The Glorious End of Life in Christ

O loving wisdom of our God, when all was sin and shame, a second Adam to the fight and to the rescue came, and the whole of Jesus' incarnation all an indication to us that the new Adam has come.

And in the life and death and resurrection and ascension and heavenly session and final return of our Lord Jesus Christ, this new Adam means to accomplish what the first Adam failed to accomplish, and in order to do it, he will bear the judgment of God against Adam's sin and failure. I don't know about you, but I often need to be reminded of our future state with the trials of life, the apparent uncertainty of our world, needing to be reminded of the certainty of God's reign and our glorious end as Christians. And we have such a reminder today on Renewing Your Mind. This is the Thursday edition, and I hope that you're being helped this week as you hear messages from this year's Ligonier Ministries National Conference. If you'd like to join us next April in Orlando, Florida, you can secure the early bird discount at ligonier.org slash 2025. Today's teacher is Sinclair Ferguson. He serves as the vice chairman of Ligonier Ministries and is a Ligonier Ministries teaching fellow.

He recently recorded a new teaching series to help us as we live our lives as sojourners and exiles, and you can request this resource plus a title from R.C. Sproul on what comes after this life when you give a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org. Well, here's Dr. Ferguson with an encouraging reminder on the glorious end of life in Christ. So, I want to ask you for this session to turn in your Bibles to the eighth chapter of the letter to the Romans. I don't plan to expound this in detail, but it will be a good starting point for our consideration of the glorious end. Although in thinking about the glorious end, someone asked me, are you going to speak from Revelation 21?

And I think I said, no, I did that the last time, and there are people with long memories who come to Ligonier conferences. This may not be the first passage that comes to mind when we are thinking about the future, but it is a passage that sheds some very interesting light both on the future and also on our lives in the present as we think about the future. And I want us to try and grasp the atmosphere of this passage. I think we often assume that words are simply words, but words in Scripture come to us with atmospheres. And it's very important as we read Scripture, for example, as we listen to the Lord Jesus' teaching in Scripture, that we also sense the atmosphere in which Jesus is communicating what He says and the style in which He is saying it. And I think that's a particularly appropriate observation when we come to a passage like Romans chapter 8.

So by way of preliminary, I want you to notice with me that there are two ideas that are intertwined all the way through the central section of Romans 8 from, for example, verse 12 right through to verse 30. One of them is that Paul here is speaking in the atmosphere of the family. And you'll notice how much family language is used here. I think between verse 12 and verse 30, there are nine different examples of family language. So in verse 12, he addresses them as brothers, verse 14 as sons, verse 15 he speaks of adoption as sons, verse 16 that we are children of God, verse 17 that we are children and heirs, verse 19 that we are sons of God, verse 21 that we are children of God, verse 23 that we are sons of God, and then in verse 29, that we are the younger brothers of our Lord Jesus Christ, which as the ESV constantly reminds us Adelphos, the word for brother, really means sibling, and so it includes both brothers and sisters. So this is a passage in which I think we can say the Apostle Paul is creating for us the atmosphere of our highest privilege as Christian believers, that we have been born again into the family of God, that we have been adopted as His children, and that He has become our heavenly Father, as he says here in these memorable words, through the Spirit we cry out Abba, Father.

And then there is another form of language that's intertwined with this. On the one hand the language of sonship and being children of God, on the other hand the language of glory, which at the end of the day is our theme. In verse 17, our destiny as children is to be glorified with Christ. In verse 18, he speaks about the glory that is to be revealed to us, or I think we might even translate that the glory that is to be revealed into us, into our very being. Verse 21, he speaks about the freedom of the glory of the sons of God into which the whole creation will enter. And in verse 30, he says that we have been predestined, called, and justified in order that we may be glorified. And in combining these two strands of biblical teaching, the Apostle Paul is saying at length what the Apostle John says much more briefly in the third chapter of his first letter, where he says to the Christians, it doesn't yet appear what we shall be, but we are already the children of God, and we know that when He, Christ, appears we shall be like Him.

