Forgiveness and Glorification

Jim Jordan suggests that justification as forgiveness of sins always also includes glorification. The “robe” that covers us (imputed righteousness) is likewise a garment of glory and beauty, so that we are invested for office at the same time we are glorified. He wants also to relate this to the OT conception of “covering” or “atonement” as including both elements. That fits with a number of emphases in the NT:

1) Reception of the Spirit is linked with justification in Gal 3 and in Acts. Investiture with the glory-Spirit is justification. In Gal 3, Paul moves from insisting (in a rhetorical question) that the Spirit comes by hearing with faith and not by works of law (v 5) to proving this by reference to Abraham, who “believed God and it was reckoned to Him as righteousness.” I suppose we can insert a finely honed blade between the “counted righteous” and the “gift of the Spirit,” but it doesn’t seem to be a blade that Paul is equipped with.

2) In speaking about judgment (perhaps final judgment) in Rom 2, Paul describes the doers of the law both as “being justified” and as “receiving eternal life” at the judgment. Eternal life includes glory, honor, and immortality (vv. 6-13).

3) Paul moves from “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” to saying that we are “justified as a gift by His grace.” Justification is the reversal of the effect of sin, and that means that justification includes NOT falling short of the glory of God, that is, attaining the glory of God.