colossians 3:4.

When Paul says we will appear with him “in glory” he’s not referring to a place but an experience. 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 bitterness. 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.

We will not only witness Christ’s glory, we will also be enveloped within it, engulfed by its surging splendor, and made experiential participants of it. One day, oh glorious day, our lives will no longer be “hidden” with Christ in God (Col. 3:3), but fully and finally and forever seen as we glow with the brightness of his glory, for his glory. This is surely what Jesus had in mind in Matthew 13:43 when he said of his Second Coming: “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matt. 13:43a).

Although the word “glory” or “glorification” does not appear in 1 Thessalonians 5:23, that is undoubtedly what Paul has in mind when he prays, “Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess. 5:23). One day our sanctification will be “complete” or consummated.

Perhaps the most instructive of all biblical declarations of our “glorification” is provided by John in 1 John 3. “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).

Just as our spiritual perception of Christ in the present sanctifies us incrementally and progressively, our literal vision of Christ in the future will sanctify us wholly. It is our experience of Christ that sanctifies. If progressive assimilation to the likeness of Christ results from our present beholding of him through a glass darkly, to behold him face to face, i.e., "to see him as he is," will result in instantaneous perfection or glorification.

John is saying that Christ shall appear, we will see him, and as a result of seeing him we shall be made like him. In other words, in his presence sin will be eradicated altogether from us. When the glory of Christ finally appears, sin flees. It cannot abide his presence. In that moment and forevermore we will reflect his glory and through the majesty of that encounter we will be made like him.

“The Weight of Glory” (C. S. Lewis)

Let me take just a moment and comment on one observation made by C. S. Lewis in his famous essay, “The Weight of Glory.” I’m especially interested in what Lewis says about glory as brightness, splendor, or what he calls, luminosity. “We do not want merely to see beauty,” explains Lewis, “though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words – to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it” (37).

Lewis does not mean by this, and neither do I, that the distinction between Creator and creature is blurred, much less obliterated. He will forever be God alone and we will forever be his finite creatures. But the glorious luminosity or majestic brilliance that is God’s will envelop us and permeate us and fill us and flood our hearts and souls and minds and bodies. This glory that will be ours is always derivative, which is to say, it is God’s glory imparted to us.

Honestly, I don’t know what I’m talking about! I struggle to find language and imagery that can adequately explain what it will be like and what it will feel like when Matthew 13:43 comes true: “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matt. 13:43a). At no time in this experience, either at its inception or throughout the eternal ages, will anyone ever think or feel or suggest that this glory is anything other than the luminosity of God that has been graciously and mercifully imparted to otherwise hell-deserving sinners. We will always be reflections of that ultimate glory that belongs to God alone. And that is why this event of glorification and the process of never-ending growth and intensification of it will always be grounds for our praise of him, and never praise of us.

Exploring the Experience of Glorification when we are Finally Freed from Sinning

The only way I know to approach this subject is by thinking deeply about what sin is like now and then trying to project into our future when such passions and impulses and temptations will no longer hold sway over us or keep us in bondage. As I said earlier, the struggle I have at this point is that I have no experience with what I’m going to explain. By God’s grace I know what it is like to experience occasional victories over temptation, but I have no idea what it would feel like to wake up in the morning without any physical discomfort or to have slept without dreams defiled by sexual fantasies. I have no idea what it would be like to never feel the slightest tinge of envy, bitterness, resentment, lust, greed, pride, selfish ambition, anger, jealousy, or any such sin.

In Galatians 5 Paul exhorts us: “walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do” (Gal. 5:16-17). Here and there I’m able to do what Paul says. Now and then I experience the victory he describes. But I have no idea what it would feel like never to feel in the slightest degree even the most minimal tinge of fleshly desire. To ponder the possibility that one day I will live every moment of my eternal existence and never once “gratify” a single desire of the flesh is almost more than I can fathom.

Of course, the reason why this will one day be true of all who know Christ is that glorification is at its core the eradication from us of the “flesh”. It is not simply that we will have more of the Spirit than of the flesh and thus we’ll win more victories over it than we will suffer losses. No. We will never suffer defeat again. There will be no flesh susceptible of yielding to temptation. We will be wholly and altogether governed by the Spirit.

Think about Paul’s imagery. He envisions the “flesh” and “Spirit” engaged in combat one with another. They are “against” each other, opposed to each other. The result is that we are kept “from doing the things” we “want to do.” That day will one day end! We will never feel the internal battle, the struggle, the war that wages daily in our inner being. All flesh will be gone and we will always and forever be able to do “the things” that we “want to do” and we will only and always want to do what is good and righteous and honoring to Christ.

So let’s take just four examples from the list of “the works of the flesh” that Paul provides and try think about what it will be like never to yield to them, never to feel the condemnation and guilt they bring.

(1) Lust – Here I’m using the word “lust” to summarize what Paul means when he speaks of “sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality” (Gal. 5:10). We may debate about the nature and cause of lust, but I dare say that we all know what it means. Can you today envision what life will be in the absence of lust? Can you gain a small sense in your soul of what it will feel like never to look upon a man or woman to fantasize illicit sexual relations with them?

You will recall that in Romans 7 Paul lamented the fact that “nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh” (Rom. 7:18a). But in the age to come, after and because of glorification, we will join him in rejoicing to say, “nothing bad dwells in me, because my flesh has come under the eternal and unchangeable influence of the Spirit of God such that it is now holy or altogether eradicated from my being.”