And so what you have in these two great apostles and their perspective on the future and how it impacts life in the present is both the privilege that is ours now and the destiny that is secured for us in the future. We are in Christ now, and because we are in Christ, we have become the children of God. We have become brothers and sisters to the Lord Jesus and to one another.

And because that is our condition and our status, we also have the destiny of our elder brother to look forward to, namely to share in His glory. And the way John puts Romans 8.29, that God has predestined us to be conformed to the image of His Son that He might be the firstborn of many brothers, is that we are God's children now. It doesn't yet appear what we shall be, but when He appears, we shall be like Him because we shall see Him as He is.

The old seventeenth-century New England preacher John Cotton in his commentary on 1 John makes his comment on these words by saying, these words reprove men's squint looking. And you can see what he's saying to Christians in his own time, Christians in our time, that we all suffer because of our fragility in sin. We all suffer from a spiritual and theological squint so that we do not see clearly, things get out of focus. And this is where, as we live the Christian life, we need our fundamental focus to be on the privileges that are ours now in Christ and the privileges that will be ours when at the very last we are with Christ and we see Him face to face.

And these two things are very much connected. Mike Reeves' exposition yesterday evening of what it means for us to be in Christ and what it means for us to have this great anticipation and longing that one day we will in fact be with Christ. There is in the believer latent at least in the heart this longing to depart, to be with Christ, which is far better.

As one of the older writers said, far better because we of Christ now and we will have the same Christ better. So these two concepts to bear in mind, that as the children of God, as the sons of God, we are actually now destined for glory. And when Paul writes this in Romans chapter 8, he's writing it against a particular background. He's writing it against the tragedy of a lost glory that surrounds us. And you remember how he's spoken about this already in the earlier chapters of the Bible.

He introduced it in Romans chapter 1. What is the tragedy of the human condition? The tragedy of the human condition is that we have exchanged the glory of God for idolatry, and that is our situation and our condition. And as a result of that, it's not only ourselves as human beings, it's the world over which we were intended to exercise dominion that has begun to creak at the edges. As Shakespeare says in Hamlet, the times are out of joint, and we can see pretty clearly here in Romans chapter 8 that Paul understands that the whole creation is out of joint. The whole creation, he says, is groaning in pain. In verse 20, it's subject to futility. In verse 21, it is in bondage to corruption.

The law of entropy is released into the created order because in a very fundamental sense, creation lost its head. And this, of course, is the teaching of Genesis 1, 26 to 28, isn't it? That God made man as His image and likeness in order to have dominion over the whole creation.

He gave him this little start, we might say, by giving him a garden. And it's clear in Genesis, isn't it, that there is a garden and there is an outside of the garden. God is like a father who is rearing his son to be the gardener of the world, and so He gives him a little start and He says, now my son and daughter, expand this garden until it reaches the ends of the earth, until all creation has become a garden in which there is harmony in the animal kingdom, in which there is harmony in the vegetable kingdom, in which there is harmony in the human kingdom, in which the very fabric of the earth has an inbuilt harmony to it.

And that is your calling, that's your destiny. The great Princeton theologian Gerhardus Vos has a very striking statement that he makes that at first sight might sound very unusual. He says in the Bible, the eschatological has priority over the soteriological. That is to say, in the Bible, the first thing is the last things, and the saving things begin to emerge because of the tragic loss of the last things in the sinfulness and rebellion of Adam. And as we read through the early chapters of Genesis, it becomes clear that in fellowship with the heavenly Father, in the enlargement of His family, Adam's task is to garden the whole world and eventually to bring it back to the heavenly Father and say the words that the Lord Jesus said on the cross, Father, it is finished.

