The Ordo Salutis

We will consider now the final act in the order of salvation: Glorification. When talking about glorification, we are entering into territory about which we know little about, but what we do know gives us great hope. Of glory and the heavenly state, scripture says in 1 Cor. 2.9 "... no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him".

Glorification will be God's final act of conforming us to the image of his son. Paul wrote in Rom. 8.29, that God has predestined us to be conformed to the image of his Son. But predestination does not accomplish this goal all by itself. Rather God brings his children into conformity to his Son through a process that began with predestination. Then at the appointed time he calls and regenerates his chosen ones. He then justifies and adopts them, begins to sanctify them, and, as a final act, he glorifies them. Glorification completes and consummates the process. In the glorified state, all of God's elect will be perfectly conformed to the image of our Lord Jesus Christ. We will bear the image of the heavenly man.

Scripture often speaks of glorification in terms of the resurrection and transformation of our bodies when Christ's returns. So Paul writes in Romans 8.11, "If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you." And again in Philippians 3.2,1 Paul says Christ "will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself."

The primary teaching about our being glorified is found in 1 Corinthian 15:36-57. Some of Paul's reasoning in these verses can be hard to follow, but what is very clear is that he is defending the resurrection. Strangely, there were members of the church in the ancient city called Corinth who didn't believe in the bodily resurrection, a truth that any Christian child knows very early in his or her life. How can you consider yourself a Christian and yet deny the resurrection? People in our day deny the resurrection, but they typically consider themselves atheists, denying God's existence.

Christians are people, and what we think and believe is often shaped by other people in our surroundings. That's normal and necessary if we are going to get along with others. Unfortunately, we can too easily agree with others about beliefs that are not true and even dangerous. So did the Corinthians.

Some of the church members in Corinth, were agreeing with a philosophy that is call Greek dualism. They taught that material things like trees, grass, metal, animals, and especially human bodies were a lower, weak, corrupt, evil mode of existence. There was a high form of existence that had to do with the soul, the mind, and rationality that was free from all weaknesses and corruption of the material world. So, if you want to be happy, then you need to be free of this material world and enter into the reality of the soul. Your body is a prison of your soul. You need to be set free from the body. Now if you thought this way, what you think of bodily resurrection? It meant you were going back into prison. And this is how some Christians in Paul's day thought, and Paul wants to correct them and lead them back from their error.

Missing the obvious

Paul, in 1 Cor. 15, is envisioning these "Christian dualists" when he mockingly says, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?" They don't think that the resurrection body will be any different from the body we have now. This is how confused their thinking had become. We might easily say, of course, that God can create a glorified body, but they were skeptical that God could or would.

So Paul, using some analogies from creation, tries to show them that God can create a glorified body. He says, "You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory." (1 Cor. 15:36-41)

Paul appeals to creation to show that God can create a body that is different from the one we have now. Look, for instance, at the seed. You plant a seed, but it sprouts as a plant different than the seed. Further, look at the bodies of men, animals, birds, and fish: they are not alike. God has made different kinds of bodies. Again, take a look at the heavenly universe at night. You see the sun, moon, and stars, and these differ from earthly bodies of men, animal, and trees and things. Further the heavenly bodies differ in glory from one another. Sun, moon, and stars do not all shine with the same brightness.

When you look at creation you see different types of bodies and different degrees of glory. God made them all, and yet they are different. Now here is Paul's simple point. "Look, you fool, if God can create so much diversity and different kinds of bodies in creation, then why is it hard to believe that he can also create a glorified body?" This shouldn't be difficult to believe.

This shows the power of falsehood. It can darken our understanding and dull our thinking so much that we can not even see what is obvious to a child. Paul refers to such a one as a fool. This is not name-calling. He does not call the person dumb or unintelligent. He says you "fool." A fool's problem is his heart not his mind. He closes his eyes to reality. A fool will not listen to instruction because he or she is too proud. He won't receive correction because he already knows more than you. What's more, fools are gullible and naive. Really smart people can be fools. These people had become fools. Their eyes were closed to the obvious and they mocked those who had true knowledge. But worse, they failed to understand and believe that God could raise up body and transform it. Their faith in God was threatened because they believed in Greek ideas instead of gospel truths.

Our thinking and belief will be shaped by other people; this is inevitable and unavoidable. You and I think like Americans for instance, not like Afghans or even Englishman for that matter. I recall how an English minister interned in a church in the U.S. He was struck by the can-do attitude that he saw all around him. He felt that this attitude was not that prominent in England. I've seen this exhibited elsewhere as well. For us Americans this pattern of thinking and behavior is simply normal, just as Greek dualism was with the Corinthians. This was ingrained and normal. I've heard it said that the most difficult culture to understand is the one you live in. We're like fish in the water. Our culture is our habitat; we don't think about it too much and sometimes don't see the influences on how we think.

