“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that we might be the firstborn amongst many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.”
Romans 8:28-30

WE come to these verses again. Let us remind ourselves the purpose behind the teaching of Paul in these verses. Paul tells us about God’s foreknowledge, his predestination, his call, his justification and his glorification of sinners in order that we may be assured that God is working all things for our good. God has called us according to his purpose in this way, so we may be sure that all his dealings with us are from his heart of love towards us, because his love has this great purpose, which is that we may know final eternal redemption, and dwell with Him in his eternal glory.

Last time we looked at the statement “And those he predestinated, he also called.” We saw that this call was God making effective in our lives his purpose because of his foreknowledge of us and his resulting predestination of us to life. God acts in all these things by sovereign grace. Let us notice that it is God who purposes and it is God who acts, and so it is God who calls, who justifies, and who glorifies. We may be assured that we will persevere in faith and love for Christ, because it is God who has purposed this for us, and so does, and goes on doing all that is necessary for the achievement of his purpose for our salvation. Let us now consider that God has justified us and glorified us.

Paul says, “those he (God) called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.” Firstly let us take to heart the fact that the tense used in all these statements is the aorist tense, which is used for something that has happened in the past and is then permanent. Paul states these as having already happened for the believer. This seems strange because as we live our lives on earth, nothing is certain in the future. Also when we look into our lives we know so much weakness and sin, and this makes us feel uncertain whether we can persevere to the end. However the truth is that God has purpose our justification and our glorification, so there is no doubt that we will persevere to the end because he has determined this for us, and will perform it, and in his eternal purpose it is already a reality.

Let us consider both these blessings God purposes for us in turn.

JUSTIFICATION

The first is justification. Firstly we need to take hold of the fact that it is God who justifies us sinners. It is a declaration of God as holy and judge of the all the world that we are just in his sight, and that he sees no sin against our name accusing us or condemning us. As the judge of all he pronounces us just in his sight, and according to his Law. So in the Book of Life you will find no sin recorded against anyone of God’s elect. God sees no sin recorded against us, and no unrighteousness in us.

This seems entirely amazing because every believer is conscious of sin. However it is a fact that we are just in the sight of God, and there is nothing against us before God or which the Law of God condemns. We can rest in this fact because it is God, the judge of all the earth, who makes this pronouncement, and he does it from his judgement seat. This is more than simply forgiveness. It reaches forward into eternity. It is the permanent declaration and pronouncement of God concerning us. We are just in his sight.

How can this be so? God makes this statement justly. God is not overlooking sin, for this would mean that he would be unholy, for God in his holiness can’t overlook sin, for his holiness demands that sin be punished, and its evil expiated. Yet God is just when he pronounces the believer just in his sight. The reason is in Jesus Christ and what he has done for us.

God had to find a way whereby he could justly save and justify those on whom he had set his love. God’s law had to be satisfied, and its holy demands met. God is holy and nothing that defiles can be tolerated by God. Here was the dilemma. We are the sinners, so for the Law of God to be satisfied concerning us, we must not sin, and if we do sin, that sin must be punished. This places us sinners in a position of death, and even though God determines in grace to love us and bring us to glory he can’t overlook our sin. Our sin must suffer the just deserving before the Law of God, and this would appear to exclude us from salvation because we can’t atone for our sin ourselves.

God resolved this problem, and this is the revelation in the Bible, by making his Son, Jesus Christ, stand as our surety and in our place. For this he had to become a human being, so he became incarnate, and was born in the stable at Bethlehem. Jesus then had to live the life of perfect righteousness that God’s law demands, and this he did perfectly in his life. He then had to make himself responsible for all our sin, from the least sin to the greatest, and then in his body to suffer the just punishment our sin deserves, and so cancel our debt to God and his Law on account of our sins. God declared that Jesus had fully met the demands of his law and satisfied its righteous judgements in his life and in his death, and God made this declaration by raising Jesus from death. Death, the punishment for sin, was fully met in Jesus, and so he was raised from the dead.

God pronounces us just because he has placed our sin on Jesus (Isaiah 53:6) and made Jesus sin for us, that we might be the righteousness of God through him. In other words because Jesus worked in his life and death perfect righteousness, and in himself he had no need to do so, his righteousness was worked for God’s chosen ones, and God puts to our account the perfect righteousness of Jesus in the same way he accounted our sin to Jesus. By His stripes we are healed.

