XXXVIII. LEADING US AS HIS MANY SONS INTO GLORY
The final issue of our experience and enjoyment of God as the Father in love is that we believers will be led into glory. Hebrews 2:10 tells us that God is "leading many sons into glory." This is the last step of God’s full salvation. Romans 8 shows us that God’s work of grace upon us began with His foreknowing, passed through His predestination, calling, and justification, and will end with His glorification (vv. 29-30). Also, Romans 8 tells us that the whole creation eagerly awaits the revelation (glorification) of the sons of God, in hope that the creation itself will enter into the freedom of the glory of the children of God (vv. 19-21). This will be accomplished by the Lord’s coming back (Phil. 3:21), at which time we will be manifested with Him in glory (Col. 3:4); this is our hope (1:27). This glorification of the sons of God, as the goal of God’s salvation, will last through the millennial kingdom and will be manifested in full in the New Jerusalem for eternity (Rev. 21:11, 23).
God’s leading us, the believers, as His many sons into glory will be the ultimate consummation of the divine dispensing. This means that God’s dispensing will consummate in His bringing us as His many sons into His glory. Therefore, it is only by the divine dispensing that we will be constituted into God’s inheritance and brought into God’s glory. Through regeneration God’s life of glory has been dispensed into us as a seed of glory in us. This seed, the divine life of glory, is Christ in us, the hope of glory (Col. 1:27). Now, through the divine dispensing, it is continually growing and developing until it blossoms. When it blossoms, that will be the time of our glorification. Today we participate in God the Father’s dispensing to experience and enjoy Him daily, and in that day we will enter into His glory and reach the goal of God’s salvation.
SUMMARY
In His divine dispensing God the Father guards us from stumbling and sets us before His glory without blemish in exultation at the Lord’s coming. He also judges us that by undergoing suffering in fiery persecution we may be disciplined, purified, and separated from the unbelievers and not have the same destiny as they. God also promises us who are in the church life that He will crush Satan under our feet and that we will enjoy God as the God of peace. Furthermore, by our persistent prayer we compel God to answer our cry and avenge us of our enemy, Satan. Moreover, God will fulfill our every good intention for goodness and our work of faith in power. Meanwhile, He perfects, establishes, strengthens, and grounds us in Him by the suffering of persecution and different kinds of environment. Although we are always being delivered unto death for the Lord’s purpose, God will raise us and cause us to stand before Him through His divine dispensing. Today, being burdened, we groan, because we are still living in our dying, physical, and natural body, yet God has wrought and prepared us by dispensing Himself into us that our mortal body might be swallowed up by His resurrection life. By continually enjoying God’s divine dispensing in His love, our whole being—spirit, soul, and body—will be completely saturated with Him and constituted of Him to become His inheritance of glory for His enjoyment. Eventually, God will lead us as His many sons into His divine glory. This is the ultimate goal of God’s salvation; it will last through the millennial kingdom and will be fully manifested in the New Jerusalem for eternity.
QUESTIONS
- Why does God judge the believers?
- Briefly explain how God will crush Satan under our feet.
- How do we experience God’s answering our cry and His avenging us?
- Briefly explain the meaning of God’s perfecting, establishing, strengthening, and grounding us.
- Briefly state the ultimate issue of the believers’ enjoyment of God’s divine dispensing in His love.
(Truth Lessons, Level 2, Vol. 3, Chapter 5, by Witness Lee)