As Christian we need to be growing in discernment or we will either become or continue to be dull to the differences between truth and error. And the best way to learn the differences is to be growing in our theology, our understanding of God and his ways.

Having said this, however, we should understand that Paul's point here is that he wants us to compare the analogies in creation to the new creation. The great diversity and differentiation in creation tells us something about God. The differences between the stars, the sun, the moon, and the difference between the bodies of people and the bodies of animals and plants, tell us that God is powerful and supremely creative. So we can believe that He can create a resurrection body that is greater in glory than our present body. If we see this, then we have no problem believing He can create a glorified body.

When we look upon a plant growing in a field, we bear in mind that that plant was once a seed and now God has given it a body. And let this remind us of the resurrection which is to come. He will give us a body that is different and far more glorious than the body we have now.

The Perfect Body

What will are bodies be like when we are raised from the dead? Paul's answer is brief but filled with hope: "So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. (1 Cor. 15:42-44)

This description is meant to show the differences between our bodies now and at the resurrection. It is important to see that Paul has the same body in view. In other words, at the resurrection we are not trading our bodies for a new one. Rather it is the same body, only transformed.

This description says a lot about our current bodies. They are perishable, lowly, weak, and natural. This should keep us from worshipping our bodies as so many do in our culture. In our culture today, if we don't already have a perfect body, then we are striving to get one. Ours is the day of obsessive exercising, diets galore, and cosmetic surgery. But no matter how perfect our bodies become, they are still perishable, lowly, weak, and natural, especially when compared to the body that Christ will give us.

Does this mean that we should not exercise and take care of our bodies? Not at all. Nor am I saying that everyone at a gym is trying to get the perfect body. Many are simply getting the exercise they can't get elsewhere. Others are genuinely trying to get healthy. A helpful verse here is 1 Tim 4.7, "Bodily training profits a little but godliness holds great value, both in this life and in the next." Yes, there is some value in exercising your body. I would venture that its value is not as great as what people think. Indeed that is Paul's very point. Don't overvalue what is of little value. There is something that holds far greater value. So, yes, exercise your body; but be far more devoted to getting godliness.

We need to understand that there is a perfect body and it is given to us solely by grace. Most believers will receive their resurrection bodies long after their bodies have disintegrated into the dust.

As to this perfect body, it will be imperishable. This means it won't be susceptible to corruption and decay. It will not grow old, nor become sick. It will not die. In addition, the perfect body will be honorable and glorious. Now they are lowly, Paul says in Phil. 3:20. However much our bodies may match the Hollywood ideal of the perfect body, they are still inglorious and lowly.

Our perfect body will be raised in power. Wayne Grudem explains, "our resurrection bodies will...also be given fullness of strength and power - not infinite power like God, of course, and probably not what we would think of as "superhuman" power in the sense possessed by the "superheroes"...but nonetheless full and complete human power and strength, the strength that God intended human beings to have in their bodies when he created them." (Systematic Theology, p. 832)

Finally, the perfect body will be a spiritual body. A "spiritual body" is not a "non-physical body". It is rather a body controlled by the Holy Spirit. Note that Paul contrasts the spiritual body with the "natural" body. It's not the physical verses the spiritual, but the "natural" versus the spiritual. This helps us understand what Paul means, for the natural in Paul refers to human nature subject to sin and confined to life in this evil age. Not so with the resurrection body. It will be completely subject to the Spirit and responsive to His guidance (Grudem, p. 832). Of the four things that Paul mentions about the resurrection, this is the greatest. This speaks directly to the holiness of our lives in heaven.

Here is the perfect body as best we know of it. You will not find it in Glamour Magazine, nor on the big screen. Paul describes it here in four terms. Each arouses our hope. The fact that is will be incorruptible is a joyful thought. I am presently completely deaf in one ear, and I suffer palsy on the side of my face. But these things will be completely gone because my resurrection body will be incorruptible. Whereas now I am weak, then I will be strong. Now I know lowliness, then honor. Now I am still fighting the flesh, but then, I will follow the Spirit as I desire to follow him (Gal. 5:17).

In His Heavenly Image

Why will God glorify us with a perfect body? One answer in found in 1 Cor. 15:50, "I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable." A mere mortal cannot enter and live in heaven. Heaven is a place of immortality and imperishability, and our bodies are currently the opposite.

