Glory of Jesus Christ

Baptism by the Holy Spirit

2004-09-01T07:31:00.000-07:00

Baptism by the Holy Spirit is experienced by all who believe on Jesus Christ as their Savior at the moment of salvation, and it is not to be repeated (Romans 8:9). In that baptism believers are identified with Christ as the Head of the Body, and are indwelt by the Spirit (John 4:14; 7:38-39).

The baptism by the Spirit occurs at conversion when the Holy Spirit enters the believing sinner and gives him new life, and makes his body the temple of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). All believers have experienced this once-for-all baptism at the moment of salvation (Romans 8:9).

The presence of the Holy Spirit and His availability for all believers is the norm in the New Testament. All of the commands and exhortations of the epistles are based on the assumption that the baptism of the Spirit has already taken place in the believer's life. The Holy Spirit "abides" with the believer forever from the moment he believes on Christ as his Savior (John 14:16).

Therefore, we should be careful not to confuse other forms of expressions found in the New Testament with the baptism of the Holy Spirit. For example, when Christians are enjoined to "walk by the Spirit" (Galatians 5:16) and to "be filled with the Spirit" (Ephesians 5:18), we are not to understand these as commands to be "baptized" of the Holy Spirit. Similarly the "anointing" of the Spirit (1 John 2:20-27) and the "earnest of our inheritance" (Eph. 1:14) and other expressions are not referring to the baptism. These references indicate various other aspects of the Spirit's work in believers and their appropriation of the gifts and blessings of the Holy Spirit in the Christian's life rather than the historical baptism of the Spirit.

We affirm the teachings of the New Testament that Christians receive one baptism, and must yield to the constant control of the Holy Spirit. We received one baptism which took place at moment of our spiritual regeneration, and we will receive many fillings during the rest of our Christian life (1 Corinthians 12:13). The baptism of the Holy Spirit places us in the body of Christ. The filling of the Spirit brings us under the control of the Spirit.

The phrase "baptized with the Spirit" defines what baptism is being referred to; it is a baptism with reference to the Spirit, not water. A baptism with reference to the Spirit is a baptism in which the Holy Spirit is the sole Agent.

The baptism of the Holy Spirit on Cornelius and his family (Acts 10:44-48) is directly linked to the first outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and it is the formal recognition of the gospel being preached to the non-Jews. Gentiles as well as the Jews have all of the blessings and privileges of the dwelling presence of the Holy Spirit (Acts 11:15-18).

Jesus predicted a definite and specific event called the baptism of the Spirit (Acts 1:5). The events on the day of Pentecost were the definite fulfillment of the prophecy of Joel (Acts 2:17-21). Only one other event in the New Testament is described as the baptism of the Holy Spirit and it may be regarded as the completion of the Pentecostal baptism (10:1-11:18).

"When God does the baptizing, that which is in view is the exertion of God's power," observes Kenneth Wuest.

1 Corinthians 12:13, "By one Spirit we are all baptized into one body." The "body" here is the mystical body of Christ of which our Lord is the Head. The personal agent who does the baptizing into the body of Christ is the Holy Spirit. He places the believing sinner into the Body of which our Lord Jesus Christ is the living Head. The tense of the verb refers to a once-for-all event in past time. "This occurred potentially to all believers of this Age of Grace at Pentecost," notes Wuest. It is the fulfillment of our Lord's words; "You shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days hence" (Acts 1:5).

The Holy Spirit places or introduces the believing sinner into the body of Christ. The same operation of the Holy Spirit is referred to in Romans 6:3; Galatians 3:17, but the apostle is relating it to our vital union with the Head of the Body.

The baptism by the Holy Spirit does not bring the Spirit to us in the sense that God places the Spirit upon or in us. The baptism by the Spirit brings the believer into vital union with Jesus Christ. Therefore, the baptism by the Holy Spirit is not for power, for in this baptism there is nothing applied to or given the believer. The believer is placed into the Body of Christ. "It is the baptism with the Spirit in the sense that God the Father does the baptizing through His personal agent, the Holy Spirit" (Wuest).

