Glorification

Brought to glory

Paul traces God's saving purpose in a single line and ends it with glory:

And those He predestined, He also called; those He called, He also justified; those He justified, He also glorified.

Romans 8:30

The verb is doxazō (δοξάζω), to glorify. Paul is so sure of the end that he speaks of what is still to come as if it were already done.

Glorification reaches the whole person. Christ "will transform our lowly bodies to be like His glorious body" (Philippians 3:21); the body "is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory" (1 Corinthians 15:43). The heart will be made new as well: "We know that when Christ appears, we will be like Him, for we will see Him as He is" (1 John 3:2). Creation itself waits to be "brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God" (Romans 8:21). So Paul can say that "our present sufferings are not comparable to the glory that will be revealed in us" (Romans 8:18).

Glorification is the completion of sanctification. The Spirit is already transforming believers "into His image with intensifying glory" (2 Corinthians 3:18), and that work will be finished on the last day. In Wesley's words, "grace, as it is glory begun, is both an earnest and a foretaste of eternal glory" Wesley.

The church's confession

The Apostles' Creed confesses "the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting" Apostles' Creed. The Westminster Shorter Catechism teaches that believers' souls are made perfect in holiness at death and pass into glory, while their bodies, still united to Christ, rest until the resurrection. Then:

At the resurrection, believers being raised up in glory, shall be openly acknowledged and acquitted in the day of judgment, and made perfectly blessed in the full enjoying of God to all eternity.

Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q. 38

Where the traditions differ

All the traditions confess the resurrection of the body and the everlasting joy of seeing God. They differ at two points. The first is how to read Romans 8:30. Reformed Christians read it as a chain that holds the same people from the first link to the last; Matthew Henry calls it "a golden chain, one which cannot be broken" Matthew Henry. Wesleyans read it as the order in which God saves, without a promise that everyone called will reach the end. Wesley wrote that Paul "only affirms that this is the method whereby God leads us step by step toward heaven" Wesley (see the order of salvation).

The second is what happens between death and resurrection. Protestant churches generally confess, with the Shorter Catechism, that believers are made perfect in holiness at death. The Catholic Church teaches that those who die in God's grace but are not yet fully purified are purified after death in purgatory before they come to the vision of God Council of Trent, Decree on Purgatory. The Orthodox churches see glorification as the fulfilment of theosis, the believer's sharing in the life of God. For more, see the lesson Resurrection, judgment and the new creation.