Systematic Theology -- Salvation

Glorification II

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Lesson: Government

Genre: Speech

Track: 18

Dictation Name: 18 Glorification II

Year: 1970’s

We shall deal with the doctrine of Glorification. Let us turn first of all to 2 Corinthians 3:5-9. “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God; who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away: how shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious? For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory.”

We saw in the last session that the false doctrine of man’s assaity, or self-being, too often colors our opinions of glory. The glory of man is only the reflected glory of God. Scripture speaks often of the glory of men in such passages as 1 Corinthians 15:43, 2 Corinthians 3:18, and so on. I shall concentrate, however, on three particular passages from the Old Testament.

First of all, Isaiah 42:8. “I am the Lord: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images.” Again, in Daniel 2:37, “Thou, O king, art a king of kings: for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory,” and then again in Daniel 7:14, “And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.”

Now, in the first of these texts, Isaiah 42:8, we are told that God is the absolute and total glory. He is the Lord. There is none beside him, and he will not give his glory to another. None possess it of themselves, other than God. It is God’s attribute and a part of his being. Then second, these three verses tell us that God, by his providence, by his grace and eternal purpose, allows men, both redeemed and unredeemed, to have a reflection of that glory in their brief span of time. God’s glory is constantly in history, so that Nebuchadnezzar, while still an ungodly man, had some of that glory in his position as a ruler. But third, we are told by Daniel again in Daniel 7:14, that the glory of God in all of creation is summed up and given to God the Son, the last Adam. The anointed one, Jesus Christ, holds in his person the glory of God and the glory of all creation. He therefore, possesses the everlasting kingdom and the everlasting dominion, for he is the glory of God.

Now, there are several words in scripture that are translated as “glory.” The key word is the one that is used in the Isaiah passage, and it has a remarkable meaning. It means “weight, heaviness, honor, worthiness,” but the emphasis is on “weight, heaviness.” Now, we spoke in the last hour of neo-Platonism. Neo-Platonism sees pure spirit as ultimate, as the highest being, and matter as lesser and inferior. For neo-Platonism, pure spirit is weightless, but the Bible says that God is the glory, that glory means weight, the absolute weight and heaviness. We have here two very different concepts. On the one hand, the neo-Platonic, pagan doctrine of spirit as weightless, on the other, the Bible doctrine of the glory of God as absolute weight, absolute heaviness. Too often, our ideas of God and of heaven are colored by neo-Platonism, but the Bible declares that the glory of God is absolute heaviness, weight, honor, and authority. In other words, the Bible does not teach that God is a ghost, or the supreme ghost, but God is not matter. The Bible tells us “God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth,” so speaks John 4:24. Thus, the ultimacy in both glory, heaviness, or weight, and spirit are ascribed to God.

As a result, the revelations of God that we meet with in the Bible come with both material and spiritual manifestations. Hence, too, the incarnation gives us God in the flesh, conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary. In the Old Testament, God’s revelation is by fire, a pillar of fire and of cloud, by thunder, by earthquake, and very definite physical ways. In the New Testament, Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration finds Moses and Elijah coming, representing the law and the prophets, appearing in glory to set forth the glory of Christ as the fulfillment of the Old Testament, of the law and the prophets as the manifestation of the glory of God, and his glory is to be manifested in the atonement, the resurrection, and the ascension, in the destruction of sin and death, and in his full dominion. The second coming, we are told as in Mark 7:38, will reveal the glory of Jesus Christ to all men.

Now, the Bible says God is spirit, but again, what does this mean? We have seen that glory in scripture means something radically different from what neo-Platonic and pagan thought would have it mean. The same is true of the word “spirit.” We think of spirit in distinction from matter. That’s the neo-Platonic division. Two substances, spirit and matter, and all beings are classifiable as either spirit or matter, or a mixture of the two, but the Bible does not contrast spirit and matter. Rather, its contrast is between spirit and death. The spirit is life. So that when we are told God is a spirit, we are told that God is life, absolute life. In him there is no shadow, no darkness, no death. So that when we become members of Jesus Christ, the incarnate God, this mortal puts on immortality. Death no longer has a power over us, and sin, which is the author of death, has its sway over us broken, so that when the Bible teaches that God is a spirit, it teaches us that God is life, and when it summons us to be spiritual, it summons us to put on life, the life that God has declared and set forth in his word. So, we do not, if we are biblical, contrast spirit and matter, but spirit as life is contrasted to sin and death.

We see this very clearly in the passage in Corinthians that we read earlier. In 2 Corinthians 3, especially verses 6-11. Sin is death, and the letter, or the administration, or judgment of the law against us is death. This is so because of sin, but the spirit gives life, because the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit, is life, absolute life.

Moreover, we are told by Paul there is a glory in the ministration of death, but a greater glory in the ministration of life, or of the spirit, so here we have the work of the redeemed set forth. In other words, glorification begins with redemption, and the process of glorification involves, among other things, the ministration first of all of law. The purpose of the law is the condemn, to discipline, to prune, to train, to sanctify. Thus, we cannot bypass God’s law.

Then second, there is the ministration of life, or of the spirit. The proclamation of the Gospel. It rests on the law because our salvation is an act of law within the Trinity. God’s justice is law being satisfied by the atonement of God the Son. To us it is grace, but it is an act of law.

