Raised in Splendor: The Hope of GloryNäide

Salvation’s Final Stage

When I say above, “Glorification is the final stage of the triune God’s overarching work of salvation,” we are reminded of those three phases of salvation: justification, sanctification, and glorification. These three are inseparable but should not be mixed or confused.

First, God justifies us, declaring us as righteous because of the work of Christ. God credits the righteousness of Christ to us and we are therefore declared to be in right standing before God. He also sanctifies the believer, making the believer more like Jesus, more holy. He is beginning the work of making us into the image of Christ. Justification, however, is not sanctification. Those who are justified will be sanctified.

We see in Romans 8 that those who God justifies, He also has predestined to be conformed to His Son’s image. In our lives as Christians, we become more like Jesus as God works in our hearts and we submit ourselves to His Spirit. As an old Baptist confession says, “Those who have been regenerated are also sanctified by God’s word and Spirit dwelling in them. This sanctification is progressive through the supply of Divine strength, which all saints seek to obtain, pressing after a heavenly life in heartfelt obedience to all Christ’s commands.”

The reason these cannot be mixed is because of the absolute nature of justification versus the progressive nature of sanctification. We must not think of justification as progressive, because God has already declared us as just because of Christ’s finished work. As the Reformed theologian Louis Berkhof states, “Justification is a judicial act of God, in which He declares, on the basis of the righteousness of Jesus Christ, that all the claims of the law are satisfied with respect to the sinner.”

Additionally, we must not think of our justification as dependent on our sanctification. It works the other way around: we are continually being made more like Jesus because it is His righteousness that makes us holy. John Owen once said, “Our Sanctification is an effect or fruit of what [Jesus] did and suffered for us.” In the same way, we cannot think of our glorification as dependent on our sanctification, because it is our right standing with God because of Christ that ensures that we will be glorified (Rom. 8:28–30).

However, this final stage is yet to occur; we are not yet glorified. We are awaiting God’s promise to glorify us. We have confidence that He will do this because He has already justified us and is currently conforming us into the image of His Son and the work of this conforming will not be complete until He returns for us.

Turning to Berkhof again, “When we speak of sanctification as being imperfect in this life, we do not mean to say that it is imperfect in parts, as if only a part of the holy man that originates in regeneration were affected. It is the whole, but yet undeveloped new man, that must grow into full stature.”

This truth then leads us to a key verse for our understanding. The apostle John tells us, “We know that when he [Christ] appears, we will be like him because we will see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).