Because it is the righteousness of Jesus that is put to our account, we always will be righteous according to the pronouncement of God as judge of all, and we are justified eternal in the sight of God. We are justified and stand in this relation of grace before God, because we are clothed in the righteousness of Jesus which is perfect according to the Law of God.

Because this is our position and standing before God, we are saved eternally. This salvation can’t be lost, and so we are under the love of God, and he will most surely work all for our good.

GLORIFICATION.

“Those he justified, he also glorified.” This is the statement. Our glorification in heaven for all eternity is certain because God purposed this for us before the world was, and called us into faith, and declares us just in his sight for Christ’s sake. Faith which causes us to enter into the blessing of justification is a gift of God which we saw came to us through God’s call. We are justified by faith because God determined we would believe in Jesus, and so made us alive so that we repented and rested our hope of forgiveness and life in Jesus, and in him alone.

Because of this purpose of God, and because we are accounted just in the sight of God for Christ’s sake, we have been glorified. How do we understand this startling statement in the light that we still sin continually as we live this life on earth, even though we hate sin and seek to be rid of it?

Firstly, because it is the purpose of God for us, and because God has and is working all for our good, this final goal will be ours by the will and power of God. It can’t fail, because God can’t fail, and this means in the purpose of God the reality is already there, and the fulness can never be in doubt.

There is indescribable comfort and assurance in this. Our place, according to God’s determined counsel and foreknowledge, is in glory, and he will bring it to fruition. This means we are children of glory now, and because of this we will want to prepare ourselves for this glory. This will mean that we shall seek to be holy as God is holy, and fight against sin and hate sin in all its forms. He that has this hope in him, says John, purifies himself. There can be no other result in the life of one who has been glorified. This is why a person who is careless about sin needs to be very careful, for such an attitude is not compatible with new life which has been granted to God’s glorified ones.

So we are certain that one day we will be brought by God and Christ to his eternal glory, and we shall be able to say with Paul in our struggle against sin, “What a wretched person I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God -- through Jesus Christ our Lord.

There is still more we can say about this fact of our glorification. In a very real sense we have been and are glorified in Christ now. It is a glory that world knows nothing about, but it is a precious possession for all who believe. It is the grace in which we now live through Christ which Paul speaks of in Romans 5:2.

What is this glory and glorification. Firstly, we have been created anew. Our new birth in Christ raised us to the life of glory so that Paul can say, as we have often noted before, we have been created to be like God in righteousness and true holiness. In our new born self we have the glory and holiness of heaven. This is still true even though we still have to live in this mortal and corrupt flesh which causes us to sin so much.

We know this glorification because in this new self which is holy the Holy Spirit dwells and gives us fellowship with Jesus, and the knowledge of his love, and the joy of his presence.

We know this glorification because now we have been translated from the kingdom of this world, into the kingdom of Christ, and now are ruled by Jesus, and Satan has no more dominion over us. We are already citizens of the heavenly glory. Surely this is glorification, even though the fulness of it is still to come.

Surely we know our glorification here and now because we have access into the holiest of all by the blood of Jesus, and enter spiritually into the throne room of heaven, to commune with Jesus on the throne. The fulness is still to come and be enjoyed, but in this way we have the foretaste now.

Surely we know our glorification now because we have placed in our soul the worship of heaven, and as all the community of heaven fall down before the throne and the Lamb as described in Revelation 4 and 5, so we find this spirit of worship in our souls, and we fall down before the throne in our spirits and worship the Lamb upon the throne and say with all the host of heaven “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have been created.” And again “To him that sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honour and glory and power, for ever and ever. Amen.”

Surely we know this glorification because when we engage in this worship we find ourselves lifted up into the heavenlies, and joy fills our hearts, and adoration and love for the Lord, so that we experience the glory of the heavenlies which is a foretaste of heaven. We are caught up by the Spirit and we experience the glory which is ours.

If this is glorious and it is, how much more wonderful will be the fulness when Jesus calls us home to his glory which is already ours by faith now. How sure we may be that God is working for our good in all things, when we experience such joy in him now, and so bask in his love.