When Does Glorification Begin?

My wife has been using my most recent book (on soteriology) for a ladies’ Bible study group in our church. When they got to the chapter on “Glorification” she raised a question. “Why do you treat glorification as exclusively future? Aren’t we in the process of being glorified now?”

That just shows how much systematic theology she knows! As I patiently explained, all the theologians reserve the term “glorification” for our future, full, and final transformation into likeness for Christ. “Well,” she suggested, “what about 2 Thessalonians 1:12?” There Paul prays for the Thessalonian believers that “the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and you in him.” Well, of course Christ is supposed to be glorified in us. And we will be glorified in Christ. But doesn’t the second-coming context from which that prayer emerges (see 2 Thess 1:3–10) suggest that Paul has our eschatological glorification in mind?

Then, a few days later she tried again: “What about 2 Corinthians 3:18?”

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

Hm.

Yes, but . . . .

Hm. Interesting.

I’ve read this language a thousand times. How have I missed its obvious ramifications for our theological terminology? In fact, how have all the commentators I checked missed the ramifications of this language for our theological terminology. We read the “being transformed into the same image” and our theologically trained minds—along with all the commentators and study Bibles—affirm that this is a reference to “progressive sanctification.” And indeed it is.

What’s fascinating, though, is that the word “sanctification” does not appear in the text, but we all recognize that the concept is there. And yet, the word “glory” is in the text—three times! But no one sees the concept of “glorification.” Well, almost no one. The HCSB has a footnote on the phrase “from glory to glory” that reads, “Progressive glorification or sanctification.”

Progressive glorification? Maybe I just haven’t been paying attention. (That’s been known to happen.) But then, when I do start paying attention and looking around, why does virtually no one use that expression, when it’s right there in the text? When we behold the glory of the Lord in Scripture, we are transformed into his image. Everyone agrees that’s sanctification, but then there’s this description of the process: “from glory to glory.”

“From glory to glory”—there’s the progressive. But “from glory to glory”—there’s the glorification. What else would you call it when that’s the word the Spirit uses?

And the passage is describing our experience now. We are being transformed. Not just in the sweet by-and-by but in the sour here and now. Progression, by degrees, from glory to glory. That sure sounds like “glorification.” So why don’t we call it that? Indeed, the clarity of present progressive glorification in 2 Corinthians 3:18 certainly warrants a reconsideration of 2 Thessalonians 1:12 as well. 

Granted, Scripture uses glorification to refer to other dimensions of our experience that are entirely future, either with reference to the glorification of our resurrected bodies (1 Cor 15:43; Phil 3:21), or more generally (Rom 8:17, 18, 21, 30; 2 Cor 4:17; 2 Thess 2:14; 2 Tim 2:10). That’s important to remember.

But if (a) present sanctification is defined as likeness to Christ, and (b) progressive sanctification is gradual growth in likeness to Christ, and (c) glorification is (among other things) our full and final sanctification in which we are “transformed into the same image” of Christ (to use the language of 2 Cor 3:18), then the expression present progressive glorification makes perfect sense as the equivalent of present progressive sanctification.

If that is so, then glorification is not merely something we are waiting for in the future, but something we are, in fact, experiencing and partaking of now (along with the divine nature, 2 Pet 1:4). And that should be a profoundly uplifting and emboldening thought.

As well as yet another reminder that I should probably listen to my wife more.