It isn’t that you will encounter a temptation and feel an ungodly impulse rising up in your flesh only then to find you have the power to resist it. In this life that sounds wonderful. Would that it might happen that way more often. But in the age to come there will be no temptation. But even if there were, there would be no inward, internal impulse. There will be nothing in your nature to which any temptation might appeal. There will be no point of contact in our souls through which sin might be aroused; nothing to which it can attach itself; no lustful thoughts or fantasies that it can exploit. If there is an impulse in reaction to the mere thought of sin it will be one of revulsion. There will be a permanent disconnect in our souls between sin and desire.

(2) Greed – Will not the potential for the sin of greed and avarice actually be heightened or intensified in the new heaven and new earth? After all, we will walk on streets of gold! How could we do that and not feel the inward prompting to possess it and expend it selfishly on ourselves? We will daily behold the precious stones and jewels that make up the walls of the New Jerusalem. John says they will be comprised of jasper and sapphires and emeralds and that the gates are made of priceless pearls. Will we not yield to the same materialistic tendencies to which we are now subject? Ladies, when was the last time you browsed in a jewelry store and set your eyes on such precious gems without feeling any impulse to own them? It almost seems as if God will have constructed the New Jerusalem precisely to entice and seduce us with its immeasurable value.

For one thing, whatever we set our eyes upon and find ourselves wanting we will want for good and godly reasons, to honor God as the creator and giver of all good things, or perhaps we will want such things so that we might in generosity give them to other people. Furthermore, greed in the present world is fueled and sustained by lack. We are greedy because we don’t have or own or possess what we want. But in the age to come there will be no lack, only unfathomable abundance. And if Paul can say in the present day that “all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future – all are yours, and you are Christ’s and Christ is God’s (1 Cor. 3:22-23), then how much more must it be true that “all things are ours” in the age to come. And if all things are ours, to be enjoyed and shared and given away, what place is there for greed?

What I’m asking you to envision, then, is the state of your soul that feels no illicit desire to have more stuff, no matter how precious or priceless it may be. For then you will have Christ, and no jewel or gem can surpass him in beauty or the power to please.

(3) Deceit or Lying – Why do we deceive and lie to one another? What makes deceit or lying such a powerful temptation? What do we hope to accomplish by means of a lie that seems to trump all the reasons why we should tell the truth?

One reason we lie is that we simply don’t trust the truth to get us what we want. In fact, telling the truth may be costly and painful and lead to hardships we’d rather avoid. So perhaps the underlying problem is greed and telling the truth will cost us business or lead to the loss of a job.

A related factor is power. People frequently lie to gain an advantage over others that would rarely if ever occur had they chosen to be honest, forthright, and humble. This power-grab may be in the form of authority in the local church or a promotion at work or prestige among one’s peers, regardless of age or context. And why is such power so appealing that it would prompt one to lie to gain it? Simply because we’ve bought into the false belief that personal value and worth is based on the perception of others and the sort of achievement that wins the applause and approval of society at large. If our identity were more wholly wrapped up in Christ and who we are in him, we would be less tempted to lie to gain from people what only he, ultimately, can give.

But when we are finally and fully glorified and beautified and in the presence of Christ on the new earth the selfish ambition that fuels our deception and lying will no longer be a factor. The person who is consummately satisfied in Christ and with Christ has no need for anything or anyone else to invest them with meaning and value. But in our glorified state we will be so overwhelmed with his glory and altogether flooded with the splendor of his presence and utterly captivated with the adequacy and sufficiency of his grace and love that we will never feel the slightest tinge of temptation to deceive others into getting what we will then have fully in Jesus.

Perhaps the most powerful energy behind deceit and lying is pride. We lie to protect ourselves from whatever embarrassment the truth might bring. The truth would expose us in our weakness and sinfulness and failures. So we lie to make ourselves appear to others different from what we really are.

But once we are glorified all such self-defensiveness and self-protection will be a distant memory, if we even remember it at all. There will be no fear of loss because we will then experience unending gain. Again, the ultimate underlying reason why we fear exposure is because we don’t believe that being in Christ and being loved by Christ and in union with Christ is enough. We live under the delusion that we need something more. But when we see Christ fully for who he is and our minds are saturated with the knowledge of what he’s done, all such idolatrous fears will disappear. We will rest so peacefully in who he is for us that our craving for the acceptance and approval and praise of others will vanish. It simply will cease to exist in our souls.

(4) Envy – Envy is a desire for some privilege or benefit that belongs to another together with resentment that another has it and you don't. Envy is the poisonous fruit of dissatisfaction with God. If God were truly enough for you, you wouldn’t feel the need to have what others enjoy. If God were sufficient for your soul, you wouldn’t feel driven to resent people for possessing what you don’t. The day is coming when we will be so utterly satisfied with God that there will not be so much as a fle23eting flicker of a thought of what we might enjoy beyond who he is for us in Jesus.

A Concluding Promise

Earlier I asked, how do we know all this is true? How can we be sure God will sanctify and glorify us completely? Once again, Paul’s answer is short and to the point. “He who calls you is faithful. He will surely do it” (v. 24). Glorification, ultimately, isn’t up to you or me. It will be our experience because the God who is faithful to fulfill his promises to us never lies. He will surely do it!