God’s Creational Purpose for Humanity

God created every single son of Adam, that is, every single human being for one purpose. He created us for glory. He created us to be temples of the Holy Spirit, in which God would completely and fully indwell us, so that our very bodies would become many times brighter than the sun.

It was a given certainty that eventually mankind would experience a corruption of his nature, because of the stratagem of the devil and the weakness of the man’s flesh. But when God created mankind He did so with a particular end in mind. That end was glory, which of necessity entails an inability to ever be capable of being corrupted again. God purposed a certain redemption for all mankind when He created mankind, in which finite image bearers could partake of the divine nature and thereby escape the potentiality of the flesh to corruption.

2 Pet 1:4 For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.

It is important to understand that Glorification is experienced only by those who are in Christ. This is because He alone is the only man who has been glorified and because it is the very glory that was His as the Eternal Son of God, given to His humanity for our benefit. Nevertheless, God created all mankind for this glory as the body was made for the Lord [1 Cor. 6:13]. Those who reject this creational purpose of God for the body will be justly punished for all eternity in hell.

Texts of Scripture Showing Purpose:

Isaiah 43:7 “Everyone who is called by My name, and whom I have created for My glory, whom I have formed, even whom I have made.”

John 17:22,23a “The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity….”

Rom. 5:2 …through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God.

Col. 1:25-27 Of this church I was made a minister according to the stewardship from God bestowed on me for your benefit, so that I might fully carry out the preaching of the word of God, that is, the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now been manifested to His saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ. For this purpose also I labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me.

2 Thess. 2:14 It was for this He called you through our gospel, that you may gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Glorification – ‘Now and Yet to Come’

It is also important to understand that Glorification is now and yet to come. It is understood to be now for the believer because upon conversion he received the Holy Spirit [see God is Our Salvation – The Holy Spirit]. For it says, ‘those whom He justified, He also glorified’ [Rom. 8:30] and ‘do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?’ [1 Cor. 3:16; 6:19].

It is ‘yet to come’, as we have asserted above, upon the ultimate end for which God created man. At the resurrection from the dead, the body being made immortal, the believer will experience the full glorification of his or her body so that the body will be illumined with the presence of God [Rev. 22:5].

Notice the emphasis by Peter, in the following texts of Scripture in 1 Peter, that we have received a ‘living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead’ that is brought to fulfillment at the return of our Lord.

1Peter 1:3,4 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you

1 Peter 1:7 so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ

1 Peter 1:13 Therefore, prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Peter emphasizes a transformation like no other for us to occur specifically at the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. In verse 13, we are to fix our hope completely on a grace to be made ours that we receive ‘at the revelation of Jesus Christ.’

This can be nothing other than the ‘yet to come’ fulfillment of the doctrine of Glorification of the believer in which we behold the face of God, we see God, and are necessarily transformed by it for all eternity.

1 John 3:2,3 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. And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.

Revelation 22:3-5 There will no longer be any curse; and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His bond-servants will serve Him; they will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. And there will no longer be any night; and they will not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them; and they will reign forever and ever.

February 11, 2024 – Matthew 5:8 Blessed are the Pure in Heart, for they Shall See God