There is no problem, no doubt, with what God has ordained for us: glory. But how are we going to enter into that glory? Or how will we be glorified?
The secret is in Colossians 1:27:
Christ in you, the hope of glory.
You know, when God created man, He had glory in view. He created man according to His image, after His own likeness. In other words, what God had in view when He created man was to make man a vessel capable of receiving Him, His own life, into man, that man might be joined to His only Son.
Why did God create man? Why did God create me? If our understanding of the Scripture is correct, we find that in the first creation, it does not seem that God created man such as we are. In the first creation, it seems that the highest creation was the angels, those celestial beings. God created animals and things like that, but it is as if there was no man in the first creation.
But after the rebellion of the archangel, this earth entered into judgment. Then we find in Genesis 1 that God’s Spirit brooded over the face of the deep. It is a picture of the love of God. The warm love of God brooded over the ruins—cursed, corrupted, and empty—and brought it back into a habitable place.
It was not until the sixth day, the final and highest act of His creation, that God created man. God created man altogether differently, because when He created angels, He did not say that He created them in His image. Only when He created man did He create man in His image. Why?
Because God loves His beloved Son. He said, “It is not good for Him to be alone. I will give Him a help.” He needs companionship. He needs fellowship. He is so lonely.
Because of this, you find God created man. So when God created man, He had glory in view: to be conformed to the image of His beloved Son, that His Son might be the firstborn among many brethren.
But unfortunately, you find the first Adam, the first man, rejected the tree of life—the way into union in life with God. Instead, he wanted to develop his own self. That really was the fall. We all know about it.
Do you notice that when man sinned, suddenly both Adam and Eve discovered that they were naked? Why did they not see that they were naked before? They discovered themselves as naked, shameful. They needed to be covered, and they tried to put fig leaves together to cover their nakedness.
I do not know. You know, this is not Scripture. You may take it or leave it. For Scripture, you have to take it; you cannot leave it. I wonder: when God created all these living things, God clothed them with clothing.
When it is cold, you do not need to put a jacket on a dog. Now, some people would put jackets on their dogs, but actually, they do not need it. God has already clothed them. Can you imagine, when God created man, He did not clothe him?
I have the feeling that when God created man, man was a glorious being. There was a glory around him. That glory came from being made in the image of God. There was glory there. You do not need other clothing because there is glory there. The glory is their clothing.
God Himself is clothed with glory. But when man sinned, the glory disappeared, vanished, and man appeared naked. Sinning is shameful. The flesh is naked. Wherever the flesh appears, there is no glory but shamefulness.
So I wonder whether that is what happened. God had to clothe them with the skins of slain animals, which are a type of Christ. We have to be clothed with Christ. If we are not clothed with Christ, we are naked. We cannot appear before God. We are shameful.
Brothers and sisters, man lost his hope of glory. Sin entered through our forefather, and the whole human race fell. In Adam all died. There was no hope of glory. Death is shameful.
Because of this, you find people in this world refuse to accept the judgment and standard of God, because they think they are naked before God. Man tries to gain glory for himself—in wealth, in position, in power, authority, and all these things. They think that these things become their glory and cover their nakedness.
But, brothers and sisters, these things are vain glory. They are transitory; they pass away. They do not come from God. Only that which comes from God is glory.
Anything that you are able to attain without finding its source in God—remember, brothers and sisters—this is not glory. This is shame.
Man lost the hope of glory. But one day, God, in His great love, sent His only begotten Son into this wicked world. The Word became flesh and lived among us, full of grace and truth. He was tempted in all things, without sin.
He was the one Man who obeyed God all the time, obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. In this second Man, hope came.
So you find that our Lord Jesus not only proved Himself to be the perfect Man, but there is now the glory of the Son of Man. A Man is in glory now because He has earned it. Thank God.
In Christ all are made alive. So when we believe in the Lord Jesus, we come into union with Christ, and Christ comes into us.
Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Do you have Christ in you? All who believe in the Lord Jesus have Christ in them. In 1 Corinthians 1:30, we find that God has put us in Christ Jesus. When you believe in the Lord Jesus, the word believe means “believe into.” When you believe into the Lord Jesus, you are in Christ, and Christ is in you.
Christ in you is the hope of glory. In other words, this is the foundation of glory. Do not, at any time, think that aside from Christ in you, there is any hope for glory. Your only hope of glory is in Christ.
It is not in your flesh. No matter how you adorn it, dress it, cover it, or perfume it, it is death. It is naked. It is ugly. It is shameful. It has to be buried, hidden from sight.
