"Who shall change our vile body" (Php. 3:21)

“Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself” (Php. 3:21).

Do you know why we will receive a glorious body like Christ’s? Because before God we are clothed in His righteousness. We appear before God in His beauty, and by God-given faith, by the Spirit of God in us, we trust His beauty, not our own. He will change our vile body to be like His glorious body because the Spirit of Christ dwells in us (Rom. 8:10). We have a nature created in righteousness and true holiness (Eph. 4:24). Though our body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of Christ’s righteousness (Rom. 8:10). The Spirit of Him who raised Christ from the dead dwells in us. Because Christ lives, we shall live (John 14:18-19). He shall therefore raise our body from death (Rom. 8:11).

We are justified before God by the work of Christ alone. Being justified in Christ, the Spirit of Christ has entered us and lives in us. He is God’s holy, incorruptible seed in us, by which we are born of God (1 John 3:9; 1 Pet. 1:23; John 6:63). Our new nature is holy because the Holy Spirit of Christ is in us. We are joined to the Lord by His Spirit (1 Cor. 6:17). We therefore cannot die because we are one with Him who is the resurrection and the life (John 11:25-26). We will not only be raised, but we will be raised incorruptible. God will make His sons known when Christ comes again (Rom. 8:19). He will openly make us appear to be what we truly are in Christ and what we are because Christ is in us.

Christ in us is therefore our hope of glory, our confident expectation that we will receive a glorious body, the possession Christ purchased for us by His own blood (Col. 1:27; Eph. 1:14). When we see Him,  we will be changed; we will be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is (1 John 3:2). We shall be conformed to His image (Rom. 6:14; 8:29). We will behold His face in righteousness because it is in His righteousness that we are dressed (Ps. 17:15; Isa. 61:10).

Our body must be like His glorious body because we are one with Him. We were one with Him in eternal election (Eph. 1:4; 1 Cor. 1:30). We were one with Him in His representative life (Rom. 5:19). We were one with Him in His substitutionary death (2 Cor. 5:21). We were one with Him in His burial and in His resurrection (Col. 3:1-3). We are one with Him where He is now seated on the right hand of God (Eph. 2:5-6). We are one with Him by His Spirit in us. Even our body is one with Him (1 Cor. 6:15)! We must live by faith in Christ and by the sure persuasion of what we are in Him (Rom. 6:11). We must live out what is true and what we therefore know and stand upon by the word of God alone. That the members of our body are Christ's ought to cause us to tremble in fear and live in hope, as we live out the salvation God has given us and is now working in us (Php. 2:12-13). We shall be glorified together with Him (Rom. 8:17).

If your only hope is that in Christ’s death, you died to sin (Rom. 6:3-11); that in Christ's burial, your sins were forever forgotten  by God out of mind (Ps. 31:12; 88:4-5; Ps. 103:12; Heb. 10:14-19); that when Christ rose, you rose with Him (Eph. 2:6); if by the God-given persuasion of these from the Gospel, Christ is all of your hope before God (Eph. 1:13-14), even all of your life (Col. 3:1-2); then you shall be glorified together with Him. In light of these facts and the sight of them that faith affords, “Seek those things which are above, where Christ sits on the right hand of God. Set your affections on things above, not on things in the world” (Col. 3:1-2).

If Christ is thus your hope, then you are dead to the guilt and condemnation of sin, and your life is hid with Christ in God. You now live upon Him by faith (Col. 3:3; John 6:35-56; Gal. 2:20; 1 Pet. 2:24). Therefore, when Christ who is our life shall appear, we shall appear with Him in glory. We shall be changed. Our bodies shall be made like His glorious body! Death’s sting has been removed because, for all who are Christ’s, it lost its sting when it stung our Savior (1 Cor. 15:53-58).

Rick Warta