A destiny for all

This is going to happen. It’s your destiny.

In fact, because we have a God who essentially operates outside of time, it has kind of already happened. This is the way it is.

We are destined to be conformed to the image of Jesus, the Son of God. We read in Romans 8:29 that God predestined those He foreknew to be conformed to the image of His Son.

Let’s start with a little foundation.

• Before we were even formed, we were known. Before we were even born, we were sanctified. (See Jeremiah 1:5.)

This was part of God’s message to a backsliding people before the entrance of Jesus to Earth, so it applies to the hot, the cold, and the lukewarm, the Christian and the Atheist, the horrible and the wonderful, and so on. Not only that, but He is all-knowing, so it should be simple to see that He has known all of us AND has chosen to sanctify us before time even began - before we ever had a chance to backslide.

• We were made in the image of God from the start. (See Genesis 1:26.)

This is all of mankind we’re talking about here. We were made in His likeness, having been given a spirit, and were given even His breath, as well as bodies not subject to death. We know God is good, and when He had finished creating us, He saw that we too were good. We were given free will and the ability to reason and the power to choose, all just as God also has. Furthermore, we were designed for fellowship because of God’s desire for fellowship, so we also innately desire fellowship. In many ways, we were made in His image and likeness. We were “of Him” from the very beginning.

Of course, we crashed our perfect image of God when we used our power to choose according to our flesh and not to the truth of God and therefore relinquished the inner image of God in us, but with the visit of Jesus, those who have accepted the gift of His sacrifice have been made new and are now made specifically in the image of the Son of God. God has arms wide open for us to return to Him as a whole, and He wants us to see that.

While we were caught up in the world, He sent someone to show us the way back to the reason we are even here: to be an image of God and inevitably embody and display His glory, but now also to be an image of His Son.

This kind of new sonship means adoption, a choice to accept and love. This sonship also means inheritance, an unshared, eternal inheritance.

As images of the Son of God, we have the saving gift of being seen as Jesus Himself when the Lord looks at us or hears our cries. If we have been made new, we are the image of the Son of God, and THAT is our destiny.

And what does God think of His Son?

He is proud of His Son. He is One with His Son and the Spirit. His Son sits at His right hand. He has given all authority in Heaven and in Earth to His Son. And so on. To be the image of the Son of God is to be very, very special to God. And once more, THAT has been our destiny from the get-go. Only you must step into it.

As you study Romans 8 this week, pay special attention to verse 30. Notice how predestined, called, justified, and glorified are all past tense. We can do nothing to earn it. It has already been done. It is already finished. We can only enter into a relationship with Him and take up our cross daily, just as Christ Jesus did. Then we will be an image of Him: predestined to be sanctified.