This
morning I was drawn to consider the aspect of eternal life that can only be
described as, “And this is eternal life,
that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent”.[1] Eternal life is to know God. Since John 3:16 tells us how our
believing in Jesus gives us eternal life, we need this focus, that eternal life
is about knowing God.
This
means that, everything in our lives is about how well we know God. To be “saved”
means to be rescued from the sin and death that keep us from knowing God,[2] to have this eternal life of knowing him.[3] So, how well do you know God?
As
I have sometimes shared lately, it helps to break these realities of salvation
down into the three stages of our eternal life, justification, sanctification,
and glorification. Justification refers to our new birth, glorification to our
complete development, and sanctification to the growing and maturing that takes
place in-between.
It
helps to understand that everything to do with salvation in the present time is
less than perfect. The third and final stage of our salvation is our
glorification, when the work of making us like Jesus will be complete. That
comes later, when we see Jesus face to face.[4] We cannot have completeness now.
What
we do have now is our completed justification by faith, whereby we come to know
God as Father through adoption.[5] Adoption is a once-for-all experience that is finished at the time
it happens. We are fully and forever adopted. As a newborn baby is fully born,
fully human even in its infancy, so our justification by faith makes us fully
born again,[6] fully righteous in God’s sight.[7] We can now say that we have the first stage of this eternal life of
knowing God because we have been adopted, and know God as our Father.
What
really helped me this morning was realizing (remembering) that the way I ought
to think of my present sanctification is that I am growing up between my
adoption, and my glorification. Nothing about my incompleteness minimizes that
I have already been fully adopted, and will one day be completely glorified.
What
helps me is to accept that the very nature of sanctification is that it is a
process, a journey. It is not perfect righteousness now, but growing up in
righteousness.
This
is the way we are with children. We do not need them to be mature adults for us
to treat them as fully loved, and fully ours, and fully part of the family. We
love them and care for them all along the way, knowing that they will keep
maturing until they are able to be adults, parents, and elders, in our
families.
In
the present experience of sanctification, this journey of growing up to be like
Jesus, we already have the eternal life of knowing God, just not in the way we
will know God in our glorification.
So,
what are some things to keep in mind regarding our present journey of
sanctification? If eternal life is to know God, and to know Jesus Christ, then
experiencing knowing God in sanctification means constantly knowing him better.
The
Scripture that made this clear to me this morning is this: “For 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.”[8]
What
encouraged me so much was that the knowing God of our eternal life means
growing to know him better every day. We must accept that this present life of
sanctification will always leave us feeling "now we see in a mirror dimly,” and “now I know in part,” but in a journey that will one day lead to
this glorious experience of, “I shall
know fully, even as I have been fully known.”
That
is so beautiful when we consider it through the imagery of children growing up
with their parents. In infancy, the little child has no way of comprehending
that he or she is loved and adored by dad and mom. When mom looks adoringly on
her child as she feeds her beloved, the baby cannot think relationally. It cannot
consider how mother is doing, or how she is feeling, or what trouble these
through-the-night interruptions cause her.
However,
as the baby grows up, the relating becomes more interactive. The baby not only
knows that mother is looking at him or her, but looks back with its own early
thoughts, impressions and feelings. The child becomes conscious of
relationship.
So
too, in our growing relationship with God in the present time, the thing that
should characterize our growth in Christ is that we are growing to know God
better every day than we have ever known him before. It may sometimes involve
coming across Scriptures we have read a hundred times, only to discover that
this time it makes us feel like we just got to know our Father in a way we hadn’t
known him.
One
of the things that really stood out to me in this is the connection between the
two lines of Paul’s expression in I Corinthians 13:12. I have long had an appreciation
for the parallelism of Jewish thought as expressed in the Old Testament beauty
of the Psalms and Proverbs. Paul seemed to use that rhythmic part of his
culture and heritage to drive home the point of what is ahead for us when Jesus
Christ appears.
The
two lines look like this:
|
“For
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.”
|
The two halves
of each sentence are in parallel thought. In the present time, the time of our sanctification,
“we see in a mirror dimly,” which
means we “know in part.” In the
future, at the time of our glorification, we shall know God “face to face,” which means, “then I shall know fully, even as I have
been fully known.”
I have spent
so much time relishing in the wonder of the second part, that we will one day
know fully, to the measure of how fully known we have been for all time, that I
hadn’t considered that this is parallel to the “face to face” part of the expression.
Today this
description of how fully we will one day know God became the way I got to know
him better this morning than I have ever known him before. I understand that
the “face to face” part of this is “then”, in our glorification. And yet,
this reveals God to us as a Father who longs to see his children “face to face.”
How many
parents have felt that desire? When our daughter was in Britain for nine months,
nothing felt right until she was back home with us, and we could be with her
face to face. When our son was living in the big city, we could never enjoy the
same relationship as now when we get to see him face to face.
And these are
the words God chose to reveal to us our future. In the “then” of our
glorification, we shall know fully, in a face to face kind of way, even as we
have already been fully known, even as the Triune knows each other. God wants
it this way. God wants us to know right now that this is waiting for us in
heaven. Whatever dark days and disappointments face us here below, and whatever
tarnishing of the brass mirror makes us feel that we see far more dimly than we
ought to by now, there is this abiding hope waiting for us, that God is
preparing the day for us to share a face to face encounter with him forever.
The apostle
John recorded very similar wards when he wrote, “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.”[9]
In the
present, in our journey of sanctification, “we
are God’s children now.” In our justification, we have been born again, and
in our sanctification, we are God’s children, growing up to be like Jesus.
However, “what we will be” in our glorification, “has not yet appeared.” Jesus has not
returned. Our inheritance of hope is still waiting for us in heaven. The coming
day is still coming, but has not yet arrived. We are not yet fully like Jesus.
“BUT!!!” (emphasis added by me!), “we know that when he appears we shall be
like him.” And, why is that? “Because
we shall see him as he is.”
In other
words, when Jesus appears, and we see him face to face, and see him as he is,
we shall be like him. We shall know as we have been fully known. We will enter
into perfect relationship just as the Triune has been in perfect relationship
forever.
Today I rest
in the wonder of what my Father has stored up for me in heaven. However, I also
enjoy the wonder of what he wanted me to know today. That little bit of
information, telling me he wants to see me “face
to face,” has increased my experience of God’s will that I “know the love of Christ that surpasses
knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”[10]
While it may
still feel like my knowing the love of Christ is like seeing in a mirror dimly,
this prayer is answered in incremental ways Paul described as, “from one degree
of glory to another.”[11]
For now, I will enjoy the degree of glory that came as I welcomed the
revelation that my Father wants to see my face to face. I wonder what that will
be like.
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures
are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version
Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
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