As our brother mentioned, we need to have a very clear understanding: God’s purpose for us is glory. But where can we find that glory? How are we going to achieve it? It is only in Christ Jesus.
Christ in you, the hope of glory.
But if Christ is in you, is there hope for glory? There is hope. But how does that hope become perfect? How is it all translated into reality? In other words, the seed is there. How is the seed to grow into maturity, that we may be conformed to the image of Christ?
Let me use an illustration. You remember the tabernacle, or the temple. You have the outer court, and then you have the sanctuary, the holy place, and behind the holy place, the holiest of all.
People could come to the outer court. The priests could enter into the holy place. But only the high priest, once a year, with blood and the smoke of incense, could enter behind the veil to make atonement for the nation. He had to quickly withdraw. In other words, the way to the Holiest was not yet open, as the book of Hebrews says.
Now, in the holiest of all, there was the ark with the mercy seat, the cherubim, and the glory of God dwelling there. In other words, God dwelt in the holiest of all upon the mercy seat, and Christ is the mercy seat. He is the One who covers the ark.
In the ark were the two tables of the commandments. In other words, He is the only One who fulfills the law of God. So, on the basis of righteousness, God can be merciful to us. There God would meet us. His glory rested upon the mercy seat.
Because of this, no one could enter into the holiest of all. Anyone who dared to do that would be smitten to death. Even the two sons of Aaron, when they tried to offer incense with common fire, were burned to death. God is a holy God. No one can see God.
Now, brothers and sisters, you remember when our Lord Jesus died on Calvary’s cross, something happened. It is recorded that when our Lord Jesus on the cross said, “It is finished,” and He bowed His head and committed His spirit to the Father, that was outside Jerusalem on Golgotha.
But within the city, in the temple, you find the veil that separated the holy place from the holiest of all was rent from top to bottom.
Now, unfortunately, at that time, the temple in the holiest of all was empty. There was no ark, no mercy seat, no glory of God there. It was empty. But symbolically, it shows that God dwells in the holiest of all, and only in the holiest of all. No one really can see Him, because of the veil, His flesh.
Then what happened? The glory of God in the holiest place shone forth and filled the whole house.
You remember in Hebrews 10, the writer says:
Therefore, brethren, we can approach the throne of God, the throne of grace, the holiest of all, with holy boldness.
Why? Because of the blood of our Lord Jesus, and because the veil is rent. A new and living way has been dedicated to us through the veil being rent, which is His flesh.
So you find that when our Lord Jesus was on the cross, when He was rent on the cross, the veil was rent. In Hebrews it says, because the veil was rent, therefore we can enter into the holiest of all—not only enter into the holiest of all, but even dwell there. In other words, we dwell in the presence of God through our Lord Jesus.
But put it in another way: now the glory of God has come out and filled the whole house.
Use this as an illustration. Here is my body, and within the body is my soul—my personality, me, my thoughts, my emotions, my will, my volition. But within the soul there is our spirit.
God has created us with a spirit, a soul, and a body: a body to communicate with the physical world around us, a soul to communicate with ourselves, and a spirit to communicate with God.
When God created us, He breathed His breath into the nostrils of Adam. But because Adam sinned, God said, “In the day that thou eatest of that forbidden tree, thou shalt die.”
Physically, Adam lived for hundreds of years, longer than all of us. Soulishly, he lived on, gave birth to sons and daughters, had a family, and became a farmer. But on the day that he ate that forbidden fruit, his spirit died.
It does not mean that he no longer had that spirit as an organ. It means that the spirit lost its function. It could not communicate with God’s Spirit anymore.
The proper environment of our spirit is God. But the communication was cut. That is death—dead in trespasses and sins. That is the reason why we need to be born again, born from above.
What does it mean? It means that he who is born of the Holy Spirit has a new spirit, a renewed human spirit. The Holy Spirit comes into our dead spirit and quickens it into life, making it new. Communication with God is renewed, and we cry out, “Abba, Father.”
Thank God, the Holy Spirit comes and dwells in our spirit. He has found a resting place.
So here you find Christ in you. The holiest of all is in you. Christ is in you. The Father is in you, because you find the Lord Jesus saying, “We will come to you and dwell in you.”
The Triune God has come, and He takes up His dwelling place in our spirit. Oh, brothers and sisters, the glory of God fills within us. There is glory within us. Do you know that?
Do you remember when you first believed in the Lord Jesus? Did you experience peace and unspeakable joy within you? You did not mind what happened to you at that time. Nothing could take away the glory within you. Is that not true?
Remember, the seed of glory is there in you. But unfortunately, there is a veil. The veil is our flesh.