"The Holy Spirit is not the element into which and with which we are baptized. . . the phrase, 'baptized with the Spirit' does not mean that in this baptism, the Holy Spirit is applied to the believer as water is applied in the case of water baptism. In other words, there is no application of the Holy Spirit to the believer. He is not given to the believer by virtue of this baptism. . . . it was the anointing with the Spirit which referred to the act of God the Father causing the Spirit to take up His permanent residence in the believer. Sincere there is no application of the Spirit in baptism, there is no power imparted in the act of baptizing with the Spirit. This baptism is only for the purpose of uniting the believing sinner with the Head of the Body, Christ Jesus, and thus making him a member of that Body" (Wuest).

Therefore, nowhere in the Scriptures are believers commanded to seek the baptism of the Spirit. We have already experienced it, and it never has to be repeated.

We are, however, commanded to be "filled" with the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18). The "filling" has to do with the control of our lives by the Holy Spirit. To be "filled" by something in the Scriptures means to be "controlled" by it. It is a matter of being available to the Holy Spirit and yielding control of our lives to Him.

For an excellent treatment of this subject adhering closely to the rules of Greek grammar, please see Kenneth Wuest, Untranslatable Riches from the Greek New Testament, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, pp. 83-90).

We shall reign with Christ in glory

2004-08-01T07:29:00.000-07:00

The apostle Paul said, “For if we died with Him, we shall also live with Him; if we endure, we shall also reign with Him” (2 Timothy 2:11-12).

Jesus said to His disciples, “You are those who have stood by Me in My trials; and just as My Father has granted Me a kingdom, I grant you that you may eat and drink at My table in My kingdom, and you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Luke 22:28-30; cf. Matt. 19:28).

The book of Revelation is filled with passages that speak of the believer reigning with Christ (chapters 1, 11, 1, 19, 21).

We are being prepared for glory by the LORD God, and can be assured of that glorious day when we shall see Him and be with Him. Christ is “bringing many sons to glory” (Heb. 2:10). Since God has called us to glory, He is preparing us for glory, and we shall be brought to that glory.

Jesus Christ is the “Captain of our salvation” and He is leading us trough the treacherous way, and He will bring us unto glory. In deed, He will bring all of His sons with Him to glory. There will be no exceptions.

“Behold I make all things new” (Rev. 21:5). There will be a new heaven, new earth, and a New Jerusalem. Have you been made new in Christ?

God is preparing us for this eternal glory

2004-07-01T07:29:00.000-07:00

We are “vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory” (Romans 9:23). What a contrast to the “vessels of wrath prepared for destruction” (v. 22). That is what we were until God in His grace reached down to us and saved us.

The preparation began in eternity when we were chosen of God, and commenced in regeneration, and is going on every day in the progressive work of sanctification.

One of the most beautiful passages on this theme is 2 Corinthians 3:18. “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18, NASB 1995). That is the process God uses to bring us into glory with Him. He will not let up until He is through. The light of the knowledge of the glory of God is in the face of Christ (4:6). The surpassing greatness of the power of God is revealed when God cracks the pot and releases His sweet fragrance of the gospel. Our glory is to contain God! Are we cracked pots? The treasure, power and the glory are from God.

God puts us in new experiences, which are beyond us, causes us to abandon hope in the flesh and we cry out, “Lord save me!” Do not lose heart; He cracks these clay pots so “our inner man is being renewed day by day.” “For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh” (2 Corinthians 4:11, NASB 1995). The life of Jesus Christ is being manifested in these old clay pots! Everything we are going through in this life is producing for us a mass of glory, an eternal weight of glory.

Kenneth Wuest give us an expanded translation of 2 Corinthians 4:17-18: “our outward self is progressively decaying, yet our inward self is being changed into a new kind of life [fit for the new spiritual existence into which we have been ushered in salvation, and constantly being conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus] day by day. For our momentary light burden of affliction is working out for us more and more surpassingly an eternal, heavy weight of glory while we are not contemplating the things that are seen but the things which are not seen, for the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

“If indeed,” says the apostle Paul, “we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him” (Rom. 8:17). Paul is absolutely sure when he writes, “if indeed,” or better “for sure.” When we suffer with Christ in His humiliation we are assured that we shall be with Him in His glory. The cross leads to the crown.

