God’s Complete Salvation: refs. include Watchman Nee and Witness Lee

The two aspects of God’s complete salvation

The eight items of God’s organic salvation

Glorification

Key verse: Romans 8:30
“And those whom He predestinated, these He also called; and those whom He called, these He also justified; and those whom He justified, these He also glorified.”

Glorification is the final step in God’s complete salvation (Rom. 8:30), the step by which God will completely saturate our body of sin, which is also a body of death and is therefore mortal (Rom. 7:24; 8:11; 6:6), with the glory of His life and nature. In this way He will physically transfigure our body, conforming it to the resurrected, glorious body of His Son (Phil. 3:21). This is the consummate step in God’s complete salvation wherein God obtains His full expression, to be ultimately manifested in the New Jerusalem for eternity.

According to the Bible, “glory” is simply God expressed. When God is hidden, there is no glory; but whenever and wherever God is seen and expressed, glory is present. Man was made by God for the purpose of containing the life of God and expressing God for His glory. But man has sinned, thus contradicting the holiness and righteousness of God, thereby forfeiting his right to receive and express God’s life. As a result, instead of expressing God, man now expresses his sinful nature and self. The Bible therefore says that man has not only sinned, but has also come short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23). God’s solution to man’s shortage of glory is glorification, the process by which God brings man into His full expression.

How does God bring us out of the expression of our sinful self and into the expression of His glorious life and nature? Colossians 1:27 says that Christ in us is the hope of glory. When we received Christ, He came into us as the seed of life. This seed in us is our hope of future glory, that is, our hope of being brought into the full expression of God. We can illustrate this process with a carnation seed. Although it does not appear promising—it is a tiny, black, unattractive seed—it has the life potential to blossom. After planting, watering, and a period of growth, this seed becomes a plant. Then, with further growth, it blossoms. This blossom is actually the seed itself, now full-grown, manifested as a flower. Thus, within the seed is a “flowering life,” and this life is the hope of the seed’s glory.

Similarly, we do not now appear to be glorious, because Christ, the “life seed” within us, has not yet grown so much. Nevertheless, through the process of God’s organic salvation, Christ is gradually being added into us and is growing within us, just as the carnation seed grows in the soil. One day, when the Christ in us becomes fully grown, He will “blossom” in us. At that time, the divine life and element that has been hidden within this seed will be fully expressed, and we will be glorified with Him.

If we are faithful to live by Christ as our inner life today, we will also be manifested with Him in glory at His second coming (Col. 3:4). This glory will not miraculously fall upon us; it will come from within us through a lengthy process. First, Christ as the seed of life is sown into our spirit. Throughout our lifetime, He grows, spreading into all the parts of our soul. Finally, He fills and saturates even our physical body, glorifying it, making us exactly “like Him” (1 John 3:2). How glorious that day will be!

Through God’s complete salvation, we, the sinners, those who were hopelessly short of God’s glory, become the glorious sons of God, full of God’s life and glory in order to express Him for eternity!

A hymn to praise God for bringing us all the way to glory