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It is resurrection, therefore, that constitutes and inaugurates the believer's final bliss. A notion of consummated bliss bereft of resurrection hope has no affinity with the prospect which Christianity defines.

Christ is the first-begotten from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. Christ's own resurrection is the prototype. Even now believers are raised up with Christ in newness of life and mysteriously, though real, they are made to sit with him in the heavenlies (cf. Eph. 2:6, Col. 3:1-3). But believers are not yet glorified; it has not been manifested what they shall be. The logic of their relation to the resurrection of Christ and to the resurrected Lord is that in the manifestation of Christ's glory will be the revelation of their glory. It is with Christ they will be glorified (Rom. 8:17).

"When Christ who is our life will be manifested, then shall ye also be manifested with him in glory" (Col. 3:4). How beggarly is any concept of final bliss that does not make the glory of Christ pre-eminent and paramount! And how impoverished is the outlook that can tolerate the thought of bliss apart from the exaltation of Christ in the resplendent glory of his future manifestation! The pole star of the believer's expectation is "the appearing of the glory of the great God and our Savior Christ Jesus." and, necessarily, this is "the blessed hope" (Titus 2:13).

Glorification with Christ and the bliss it entails for the people of God must not be isolated from the broader context of a renewed and reconstituted cosmos. "The reaction itself will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children God" (Rom. 8:21). It is not simply the human race that suffered the curse incident to sin. The ground was cursed for man's sake and the creation was subjected to vanity. The crown of God's creation fell from original integrity, and curse, bondage, and corruption for the created order followed in the wake of man's apostasy. His environment bespeaks the curse of sin. When redemption repairs man's ruin it must likewise work its renovating effects in the whole creation. And with the consummation of redemption this restitution will be as complete in its own sphere as man's redemption will be in his. Nothing less could be implied in the liberty of the glory of the children of God."

In the restitution of creation, the transformation will as radical as are the changes embraced in the redemption of men. The regeneration of man requires a new nation, old things must pass away and all things become new (cf. 2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15). In the realm cosmic renewal there must likewise be a new heavens and new earth. And the process which effects this change is as convulsive and cataclysmic as that "the evens shall pass away with a crash and the elements being burned up shall be dissolved, and the earth and works that are in it shall be disclosed" (2 Pet. 3:10). The present heavens and earth are treasured for fire; they will perish and will be folded up as a vesture (2 Pet. 3:7; Heb. 1:10-12). And the renewed creation will be a new heavens and a new earth emancipated from every trace of the curse and corruption of sin and pervaded by righteousness (2 Pet. 3:13).

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June (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47