Then third, the law is divided into a ministration of condemnation, an administration of righteousness or justice. In 2 Corinthians 3:9, the life of faith is the life of righteousness, or justice.

And fourth, glorification in process includes the knowledge of the Lord and all things in the Lord. Paul goes on to say in 2 Corinthians 4:6, “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

The scripture tells us that man was created with glory and honor; Psalm 8:5. The same Psalm goes on to tell us that he was ordained to have dominion, and the work of God’s hand was placed under man’s feet. Hebrews 2:6-9 tells us that man, having failed in this task, Jesus Christ came to fulfill this calling, to exercise the glory and the dominion that God gave to man, his creature, and now, in Christ, we have a duty to discharge this dominion, this calling through the ministration of death by setting forth the judgment of God upon all sin, the ministration of life, the proclamation of the Gospel, and the ministration of righteousness of justice, the ministration of knowledge, and all these are a part of our glorification as we fulfill these ministries. The glorification of man begins in time, and it is the development of the implications of the image of God.

Our Lord, in Matthew 25:26-30, in the parable of the talents, says to the servant who just came and returned the talent to him, “Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed: thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury. Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents. For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Remember, the spirit is contrasted to death, to darkness, so to be cast into the outer darkness, into hell, is to be cast into eternal death, the living death.

Now, there is a neglected point in this passage: verse 27. “Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury.” Now this is a very interesting point. What is our Lord saying? Let’s put it into very modern terminology. Our Lord says, “I gave you $1,000 and all you’ve done is to hand it back to me. Therefore, you’re under judgment. You could have taken that money down to the Bank of America, or Security Bank so that when I came, I could have had it with interest. It would have cost you nothing. It would have been no work on your part, just to take that money down and deposit it. I would have then had some return, but you’ve given me nothing.” In other words, our Lord is saying, “It would have taken no effort on your part. It just would have meant to be alive to the situation.” In other words, to be unproductive is to be dead.

Hence, our Lord calls this servant wicked, slothful, unprofitable, cast into the outer darkness because he belongs with the dead. If we are not productive to the Lord, we are dead and we belong with the dead in hell. God is a spirit. God is the glory and to God belongs the glory. He is ultimate heaviness, weight, honor, authority, and life, absolute life, and life is a well. To be alive is to be living, it is to be growing, it is to be doing, to be productive, and so our Lord says to the unprofitable servant, “No glory for you. You are unproductive. You are dead, and you belong with the dead.”

Hell, in other words, is life stripped of all of God’s glory, stripped of the spirit which is life. It is a place filled with a horror of loneliness, of total isolation from God who is weight and life. The idea of ghosts indeed belongs to hell, and they are the ones with no glory and no life. Hell has a fearful irony to it, because it is the essence of the man in sin, that he seeks to be his own god, to be his own world, his own universe, to have assaity, self-being. This is what Existentialism and the whole modern mood is about. Well, in hell, they have it in an ironic sense. They have nothing but themselves throughout all eternity, and so hell is the place of utter separation from meaning, from life, and there, the reprobates are left to their empty selves.

But our future in Christ, our glorification, is very different. We have the spirit, which is life, and ours is the glory of eternal life with Christ. Are there any questions now? Yes?

[Audience] How did the Holy Spirit fit into the framework of the weighty matter? Would you say that {?} Holy Spirit, we are the body? The weighty matter of the spirit?

[Rushdoony] How does the Holy Spirit fit in with the idea of weight, or glory? It’s hard for our minds to conceive of this, because it so far transcends our understanding. So that there’s a limit to the ability of our minds to grasp this idea, but when we speak of God as ultimate weight or heaviness, we’re dealing with categories of thought that are really beyond in their full implications our ability to grasp. For us, life means a beginning and end. It means also involvement with death, so again, it is difficult for us to grasp the idea of pure and absolute life, eternal life. Yet, we must say that the Holy Spirit is not to be thought of as something in a neo-Platonic sense, as pure idea, or ghostiness, but as something which, while beyond our understanding, manifests God’s glory and absolute life, and is God’s glory and absolute life.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Now, are there any other questions on glorification? Yes?

[Audience] I had another one the Holy Spirit. I’m an artist and I have a difficult time when the time comes to {?} Holy Spirit. What would be the best way to represent it? Possibly just the wind?

[Rushdoony] How to represent the Holy Spirit in art is really an impossibility, and through the centuries, artists have struggled with trying to represent God the Father, as well as God the Spirit, and the problem is that representation is a limitation, and how can you represent the infinite and the unlimited, so that it really poses a problem for the artist, which is insolvable, and therefore, it is better not to attempt it. I do not believe there has ever been a successful work that has really done anything but limit. I think therefore, the artist should attempt to show, not the triune God, but their effect. You see, that is within our limits.

Well, if there are no further questions. Let us bow our heads now in prayer.

Our Lord and our God, we thank thee that thou hast prepared so glorious a future for us in Jesus Christ. We thank thee that thy word is perfection, and thy word is truth. Make us zealous and strong in thy word, that we may face all the problems of this world as more than conquerors in Jesus Christ. In his name, we pray. Amen.

End of tape