And the reason, of course, our Lord Jesus says those words on the cross in the agony of His passion bearing the judgment of God is because God's first Son, Adam, so tragically not only failed but exchanged the glory of God for the idolatry of Himself and His idolatry for the world. And because of that, says Paul, as he pictures the state of creation, he says, it is though you can hear the moaning and the howling of the wind and the waves and the power of lightning and thunder and earthquake and erupting volcanoes because the whole creation is groaning under the weight of the fall of its first head, Adam. And as I say throughout the opening chapters, Paul has been painting this picture so that you remember how he picks up the same theme in chapter 3, verse 23. Earlier on, he had been speaking about the way in which Adam and we have broken the revealed law of God and the will of God. And then he says, but the real tragedy is that we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And you see that's Paul's reading of the early chapters of Genesis, that God made man as His image, as His Son. Just as later on in chapter 5, we are told how Adam had a son in his image. And connected to these two ideas, being the image of God and the Son of God, is the notion of being for the glory of God. The first question and answer of the Shorter Catechism is not just relevant to our fallen condition.

It was supremely relevant to our created and unfallen condition. What was the chief end of Adam? Adam's chief end was to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever, and he stumbled and he fell. And we can put it this way, he forfeited the glory that could have been his, the glory of a finished creation, the glory of the harmony of nature with man, the animal kingdom with man, everything that the prophets looked forward to in the new heavens and the new earth, he despised.

And he has therefore fallen short of the glory that was to be his as God's image and likeness. I wonder if you've ever been puzzled by the way in which in Ephesians chapter 5 Paul speaks about marriage and then suddenly, as though out of nowhere with little preparation, he says, I'm actually speaking about Christ and the church. Well, why does he say that? He says it for a very simple reason. He sees that built into the original created relationship, both man's relationship to God and man's relationship to woman is what is only fulfilled in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he gives a very interesting insight into what he's talking about in the chapter on hair and head coverings, doesn't he, in 1 Corinthians, where he says in 1 Corinthians 11.7 something that I think that people have found quite difficult to understand and indeed some people have found it quite objectionable. He says, man is the image of God, but the woman is the image and the glory of the man. Is he being chauvinistic?

Well, no, think about it like this. He says as to the man, he is created as the image of God to reflect God, to reflect His glory, to fill the earth with His glory, to have dominion over all things and put on display God's glory. And if you want to understand what that is like, you look at the relationship between the man and the woman, and in the relationship between the man and the woman, the woman is the glory of the man.

Let me try and illustrate it in a way that might appeal to anyone under 25. You find yourself in some social occasion, and you find yourself in conversation with a young woman your age. She is really beautiful in a modest, attractive way.

She is a Christian believer. She is attractive to you, both in terms of her engagement with you and what she looks like. You see something in her, and then she is hauled away by somebody, and you find yourself in another conversation, and you say, who was that girl? And they tell you who she is, and then say, have you met her boyfriend? Oh, and your heart sinks, and they say, you should meet her boyfriend.

He is really something. And you find your way accidentally but providentially back into her presence, and as the conversation goes on – this is not as long as the illustration on 1984, by the way – as the conversation goes on, she says, have you met my boyfriend? Your heart sinks even further. Oh, I'd like you to meet my boyfriend. And she turns around and she calls over a fellow who is six inches shorter than she is, who is chewing tobacco and spitting, who has spilled ketchup on his tie, who is wearing torn jeans and has a pockmarked face. Now, let's be clear.

People who chew tobacco wear jeans, have pockmarks on their faces. They are not denied love. But you see this fellow, and two thoughts enter your head, don't they? The first is, hey, there's still hope for me. But the second is, instinctively, there's something here that's not quite right. Why does everyone have that instinct?

Because when you look at this girl, you inevitably draw the assumption that the man who has this woman as his glory, as his weight, as his worth, this woman who expresses beauty, dignity, grace, affection, the man who has her must be a man of incredible substance. And so you're expecting the quarterback to appear, or the guy who plays first base, or the winner of the Masters Golf Championship to appear, and you realize there's something profoundly wrong because this glory should say to me what a man has this woman's love. And that's what Adam was created for. Adam was created so that, as it were, the whole animal kingdom, that the whole family that he produced, that they would be able to look at this man and say, the person who has won his affections must be someone very special. And correspondingly, what Paul is pointing out is exactly the same as true in connection with Christ and the church, that God purposes to put glory in Christ Jesus into the church so that when the world looks at the church, the world is compelled to say, like it or lump it, compelled to say, the one who has produced this, the one who is the devotion of this, the one whose glory is this must be some Savior. And you see, all of that was meant to be brought to pass without any sin.