We have been called to this glory

2004-06-01T07:28:00.000-07:00

God has “called us unto His eternal glory by Christ Jesus.” In His Sovereign grace He has called us to repentance, faith, sanctification, perseverance, and glory. “For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified” (Romans 8:29-30, NASB 1995). “So that you would walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory” (1 Thessalonians 2:12, NASB 1995).

If you are justified by grace through faith, you shall be glorified through Christ Jesus. Called, justified, glorified.

God has called us to reign with Christ in glory. The apostle Paul told Timothy he “endured all things for the sake of those who are chosen, that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory” (2 Timothy 2:10). He was encouraging Timothy not to lose heart. The minor inconveniences, “light afflictions,” we endure work for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. There is nothing to compare with it. Paul said, “For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17; Rom. 8:18). The suffering is temporal, but the glory is eternal.

“When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory” (Colossians 3:4, NASB 1995). The promise is ours and God never forgets His promises. He is faithful.

We will dwell in God’s immediate presence forever

2004-05-01T07:28:00.000-07:00

We will enjoy intimate fellowship with the LORD God! The presence of the LORD God will be our blessedness forever. The fact that “He has called us unto His glory” outshines everything else. The glory the saints will have forever is a glory, which God Himself will put upon them. It is “His glory.” It is the richest, fullest glory possible.

We will enjoy God Himself. He will be our joy. Our God shall be our glory. “God has called us unto His eternal glory.”

The apostle Paul places great emphasis on the fact that when Christ died, we died, that when He was buried, we were buried with Him, when He rose from the dead, we rose in Him, add we shall ascend into heaven to reign with Him. All our glory is by and through Jesus Christ, and in all the glory of Christ we have a share. We are member of Christ, and we are one with Him. By virtue of our vital union with Christ we share in His glory.

The saint will have divine approval

2004-04-01T07:27:00.000-08:00

We who have come short of the glory of God will one day hear Him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” “Come you blessed of my Father.” Those who were despised and rejected of men will be approved of God.

We will be trophies of God’s saving grace. We will be mirrors reflecting God, and in us His glory shall be revealed even as today in a foggy mirror we “give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” as “we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18). Our glory will be God shining through us to the astonishment of all the principalities and powers and inhabitants of the heavens to His glory. Saved by grace will be our theme. All of heaven will be astonished at the divine glory, which will be manifested in sinners emancipated from sin and hell ad made heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ.

God is the author of this new life

2004-03-14T07:34:00.000-08:00

It is “according to the riches of His glory.” It is a miraculous act of God at the very core of man’s being. He creates a new birth and gives new life. It takes place deep within the “inner man” and it is through the power of the Holy Spirit. This “inner man” is the personal, rational self that has experienced spiritual renewal by the Spirit of God. It takes place at the very core of our personality in that part of man that responds to the Spirit of God. He does it so “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith . . . that you may be filled up to the fullness of God” (vv. 16-17, 19).

Christ wants to enter into the inner recesses of our heart, settle down, and make Himself at home. This is something no man can do. It takes the miraculous power of God to do that. To “dwell” means “to settle down in a dwelling, to dwell fixedly in a place.” Christ wants to live in our life and express Himself through our personality. Christ wants to settle down and feel completely at home as a permanent resident in our inner person.

Do we make Him fell at home, or do we keep Him out of certain rooms in our heart? Do we welcome Him in and tell Him here, make me your home? Do we take down all of the “private, no trespassing” signs? Do we allow Him to be the Lord and Master and King of every area of private, personal and professional lives? Do we say, here Lord, you be the absolute master of my life? Or do we keep the keys to the private areas of our lives and lock Him out of the house? Do you dread His absolute dwelling in your inner person?