Because our flesh is still not rent, you know how the Lord Jesus—His body was rent, His flesh was rent—and He opened for us a new and living way. In other words, He opened a way for us. Here is a way for us, but it is a way dedicated to us. We have to go the same way.
If you do not go that way, the glory of God will be confined, imprisoned in your spirit. It will not be able to shine forth and transform you from glory to glory according to His image.
So our problem is here. Why is it that the work of transformation is not going on? What is transformation? To put it in a very simple way, transformation is done in our soul.
Our spirit has already been reborn, and the glory of God is already there.
Christ in you, the hope of glory.
But Christ has to come out and dwell in your heart. Christ has to fill your soul.
Your emotion must express the emotion of Christ, not merely your own emotion. Your thought must not express you; it must express Christ. The mind of Christ is in you. Even your will must not express your own will, but your will must be so surrendered to God that it expresses His will. That is transformation.
That is transformation from glory to glory. Brothers and sisters, this is a work that is going on from the moment you are born again. To be born again is not the end of your Christian life; it is the beginning. The seed is there now. Now it needs to grow.
How can the life of Christ fill your soul? There is only one way: your flesh, that which is not of the spirit, the old man, must be dealt with.
When you come to Genesis 6, you find God saying, “Man has become flesh.” Spiritually speaking, even though we have Christ in us, we still try to live by our old, natural life. That is the veil that imprisons the glory of Christ from shining into our soul.
How the Lord Jesus wants to fill Himself, strengthen Himself, within us. Oh, how He wants to glorify us. But He cannot, because our flesh is so strong. The outward man has to be broken for the inward man to come forth.
What is our outward man? Basically, it is our soul, our self-life: me, my thought, my will, my desire. “This is what I love. This is what I like. This is what I do with my life. I do not agree with you. This is my opinion. This is my right.”
Brothers and sisters, that flesh has to be rent. You know, for the flesh to be rent is painful. Suffering is involved.
Sometimes people say, “We in this country, Christians, have such a good environment. We do not suffer. We find people in other countries—oh, how they suffer for the Lord’s sake! But we do not suffer, and because we do not suffer, we do not grow.”
Some people even pray that God will send some suffering to this country. But brothers and sisters, remember one thing: those outward sufferings are nothing when compared to the rending of the flesh. It tears you apart. You do not like it.
No one does not love his body, his flesh. We want to hold on to ourselves. Even though we want Christ to fill us, yet we hold on to ourselves. You cannot have both.
The earthen vessel has to be cracked and broken for the radiance of the treasure in it to shine forth. The cross has to do its work in our whole life.
Oh, brothers and sisters, the cross is not just an objective cross that was erected on that little hill outside Jerusalem two thousand years ago, where Christ was crucified. Thank God, that cross is the foundation, the power, and the salvation for us to take up our cross, deny ourselves, and follow Him.
Without the cross, we would not have that power. We would not have that basis even to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him. We cannot do it. His cross bears us so that we may bear our cross.
But remember, that cross has to be implanted within us, not just outside for you to look at. The veil has to be rent. The way has been opened. The Lord has opened it, and it is dedicated for us.
Are we going through it? Are we willing to have our outward man broken?
Paul said:
Our outward man is decaying, yet our inward man is renewed day by day.
When we think of the light affliction we are going through, it works for us an eternal weight of glory. That is nothing.
Dear brothers and sisters, to be glorified is the will of God. But we need to take up that cross. We need to allow that cross to work in our lives.
Put it this way: the measure of the brokenness of the outward man will be the measure of the degree of being glorified. How much you are conformed to the image of God’s beloved Son depends on how much you are willing to let your outward man be broken.
In 2 Corinthians 3, we read:
But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit.
Here you find that we are all beholding the glory of the Lord with unveiled face. That unveiled face is nothing but a heart that is turned to the Lord.
If you read the preceding verses—for instance, verses 13 through 18—you find:
But unto this day, whensoever Moses is read, a veil lieth upon their heart.
But whensoever it shall turn to the Lord, the veil is taken away.
Now the Lord is the Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
Dear brothers and sisters, in this process of transformation, our heart has much to do with it. We are not talking about the physical heart. The physical heart is the center of our physical being, but we are talking about the spiritual heart. It is the center of our spiritual being.
In Proverbs, it is said:
Keep thy heart with all diligence;
For out of it are the issues of life.
Everything comes from the heart, goes into the heart. So our heart is very important. But unfortunately, we do not know our heart. Our heart is deceitful above all things. Who knows it? You do not know it. Other people do not know it. Nobody knows it, but God knows it.