It was meant to be brought to pass seamlessly and perfectly. And this is what is in the background when Paul says in Romans 3.23 that we have all sinned and we have fallen short of the glory of God. We've lost our destiny. We've forfeited our glory. And it is the wonder of the gospel, as he says in 8.29 to 30, that in Jesus Christ what was lost in Adam is now being restored to us.

And that's the second thing I want you to notice. If these words that Paul writes or rather that his scribe Tertius writes are set against the background of the tragedy of a lost glory, then he's also teaching us, isn't he, the recovery of that glory by our Redeemer Jesus Christ for our sakes. We've sinned and fallen short of the glory. But then he says there is a second Adam who has come. Oh, loving wisdom of our God when all was sin and shame, a second Adam to the fight and to the rescue came. And the whole of Jesus' incarnation, His life, His ministry, His sufferings, His miracles of healing, His undoing of the evidences of the fall in people's lives, all an indication to us that the new Adam has come. And in the life and death and resurrection and ascension and heavenly session and final return of our Lord Jesus Christ, this new Adam means to accomplish what the first Adam failed to accomplish. And in order to do it, he will bear the judgment of God against Adam's sin and failure. And that's why he's described by the author of Hebrews as being the express image of God. He is the one, as Hebrews says, who is the archegos, the captain, the leader, the leading officer of salvation, because what he is doing is accomplishing for us what Adam and we failed to accomplish for God and for ourselves. And so, as Hebrews says, he is made complete. That is to say, his equipment to do this is absolutely perfect because of all he suffered on our behalf to bring us back to where God originally had called us to be. He makes the great exchange where Adam was created for glory and covered his glory with shame. Jesus, who possesses glory, finds His glory covered in shame, that our shame might be covered in His glory. And there is this wonderful exchange takes place in the gospel.

In my place condemned, He stood and sealed my pardon with His blood. No wonder we sing, Hallelujah, what a Savior. But when He has done that, do you remember what He says as He ascends into heaven? He says to the apostles, now you go into all the earth with the gospel and do it because now all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Now, number one, that may seem strange to us because isn't He the Son of God and didn't He always have all authority in heaven and on earth?

Yes, He did. But He is speaking here not merely as it were as the Son of God, He is speaking as the second Adam. And perhaps the thrust of what He is saying would be clearer to us if either Genesis 1, 26 to 28 had been translated, I'm making you as my image and I'm giving you authority, or if Matthew 28, 18 to 20 had been translated as Jesus saying, all dominion in heaven and earth has been given to me, so you go into all the world.

You are my family, you are my children, you are my brothers and sisters. Now you go into the world and with the gospel that brings pardon and restoration and recreation by means of the gospel as days, years, centuries if necessary pass, there will eventually come to pass what Adam was called to be and to do when at the last I return not to the fight but to the victory and all things are placed under my feet and every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess, Jesus Christ has dominion. And so you see all of this is putting the ministry of our Lord Jesus into its whole Bible perspective, isn't it?

Paul reflects on this. We didn't quite get there last night, but Paul reflects on this also in 1 Corinthians 15. You remember when he speaks about, he says there is an order to the restoration that God is accomplishing in Jesus Christ. First of all, there is the resurrection of the Lord Jesus as the first fruits, and then there is our resurrection because we are united to Jesus.

And then do you remember what he says is often seemed to be a very strange thing to some readers of Scripture. He says, when Christ has fulfilled all things at His coming, then comes the end. Now that's the end, the end. It's also the telos. Then comes the original goal.

And what is that original goal? It's not only that as by man death came, so by another man life has come. It is, as Paul says here, when God has put all things under His feet in subjection to Him, then – listen to this, this is 1 Corinthians 15 verse 28 – then the Son will also be subject to Him who put all things under His feet.