Because of this struggle that we all experience in our daily life, Paul cried out, “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24). We need God’s power to make Christ Lord of our lives. We must have His resurrection life to live the Christian life. There is no other way to live it.

“But when God, who had set me apart even from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood . . .” That was Paul’s testimony. God “was pleased to reveal His Son in me . . .”

Martin Luther said, “After I was born God supported me. Heaping mercy upon mercy, He freely forgave my sins, replenishing me with His grace to enable me to learn what great things are ours in Christ. To crown it all, He called me to preach the Gospel to others.” The he asked, “What prompted Him to call me? His grace alone.” Amen.

Christ has made Himself real in Paul’s inner being. Has Christ revealed Himself in you?

One day while studying the passages of Scripture on the resurrection of Christ R. W. Dale was overcome by the reality of the living presence of Christ. He walked about his study shouting, “He is alive! He is alive! He is alive! I want my people to know you are alive!” Christ is now alive in me. Christ can now be a living reality when He is revealed in us. Do you know the indwelling reality of the resurrected Christ in your life? Is He at home and is He free to express Himself in your life?

The saint will have a purified character

2004-03-01T07:26:00.000-08:00

We will one day be like Christ in His perfect holiness. When He is through with His work of progressive sanctification the Holy Spirit will leave no trace of sin in us. No object of temptation, without or within, will be able to touch us. The eyes of a thrice-holy God will not be able to detect anything blameworthy or sinful in us. God in His redeeming grace will have made us fit to dwell with a Holy God. That will bring glory to Him throughout eternity.

“Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is” (1 John 3:2, NASB 1995). We will be remade in the image of God, make like our divine Lord who is “the firstborn among many brethren.” What the apostle Paul says about the church is true of the Christian (Eph. 5:27; 2 Tim 2:10).

God has quickened us together with Christ

2004-02-14T07:34:00.000-08:00

This is what God did “even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus . . . “ (Ephesians 2:5-6).

We are identified as living members of the body of Christ. By identification with Christ, we have experienced a co-crucifixion and a co-resurrection with Christ. “Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection” (Romans 6:4-5). This is the newness of life that comes through our new identity with Christ.

Paul tells us in verse six that we have been set free from the obligation to obey the old man (v. 6). The dead man has been freed from the control by the sin nature. That is not to say we do not experience temptation. It does not mean that we do not sin. The facts are we do sin. We are not perfect. Nevertheless, there has occurred a radical change in our lives.

Jesus Christ went to the cross and died as our substitute that He might redeem those who were spiritually dead. Now that we have put our faith in Christ He has made us alive in Him.

Paul is so identified with Christ that when Christ died as his substitute and paid the penalty due to the law Paul declares I died to the law, too. It not longer has claim over him. Paul abandoned it as a means of justification. He was saved by grace alone. The law provided no remedy for sin. Instead, it condemned Paul and proved him a guilty sinner. It made him a sinner and it punished him for being one. There was no freedom in the law.

The Lord Jesus died under the demands of the law and satisfied its requirements. “All believers,” Kenneth Wuest reminds us, “were identified with Christ in His death and also in His resurrection, and thus have passed out of the realm of divine law so far as its legalistic aspect is concerned.” Paul died to the law so that he could freely live to please God.

The law demanded the death penalty for all sinners, and Christ paid that death penalty for all sinners by going to the cross and dying. The law killed Him. It declared our Representative guilty and punished Him for our guilt. Because we are so identified with Him by faith, He has freed us from the demands of that death penalty and the law. Now Paul can say I died to the law because I was crucified with Christ.

Therefore, Paul could declare, “I am crucified with Christ.” It was a “past completed action having present finished results.” His “identification with Christ at the cross was a past fact, and the spiritual benefits that have come to him through his identification are present realities with him.” The demands of the law for Paul’s death penalty have been completely satisfied in Christ’s substitutionary death. God has acquitted Paul based upon the death of Christ as his substitute. Therefore, the law had no more demands on Paul and the power of old Adam’s nature over Paul was broken.