There is a greater reason why God will change our bodies. It is so that we will match the image His Son Jesus Christ. We saw earlier that God predestined us to be conformed to his Son's likeness. This likeness refers ultimately to Christ in His state of resurrected, exalted, heavenly glory.

At this point, Paul steps back, as it were, to give us the ultimate perspective on the resurrection. He says that there are ultimately only two men. Everyone else is united to one of these two men and bears his image. There is the "first Adam" and the "last Adam". The first Adam is natural and became a living soul when God breathed life into him. He is from the earth, a man of dust. In contrast, is the last Adam, Jesus Christ. He is a "life giving Spirit"; (this means Jesus is the source of spiritual life and thus of our resurrection bodies). Further, he is from heaven and he reigns in heaven. Then Paul draws the conclusion in 1 Cor. 15:49, "Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven."

The resurrection is not so much about us in our new bodies checking out the architecture in heaven. It's more than this. It's about the Son of God. Like every doctrine and every story in the whole Bible, the resurrection is Christ-centered. From first to last salvation is about the Son of God and His glory. We get the truly awesome privilege of sharing in His glory. And this we will do only if we are fully and completely like Him. The reason why we will have a body like His, then, is that we are meant to bear the heavenly image of the last Adam.

So while every believer should look forward to having the "perfect body", this is not the main reason to desire the resurrection. The greater, far more joyous reality is that we will be like Jesus in his glory.

Here we have our questions. What is the greater glory of bearing the image of the man of heaven? What will this mean for us? What precisely will it be like? These questions remain unanswered. We simply know that we will be like Jesus and this is will be joyful and glorious. John says, "Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is." (1 John 3.2)

You should understand that this teaching is not a small matter. It should have a radical impact upon our lives. It should change us from an earthbound orientation to being heavenly minded people. Paul says, "Set you minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died and your life I is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory." (Col. 3.2-4)

Not only this, the resurrection should create expectation in our hearts, so that we will set our hope completely on the grace which is yet to be revealed. It will be grace that will transform our lowly bodies; it will be grace that will complete us in the image of the Son of God. For these reasons we look forward to the coming of Christ with uplifted heads.

Part 2. Why Are We Given Two Sacraments?

By requiring His disciples to "do this in remembrance of me," the Lord Jesus Christ requires faith in Himself as an essential element of the Lord's Supper. Thus the Heidelberg Catechism teaches that "Christ has commanded me and all believers to eat of this broken bread and drink of this cup in remembrance of Him." Those who are not believers, either by choice or by being uninstructed infants, are simply not to partake of the Supper. Indeed, when those who are "unbelieving and ungodly," or by implication, those who are not able to profess faith and demonstrate a godly life as would be the case with infants, are admitted to the Supper, "the covenant of God is profaned and His wrath is provoked against the whole congregation" (Heidelberg Catechism #82).

This same requirement for participants in the Lord's Supper is found in Question and Answer #97 in the Westminster Shorter Catechism. In answer to the question, "What is required to the worthy receiving of the Lord's Supper?" this Catechism answers, "...that they examine themselves of their knowledge to discern the Lord's body, of their faith to feed upon Him, of their repentance, love and new obedience..," all of which express the necessity of living faith in the participants.

The Importance on Faith

This emphasis on the presence of faith in those who participate in the Lord's Supper rests upon the fact that the Supper commemorates union with Christ through faith in Him. The Heidelberg Catechism handles the Lord's Supper with the same series of questions that it uses for Baptism, but the content of the answers is somewhat different. When asking in Question #75, "How is it signified and sealed to you in the Holy Supper that you partake of the one sacrifice of Christ..?" the Catechism answers that this ceremony is according to the command of Christ and then teaches, "and has joined therewith these promises...." The operative word in the significance of the Lord's Supper, just as it is in Baptism, is "promise." The promise in the Supper is somewhat different, though really closely related, but the Lord's Supper is a promise. The Supper promises that Christ's body was "offered and broken on the cross for me," and "that with His crucified body and shed blood Christ Himself feeds and nourishes my soul unto everlasting life... (Heidelberg #75).

The point is that through faith the participant in the Lord's Supper does spiritually participate in Christ's sacrifice and does spiritually "eat my flesh and drink my blood," as Christ commands in John 6. The Supper is the visible promise and seal (or guarantee) that this invisible thing is actually happening. Again, the spiritual union with Christ and His work is just as true and real as the physical bread and wine are to our physical senses.