Now just think about that. What is Paul saying? The one thing we can be sure he is not saying is that there is an ontological subordination of the Son to the Father as though He were some lesser God. What he is saying is this, that when the Lord Jesus has ultimately fulfilled His ministry as the second man and the last Adam, He will in fact do what the first man and the first Adam was created to do. He will bring the entire created order now in subordination to Him, every knee bowing, every tongue confessing His dominion as the second man, the last Adam. He will come to His heavenly Father and He will say, Hebrews 2, here am I Father and the children You have given me.

It is finished. And as our worship leader, as our praise leader in a sense, in that humanity which He bears forever as our mediator, He will lead the whole creation in subservience to God and say, Father, it is finished. And on our behalf, in His name, by His passion and resurrection through His heavenly session, by His glorious return to place all things in subjection to Himself, He will then offer it all back to the Father.

Just as if you think about it this way, a father might buy some painting materials for his son or daughter, and the son or daughter might paint something and bring it back and say, Daddy, it's finished and I want you to have it. And then says Paul, God will be all in all. The end for which the world was created that Adam forfeited, in which forfeit we share, will one day exclusively through the person, the work, the ministry, the power of our Savior Jesus Christ who brings us to the knowledge of the Father, who sends His Spirit to enable us to serve Him for His glory. This is the glorious destiny. This is the end to which the whole creation moves. This as Paul says here in Romans 8 is what the fallen creation is longing and groaning for, as though it were a mother in labor pains longing for the moment when the child would come forth. And however metaphorical that language may be, it is surely a glorious picture of the way in which by whatever means, and Paul doesn't reflect on those means here although Simon Peter seems to do in 2 Peter, by whatever means it takes place, out of the ruins of the old creation, the Son of God will bring the pristine new creation in which the Spirit reigns, in which there is reconciliation and peace in the animal kingdom, in which the very fabric of existence is transformed in the new heavens and the new earth. And this is our glorious gospel.

This is our hope, brothers and sisters. This is what marks us out in a decaying and dying world, that we know what the telos is. We know what the end is. And so what we see Paul saying here in terms of the back cloth in the tragedy of a lost glory and his story of the recovery of that glory by our Savior Jesus Christ leads inevitably to the destiny for which we are intended as we are given this amazing privilege of sharing in that glory. Many people who are non-Christians who are listening to this would say, well, it's pie in the sky when you die, isn't it? Well, the truth of the matter is it's pie in the sky when you die, and it's pie now as well. And this is the New Testament teaching, isn't it? The love of God that is the world He inhabits in heaven and the saints in glory now inhabit, that love is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us, and we already begin to taste it. We might… some of us might even go home and someone says, what was the Ligonier Conference like? And we'll say, it's glorious. It was glorious. And we don't just mean it was great, we mean we tasted something of the glory of God among His people.

And this is why C.S. Lewis famously said, you know, people think that there are people who are too heavenly minded to be of any earthly use, but if you read history, you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the world to come. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of that other world that they have become ineffective in this. And here in Romans 8, Paul gives us indications of how this transforms our lives now. For example, he teaches us that it's this that sheds light on our suffering.

He says the Christian looks at suffering and understands that suffering in his or her life becomes the raw materials out of which God will create the glory that will shine in them. Now, people sometimes say, will we recognize one another in the future world? And the answer is yes, but it may take a few minutes because in that world the inside that's been hidden will become visible. And then we will be able to say to each other and maybe regret that we never said it in this world, oh, so that's who you really were. I hardly gave you a second thought, but that's what the Spirit was creating in you as He prepared you for the specifics of glory that will shine in your life.

We will not be like characters in a science fiction movie where everybody wears the same mask and there's nothing behind the mask. If we are diverse now, then the full diversity of what God has done in us by the Spirit through Christ will shine in that day, and therein will lie our glory. So Paul understands that as children we are heirs provided we suffer with Him in order that we may be glorified with Him. He's not saying our justification is based on our suffering. He is saying that our suffering is the raw materials out of which God is creating the specific glory that He means to put into our lives, and that gives us hope and steadfastness in suffering. And what he's teaching here also in many ways explains the paradoxes of our Christian experience. He puts it like this. He says, we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the resurrection of our body. That's a very strange combination, isn't it? You couldn't create that in yourself.