So the important thing in this process of transformation is that we need to turn our heart to the Lord.
Just like the psalmist:
Search me, O God, and know my heart:
Try me, and know my thoughts:
And see if there be any wicked way in me.
How daily we need to turn our heart to the Lord. The heart is the place of love and affection. How we need to turn our hearts to the Lord. As we turn our heart to the Lord, we see Him. We see the glory of the Lord.
You know what happens? Then you see all the ugliness in your heart. You do not see your ugliness if you are in darkness. But when you turn your heart to the Lord, you look at the glory of the Lord. Oh, how glorious He is—His character!
Then immediately, His light strikes you. You find your flesh is all corrupted. Your very thoughts need to be washed by the blood. As John Bunyan said, even our tears need to be washed with the blood.
Brothers and sisters, that is the way to glory. We have a responsibility. Our responsibility is to turn our hearts to the Lord.
As we turn our hearts to the Lord, light shines upon our heart, and all that is there is disclosed. Brothers and sisters, it is only there and then that you desire to see your flesh broken.
But remember, this is not your work. This is the work of the Holy Spirit. Transformation is not your work. Only the Holy Spirit can transform you. Only the Holy Spirit can conform you to the image of Christ.
He is the power of God. He will make everything that Christ accomplished on the cross real and living to you. He is the Spirit of glory. He does the work. So it is by the Lord the Spirit, not by you.
But what do you do? You need to turn your heart to Him. Love Him. He will shine upon you. The glory of the Lord will shine upon your heart and reveal all the ugliness, the hidden things, in your heart. You will begin to abhor yourself.
You will hope, how you will long, that this flesh would die, would be delivered to death. Then you will let the Holy Spirit do it. He will do it.
On the one hand, you find He will raise the veil upon your heart. On the other hand, He will fill your heart with Christ.
That is the reason why Paul, in his second prayer in the letter to the Ephesians, said:
That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory,
that ye may be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inward man;
that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith;
to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,
may be strong to apprehend with all the saints
what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge,
that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God.
It all begins in your heart. So there you find the veil is rent, and the glory of the Lord fills us all. Then it touches the body.
One day, when He shall return, in Philippians 3, you find:
Who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation,
that it may be conformed to the body of His glory,
according to the working whereby He is able even to subject all things unto Himself.
This is the time that we receive our sonship. Oh, brothers and sisters, this is the purpose of God concerning you. This is what Christ has done for you. This is something that the Holy Spirit is eager to work into your life. Will we cooperate?
Now, we are only touching one area of our glory. There is another area. You know, our glory is both inward and outward.
If you read the Word of God, you will find there is a glory that God has prepared for His people. There is a glory that one day our Lord Jesus will lead many sons into. There is a glory that is still in the future.
There is a realm called glory. But, brothers and sisters, before you can enter into that glory, glory has to enter into you first. Unless you are glorified, you are not able to enter into glory. Why? Because you cannot stand it.
As people say, if a person is not saved and goes to heaven, he will feel so uncomfortable, because there is no casino, no theater, no dancing hall, and all these things. He will want to get out quickly.
Brothers and sisters, today is the time of being transformed. The Holy Spirit is doing this work today.
Christ in you, the hope of glory.
He will transform you from glory to glory according to His image, by the Lord the Spirit. When this work goes on to the time He comes, even this physical body, the body of humiliation, will be changed.
Is not this the body of humiliation? So weak, so open to sickness and death. It really is. But even this body of humiliation will be changed into the body of glory. Then we will be co-heirs with Christ.
The Bible uses many different ways to express the glory that is waiting for us, as Peter said—prepared for us, ready for us: inheritance, kingdom, eternal kingdom, crown, throne, marriage feast, the joy of the Lord, that eternal union with Christ in God.
Oh, brothers and sisters, glory belongs to God, but He wants us to share all the glory that we can share with His beloved Son. Do you not think that because of this, how we need to pursue after the Lord?
Shall we pray?
Dear Heavenly Father, what do You see in us, that even before the foundation of the world, Thou hast predetermined that we shall enter into glory?
O Lord, how we praise and thank Thee that for this Thou wert willing to come into this wretched world and die for us, redeem us, that we may be justified and even glorified.
O Holy Spirit of God, how we pray, praise, and thank Thee that Thou dost dwell in us today. However much we may grieve Thee, Thou wilt not leave us until Thy work is done in bringing us to glory.
O Holy Spirit, we praise Thee and worship Thee. O may Thy love constrain our hearts, that we may not be complacent or careless. O Lord, we want to follow Thee all the way from Calvary to glory.
In the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.