31 Called to Christ’s Image

Paul had previously shown that God is deeply involved and invested in the lives of His children:

Romans 8:28

The Paul continued to show how the Lord is continually both working “in” and “for” His children.

Because of His sovereignty, God is both able and inclined to work all things out for the God of those who belong to Him.

1 Foreknown and Predestined

Romans 8:29

Foreknowledge is a divine attribute of God, which means that He knows in advance, all that His creations actions and reactions to every event and situation.

In addition to His foreknowledge, the Lord has created each of us with a purpose, as seen in the Lord’s words to the prophet Jeremiah:

Jeremiah 1:5

It shouldn’t be thought of as just referring to someone called to the office of prophet, but for each of us. The Lord considers every life as precious, and as we see from the passage, that is even before our conception.

The Lord’s foreknowledge, therefore, means that He knows everything with complete certainty. Even so, He has created each of us with a free will, which means that we may choose either to follow His ways and will, or to reject them.

The next aspect which Paul mentioned is “predestination”. Our having been predestined, if essentially, the outworking of God’s foreknowledge, and cannot be separated from it.

Therefore, it is through His foreknowledge that the Lord knows all that we will ever do (including if we will respond to Christ’s redemptive work) – which the causes Him to predestine us:

Ephesians 1:4-5

Even though the believer has been chosen by the Lord, we should always remember, that He loves everyone He’s created, to the extent, that He sent His Son to die for the sins of the world:

John 3:16

In the text, Paul states that the believer’s “predestination” is designed, so that we might be “conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren”.

2 The Father’s Desires

Our salvation entails much more than our having been kept from hell:

Romans 8:30

The fact that the believer has been “called” refers to Him
“wooing” us, thus often working in various ways to bring us to Himself.

Once an individual responds “positively” and has accepted the Lord’s call, they have then been “justified” and accounted as “righteous” in God’s eyes.

Earlier in the epistle, Paul showed how the believer’s justification comes from God’s grace, which was poured out through the redemptive work of Christ:

Romans 3:24

The Bible shows that there are three stages to the believer’s sanctification.

The first stage takes place at the moment of salvation, when we admit that we’re a sinner, who requires saving, which is only accomplished by Christ’s redemptive work at Calvary.

The second stage is a life-long process, which will continue from that initial stage, until their final breath. Since this stage covers the course of a lifetime, it requires our continual cooperating with God’s plan.

It is during that process, that the Lord, as the Potter, and we as the clay, is molding and shaping us, to conform us into His image.

But opposed to literal, inanimate clay, since the Lord created us with free wills, we must intentionally cooperate with Him during this process, which is why Paul made the following statement in his letter to the Galatians:

Galatians 5:16

The believer has God’s wonderful promise that He will continue the work which He’s begun in us:

Philippians 1:6

In that verse, Paul speaks of the believer being “glorified”, which is the final of the three stages of our sanctification. Glorification takes place when we will be in God’s presence in heaven for all eternity, which is wonderfully presented to us in the final book of the Bible:

Revelation 19:7