I'm going to simultaneously wait eagerly while I'm groaning inwardly. But it's a perfect description of the experience of the Christian faith, isn't it? The clash that goes right through the Christian believer because the work of glory has already begun in a heart and in a world that is still plagued by sin. Then he goes on to say that all of this teaching reassures us that there is actually a reason for life now because there is a purpose in life then. We know. You don't know this if you are not a Christian. You have no grounds for saying this if you're not a Christian. We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to His purpose.

We know that. You can't know that apart from Christ. You don't know what the purpose is. You don't know that there is a purpose. And what a reassurance and stabilizing element in our Christian lives that is.

And it's all subservient to this. What is His purpose? His purpose, verse 29 in chapter 8, is that those He predestined would be conformed to the likeness of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. Beloved, as John says, we are God's children now, but it does not yet appear what we shall be. But when He appears, we shall be like Him because we shall see Him as He is.

You ever do FaceTime with someone who just can't get it right? And one face is clear and what you see is someone else's chin? That's life now even as a Christian. But in that day, on the screen will be the perfect face of Jesus Christ and your face perfectly reflecting Him. Remember how John sees this in the book of Revelation in chapter 21 when he sees the new world order coming down from heaven, the new Jerusalem, and it's this strange combination of being a city on the one hand, a massive city of amazing dimensions with extraordinary walls and yet somehow or another all this concrete and clay is adorned like a bride for her husband. And then he hears this, the dwelling place of God is with man.

There's no temple there because God and the Lamb are the temple. And on that day, says John in Revelation as he hears the loud voice from the throne, on that day death shall be no more, neither shall they be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away, they'll be gone forever. But he prefaces that, and it's the second time in the book of Revelation this is said, he prefaces that with these words, melting words. On that day, God Himself, not an angel, but God Himself, I can't begin to understand or explain what this will be like, God Himself will wipe away every tear from your eyes. Remember maybe as a little boy or a little girl, you fell on the sidewalk and you bruised your knee or your elbow or your hand, and you were only two. You were still small enough to be picked up by your mom, I remember this quite vividly, and sat on her knee and with a clean hanky she would wipe away the tears from your eyes and she might kiss the bruise. And then I don't know what your mom said, but my mom said one word, better now. And I remember saying, better now. That's what it will be like to hear the Savior say, better now. Think of the mass of sorrows represented in this room, the mass of sorrows that lie ahead of us in this world, death unless the Lord returns for each of us, parting from our loved ones, our family, our children, our grandchildren, our parents, the sadness, the sorrow, the groaning of this creation and the creatures who inhabit it. And then the day will come, the glorious day of the future, when He will wipe away every tear from our eyes.

I came across these words written by the great metaphysical English poet John Donne. He loves us to the end, and not to our end, but to His end, and His end is that He might love us more. His end is that He might love us more. You mean there's more, Lord? Oh yes, there's so much more, and it's all waiting for you in the glorious end. There's so much more.

That's hard for us to comprehend, but what a glorious truth to cling to. That was Sinclair Ferguson on this Thursday edition of Renewing Your Mind with a message he delivered at Ligonier Ministries 2024 National Conference earlier this year in Orlando, Florida. You can join us next year and secure the early bird discount when you register at ligonier.org slash 2025. And if you'd like to hear an extended edition of today's message, be sure to follow the Renewing Your Mind podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. Dr. Ferguson has recorded many teaching series with us, and his most recent is on 1 Peter. It's titled Sojourners and Exiles, and it's a practical exposition of 1 Peter to help us in our pilgrimage on our way to the glorious end that you heard about today. When you give a gift of any amount at renewingyourmind.org, or when you call us at 800 435 4343, we'll send it to you on DVD, give you lifetime digital access to the messages and study guide, plus send you R.C. Sproul's title, What Comes After This Life? This offer ends tonight at midnight, so visit renewingyourmind.org or click the link in the podcast show notes while there's still time. Ligonier's teaching fellows will join us tomorrow for a Q&A session answering questions from our conference attendees. Don't miss tomorrow's episode here on Renewing Your Mind.