When Paul declares, “I have been and am now crucified with Christ” he is saying it has brought death to the law. We are free from all the curse and guilt of the law. We are now free to live for God. Paul is “not saying here that the law of God had lost all meaning or relevance for the Christian behavior. This is the error of antinomianism, which Paul was at pains to refute both here in Galatians as well as in Romans. . . There is an ethical imperative in the Christian life that flows from a proper understanding of justification” (Timothy George).

This new life brought about a change in Paul’s regard for himself. He can say, “I no longer live.” Like Walvoord says,

The self-righteous, self-centered Saul died. Further, death with Christ ended Paul’s enthronement of self; he yielded the throne of his life to Another, to Christ. But it was not in his own strength that Paul was able to live the Christian life; the living Christ Himself took up His abode in Paul’s heart: Christ “lives in me.” Yet Christ does not operate automatically in a believer’s life; it is a matter of living the new life “by faith in the Son of God.” It is then faith and not works or legal obedience that releases divine power to live a Christian life. . . “If He loved me enough to give Himself for me, then He loves me enough to live out His life in me.”

Moreover, Paul can declare, “Yet not I, but Christ lives in me.” His life is now Cristo-centric. It is a Christ-centered life. “His life is a person, the Lord Jesus living in Paul.” The Lord Jesus is manifest in Paul’s daily life through the indwelling Holy Spirit. Paul is dead, crucified, buried, as far as his attempting to be accepted by God in his own self-righteousness. He is like a dead man. He can do absolutely nothing to make himself acceptable before God.

Therefore, this new life in Christ is “a Person within a person, living out His life in that person,” says Wuest. Instead of depending on a set of rules and regulations in order to be accepted by God Paul now yields to the Holy Spirit to produce in him a life that is pleasing to God. He is “energized by the divine life resident in him through the regenerating work of the Spirit.”

I like the way Wuest summarizes Paul’s conviction: “Instead of a sinner with a totally depraved nature attempting to find acceptance with God by attempted obedience to a set of outward laws, it is now the saint living his life on a new principle, that of the indwelling Holy Spirit manifesting forth the Lord Jesus.”

We, too, can now say with Paul, “the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Paul described this transformation in a believer who has come to God by faith in Christ in terms of a death and resurrection. This is the believer’s vital union with Christ in His death and resurrection.

Therefore, Paul prays that God the Father “would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love . . . ” (Ephesians 3:16-17).

God promises His glory for the saints

2004-02-01T07:26:00.000-08:00

God reverses the tables. We who “have fallen short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23), are promised His eternal glory in Christ.

King David is a good example of a sinner who was promised to receive God’s glory. “With Your counsel You will guide me, And afterward receive me to glory” (Psalm 73:24, NASB 1995). “For the Lord God is a sun and shield; The Lord gives grace and glory; No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly” (Psalm 84:11, NASB 1995). No good thing in heaven is going to be held back from the saints “who walk uprightly.”

The Lord Jesus Christ suffered and entered into His glory. He sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven.

After we have suffered a little while, “the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you.” We will be with the Lord Jesus in His glory.

This eternal glory involves the whole person. For example, our physical body is “sown in dishonor,” but “it is raised in glory” (1 Cor. 15:43). When Christ returns He “will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself” (Philippians 3:21, NASB 1995). This frail, feeble, hurting, declining human body will one day be changed into a perfect resurrection body.

I love what C. H. Spurgeon wrote about the resurrection body of the believer: “The body of a child will be fully developed, and the dwarf will attain to full stature. The blind shall not be sightless in heaven, neither shall the lame be halt, nor shall the palsied tremble. The deaf shall hear, and the dumb shall sign God’s praises. We shall carry none of our deficiencies or infirmities to heaven. . . neither shall any of us need a staff to lean upon. There we shall not know an aching groan or a weak knee or a failing eye. ‘The inhabitants shall no more say, I am sick.’”