Now, when asking, "What does it mean to eat the crucified body and drink the shed blood of Christ?" the Heidelberg Catechism points directly to faith. "It means not only to embrace with a believing heart all the sufferings and death of Christ and thereby to obtain the forgiveness of sins and life eternal...." The Lord's Supper commemorates union with Christ through faith, or in the words we have just quoted, "embracing (Him) with a believing heart." Thus, while commemorating union with Christ, just as Baptism does, the Supper commemorates union with Christ as the other side of the coin, through the human action of faith, rather than through the divine action of regeneration. And this is why there are two sacraments.

While there is a great and fundamental unity between the two sacraments, which is commemorating union with Christ, they are clearly distinct in the means of union with Christ which they commemorate. Again, one commemorates union with Christ by the action of God, the other by the resulting action of man. When we confuse the two sacraments, we either make them entirely divine as does hyper-Calvinism, thus treating man as a "stock and a block," or we make them entirely human, as does Roman Catholicism, thus giving man the ability to save himself by using the Supper more and more frequently and indiscriminately.

The Work of the Spirit

There is a further point made by the Heidelberg Catechism concerning the Lord's Supper about the work of the Holy Spirit. This too is stated in the Heidelberg Catechism. "Eating the crucified body and drinking the shed blood of Christ" is also described as "being more and more united to His sacred body by the Holy Spirit, who dwells both in Christ and in us, that although He is in heaven and we are on earth, we are nevertheless flesh of His flesh and bone of His bones, and live and are governed forever by one Spirit, as member of the same body are by one soul." Notice, first of all, that this work of the Holy Spirit commemorated in the Lord's Supper is not regeneration, but a continuing indwelling of the Spirit that supports our union with Christ and draws us ever closer to Him spiritually. Like a marriage in which the husband and wife are just as much married when a thousand miles apart as when they are touching each other, (indeed in that physical separation their mutual love may even grow), so it is with the Christian and His Savior. His love for and obedience to Christ will grow even though Christ's physical body is out of reach in heaven. Indeed, Christ's spiritual body is manifested in the Church (1 Cor. 11:52; 1 Cor. 12:27), and our attitude toward the Church speaks volumes about our faith or lack of faith in Christ. "Discerning the Lord's body," especially in the context of 1 Corinthians 11, must then include knowing that that body is not present physically in the bread and wine, but is present spiritually in the other Christians with whom we are participating, in addition to remembering that His physical body was offered and broken for me on the cross.

It remains to demonstrate from Scripture that the Lord's Supper commemorates union with Christ through faith, and that this is not just a nice little stack of cards erected by our Reformed and Presbyterian fathers. The first Scripture we must examine is John 6, where the Lord Jesus Christ speaks very specifically about "eating my flesh and drinking my blood" as being necessary for our salvation. We need to see that here in John 6 the central subject is salvation through faith in Christ; this is mentioned specifically no less than seven times in verses 29, 35, 36, 40, 47, 64 and 69. Secondly, we need to note the parallel between believing in Christ and "eating and drinking Christ." We see this particularly in verses 47 and 54 where "believes in me" in verse 47 is replaced with "eats my flesh and drinks my blood" in verse 54. This, plus the fact that Jesus goes directly from commanding faith in Himself to the necessity of "eating my flesh and drinking my blood," indicates clearly that we eat his flesh and drink His blood by exercising saving faith.

The capstone of Christ's teaching in John 6 is found in verses 63 and 64. When the Jewish listeners began to think in terms of eating and drinking Christ physically, really quite in the way that Roman Catholics and Lutherans do, Christ sharply rebukes them and set them straight. When the Jews said, "How can this man give us His flesh to eat?" and some of His disciples said, "This is a hard saying, who can receive it?" Jesus said, "It is the Spirit who makes alive, the flesh profits nothing...." Even if we could eat and drink Christ physically, it would do us no good! Speculating about the physical presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper is then unbiblical foolishness. And thinking that physically eating bread and drinking wine is going to help us in itself, as do those who would give the sacrament to infants or who think that the more often we get that bread in our mouths the more saved we will become, is even worse foolishness.

What Christ means by, "It is the Spirit who makes alive," He goes on to explain clearly. He says, "the words that I speak to you, they are Spirit and they are life, but some of you do not believe." It comes down to, "eating my flesh and drinking my blood is believing in me through my word." Eating Christ's flesh and drinking His blood is a spiritual exercise accomplished by faith - faith worked in us by the Holy Spirit's use of the Word, just as the Reformed confessions teach.

