Lectionary Calendar
Thursday, March 28th, 2024
Maundy Thursday
There are 3 days til Easter!
Attention!
Take your personal ministry to the Next Level by helping StudyLight build churches and supporting pastors in Uganda.
Click here to join the effort!

Daily Devotionals
Music For the Soul
Devotional: August 8th

Resource Toolbox

CHRIST GLORIFIED IN HIS SAINTS

He shall come to be glorified in His saints. - 2 Thessalonians 1:10

The two Epistles to the Thessalonians, which are the Apostle’s earliest letters, both give very great prominence to the thought of the second coming of our Lord to judgment. In the immediate context we have that coming described, with circumstances of majesty and of terror. He "shall be revealed .... with the angels of His power." " Flaming fire " shall herald His coming; vengeance shall be in His hands; punishment shall follow His sentence; everlasting destruction shall be the issue of evil confronted with "the face of the Lord ’" - for so the words in the previous verse, rendered "the presence of the Lord" might more accurately be translated.

And all these facts and images are, as it were, piled up in one half of the Apostle’s sky, as in thunderous lurid masses; and on the other side there is the pure blue and the peaceful sunshine. For all this terror and destruction, and flashing fire, and punitive vengeance come to pass in the day when " He shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be wondered at in all them that believe."

Christ is glorified in the men who are glorified in Christ. If you look on a couple of verses you will find that the Apostle returns to this thought, and expresses in the clearest fashion the reciprocal character of that "glorifying" of which he has been speaking. "The name of our Lord Jesus Christ," says he, "may be glorified in you, and ye in Him."

So, then, glorifying has a double meaning. There is a double process involved. It means either "to make glorious" or "to manifest as being glorious." And men are glorified, in the former sense, in Christ, that Christ in them may, in the latter sense, be glorified. He makes them glorious by imparting to them of the lustrous light and flashing beauty of His own perfect character, in order that that light, received into their natures, and streaming out at last conspicuously manifest from their redeemed perfectness, may redound to the praise and the honour, before a whole universe, of Him who has thus endued their weakness with His own strength, and transmitted their corruptibility into His own immortality. We are glorified in Christ in some partial, and, alas! sinfully fragmentary manner here; we shall be so perfectly in that day. And when we are thus glorified in Him, then - wondrous thought! - even we shall be able to manifest Him as glorious before some gazing eyes, which without us would have seen Him as less fair. Dim, and therefore great and blessed, thoughts about what men may become are involved in such words. The highest end, the great purpose of the Gospel and of all God’s dealings with us in Christ Jesus is to make us like our Lord. As we have borne the image of the earthly we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. "We, beholding the glory, are changed into the glory."

Subscribe …
Get the latest devotional delivered straight to your inbox every week by signing up for the "Music For the Soul" subscription list. Simply provide your email address below, click on "Subscribe!", and you'll receive a confirmation email from us. Follow the instructions in the email to confirm your subscription to this list.
adsfree-icon
Ads FreeProfile