SPROUL: This is why we talk about the order of salvation and that the way the term salvation
is used in every tense of the Greek verb.
We were saved, we were being saved, we have been saved, we are saved, we will be saved,
we will be being saved, and that the pattern is that we’re justified the moment we believe.
And Luther’s famous motto simul iustus et peccator “at the same time just and sinner,”
we’re justified by an imputed righteousness, but still in and of ourselves we remain sinners,
but sanctification begins immediately.
We are being made into the conformity of the image of Christ as we are being sanctified.
But even the finest, most sanctified Christian, when they leave this earth, is not fully perfected
until glorification.
And that is the work of the Holy Spirit, when we come into glory that we are cleansed and
purified from sin altogether.
One of the things that you talk about the Highland hymn and the beatific vision, where
we talk about seeing God as He is, in se est, and we would say, and this we don’t know
what we’re going to be.
But this we know, that we will be like Him because we will see Him as He is.
And the question that I still haven’t resolved in my mind is how that works.
We will be like Him, because we will see Him as He is.
Now, maybe what that means is, if we go back to the Beatitudes, “Blessed are the pure
in heart, for they shall see God.”
And the reason we don’t see God right now is because we’re not pure in heart.
So the idea means that we must be purified or glorified before we can have the beatific
vision.
That would seem to be the logical construct that we would reach from that relationship
between those two things.
But what I’ve always wondered is if the final act of purification is that we will
see Him and it’s by the beatific vision, the vision of God, that that’s the very
action that affects our ultimate glorification.
I’m not sure which way that goes.
It would seem to me the former rather than the latter, but I’m not sure that it isn’t
the latter rather than the former.
What do you think?
HAMILTON: I think you’re right.
SPROUL: Boy, I hear truth.
HAMILTON: One of the most significant dogmatic statements I’ve ever read, Volume
2, early on, maybe page 32 of Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics, “Mystery is the lifeblood
of dogmatics,” and it’s lovely, I hope I say this not to flatter you, it’s lovely
when theologians are willing to say, “You know, I really don’t know.”
There is a profundity, a mystery, a holy mystery, we see through a glass darkly.
I think, like you I tend to believe that the final moment will be when we see Him as He
is, unclouded by our poor sight and by the veil that there is between this world and
the world which is to come.
But we live, at times we live in holy agnosticism, because God is God, and we are not.