| “Salvation is of the Lord,” and we have been saved altogether by God’s grace. “The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” But He has not only saved us that we “should not perish,” though this is blessedly true; He has saved us also from that eternal doom “according to His purpose.” Elsewhere we read that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.” The purpose, then, for which God has called us is that we might “be conformed to the image of His Son.” The full consummation of this will be at His coming, for “we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.” But even now, God is making “all things work together for good” to that end. And as we look upon our Lord in the Word, “with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, [we] are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” |