Now, Christ also teaches us in John 6 that "eating my flesh and drinking my blood" means union with Himself. He teaches this virtually in so many words when He says in verse 56, "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him." Thus while the Lord's Supper itself is not even mentioned in the book of John, Christ's teaching here in John 6 clearly tells us that we are united to Christ by faith, and that this union with Christ by faith is what He means by "eating my flesh and drinking my blood."

Nevertheless, John's gospel is not the only Scripture that states this teaching of union with Christ by faith. The apostle Paul tells us in Gal. 3:26-27, "For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ." Now, it goes without saying that to "put on Christ" means to be united with Christ, and as Paul says, this happens by being "baptized into Christ" (this is parallel with the teaching of Rom. 6:1-4 and 1 Cor 2:13). Coupled with the whole New Testament's teaching that Christians are what they are and have what they have by being "in Christ," there can be no doubt what Paul has in mind, especially in the light of Gal. 3:26. This expression "in Christ," appears some 72 times in the New Testament in various connections, but most often as shorthand for what it is to truly be a Christian.

Now, notice the parallelism between verses 26 and 27 of Galatians 3. Both verses say the same thing in a different way (a typical case of "Hebrew parallelism," such as the common expression "answered and said," when in English either "answered" or "said" would be sufficient). We know that this is parallelism because of the word "for" at the beginning of verse 27. "For" is a causative connective, it connects two phrases or sentences just as does the word "because." In other words, we are "sons of God through faith," because "we have put on Christ by being baptized into Him." Thus we have both means of union with Christ, faith and spiritual baptism brought into parallel with each other. Together these verses tell us that we are "united to Christ by spiritual baptism and therefore are the sons of God," and, "we are united to Christ by faith and therefore are the sons of God." It is telling that the Holy Spirit would place these two means of union with Christ in such close proximity and parallel that we cannot doubt that they are two sides of the same coin, that coin being the union with Christ by which we are saved!

The Word and the Sacraments

Any time we deal with the sacraments, it is important to remember that they are secondary, or dependent, means of grace. The sacraments do not by themselves work faith in our hearts, and much less do they communicate salvation by themselves. As Martin Luther well put it, "without the Word, the sacraments are empty ceremonies." The sacraments do communicate God's grace and do provide a strengthening of our faith, but, as the Reformed and Presbyterian creeds always point out, only when they are received by true faith. What needs to be clear is that this "true faith" is worked in our hearts by the Holy Spirit using the Word of God, and only the Word of God. As the apostle Paul says in Rom. 10:17, "Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God." The formulation of this truth is also very careful in the Heidelberg Catechism, which answers the question, "...where does this faith come from?" with "The Holy Ghost works faith in our hearts by the preaching of the holy gospel, and confirms it by the use of the holy sacraments" (Q&A #65).

That this understanding of the Word of God as the primary means by which He communicates saving faith to us is argued by Scripture itself. When Paul is teaching about justification through faith alone in Romans 4, he specifically asks the question, "does this blessedness (of justification) come upon the circumcised only, or upon the uncircumcised also?" (verse 9). His answer, using Abraham's life as his proof, is that you do not have to be circumcised to be saved. In fact, he says that righteousness was imputed to Abraham "Not while he was circumcised, but while he was uncircumcised" (verse 10). Furthermore, the sacrament of circumcision was given to Abraham as "a sign" and "seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while still uncircumcised" (verse 11).

Since Baptism in the New Testament replaces circumcision, it is clear that Baptism also does not save us. In fact, this is clearly why Paul says "Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel...." The thief on the cross next to Christ was most certainly saved, although neither baptized nor a participant in the Lord's Supper. You cannot be saved by the sacraments, you can be saved without the sacraments, but you cannot be saved without the word.

This truth about the primary place of the Word of God is demonstrated in a number of other ways in Scripture. For example, neither the Gospel of John nor the book of Romans even mention the Lord's Supper, which would be a great dereliction if it were necessary to our salvation, or if it were a primary means of grace. Yet both books constantly make us responsible to believe the word of God with all our hearts. This truth is also taught indirectly when Paul tells us that it is possible to "eat and drink judgement to (our)selves" when the Lord's Supper is received in an unworthy manner. This would not be possible if the Supper brought grace to everyone who chews the bread and drinks the cup (which is interestingly the Roman Catholic conception - they are extremely careful not to let the rats and insects eat the "host").

The upshot of all of this is that the Reformed and Presbyterian creeds have it right, and the historic practices of the churches that hold these creeds are also right. There simply is no need to change them, indeed changing them demonstrates a real ignorance of, or obstinacy, against Scriptural teaching.