He goes on, saying it shall be “a body that will be incapable of any kind of suffering: no palpitating heart, no sinking spirit, no aching limbs, no lethargic soul shall worry us there. No, we shall be perfectly delivered from every evil of that kind. Moreover, it shall be an immortal body. Our risen bodies shall not be capable of decay, much less of death. There are no graves in glory. Blessed are the dead that died in the Lord, for their bodies shall rise never to know death and corruption a second time. No smell or taint of corruption shall remain upon those whom Jesus shall call from the tomb. The risen body shall be greatly increased in power: it is ‘sown in weakness,’ says the Scripture, but it is ‘raised in power.’. . . It will be a ‘glorious body,” and it will be raised in glory,’ to that the whole of our manhood shall participate of that wonderful depth of bliss which is summed up in the word—‘glory.’”

Union in Christ’s Resurrection

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The person who has accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Savior is identified with Christ in all that He has accomplished. The believing sinner is joined to Jesus Christ in His death, in His burial and in His resurrection. This is our vital union with Christ. This is the means whereby we walk in the newness of eternal life.

The apostle Paul appropriates for himself this close personal relationship with Christ. A. T. Robertson observed, “So close has become Paul’s identification with Christ that his separate personality is merged into that of Christ.”

The apostle Paul’s passion was, “that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:10-11). The apostle Paul is not thinking about sometime in the future when his body will be raised from the dead. In this verse, he is thinking of the reality of the resurrection life of Jesus Christ in which he has become a partner by the identification with Jesus Christ in His resurrection. His desire is to have such an intimate relationship with Christ that the resurrection life will manifest itself through him every day of his life. Paul doesn’t think of eternal life as something off in the distant future, but in the here and now. God has given us a new kind of life.

Paul prays that the Ephesian church will experience this same power in their lives. He prays that they may experience, “what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 1:19-20).

The apostle Paul reminds us that “Christ lives in me” by His Spirit. “If any man has not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His” (Romans 8:9). Christ in His glorified body is in heaven at the right hand of God, but He is represented here by the Holy Spirit. What is said to be done by Christ now is done by Him through the agency of His Spirit.

Paul says, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me . . . “ (Galatians 2:20). “Having died with Christ in his death, the believer now lives with Christ in his life––i.e. his resurrection life. In fact, the new life in Christ is nothing less than the risen Christ living his life in the believer. The risen Christ is the operative power in the new order, as sin was in the old (cf. Romans 7:17, 20). . . It is by the Spirit that the risen life of Christ is communicated to his people and maintained within them. It makes little practical difference whether he speaks of Christ living in them or the Spirit dwelling in them (cf. Romans 8:10a, 11a) . . . although it makes little practical difference whether he speaks of them being ‘in Christ’ or ‘in the Spirit’, it is the former expression that is commoner. . . The believer’s present life is lived in faith–union with Christ, the Son of God” (F. F. Bruce).

The Glory of Believers

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The apostle Peter saw the prospect of the supernatural glory that is prepared for us in Christ Jesus. He wrote: "After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you." (1 Peter 5:10, NASB 1995)

The apostle Paul said that it has not “entered into the heart or man the things which God has prepared for them that love Him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). The glory of God is among these deep things God has prepared for His people.

The Hebrew word for “glory” originally meant “weighty, heavy, or important.” God’s glory is His beauty in holiness. He is the God of glory.

In His incarnation, the Son of God showed the glory that was His as the only begotten of the Father (John 1:14). The transfiguration of Christ was a breaking out into open His glory (Matthew 17:1-8). Jesus Christ is the Lord of glory (1 Cor. 2:8). The glory of God radiated from His face, and as we behold Him we become like Him (2 Cor. 3:18).

Sanctification of the believer is described as a changing from glory to glory. Glorification is implied as the lat event in the change from glory to glory. Glorification is the completion, the consummation, the perfection, and the full realization of salvation. It is a perfect, incontestable standing before God. Glorification is the perfection of our sanctification (Eph. 5:27; 2 Tim. 2:10).

The glory spoken of by Peter is the glory that belongs to God alone.