ONIANS

CHRIST GLORIFIED IN GLORIFIED MEN

'He shall come to be glorified in His saints; and
to be admired in all them that believe.'--2 THESS.
i. 10.

The two Epistles to the Thessalonians, which are the Apostle's earliest
letters, both give very great prominence to the thought of the second
coming of our Lord to judgment. In the immediate context we have that
coming described, with circumstances of majesty and of terror. He 'shall
be revealed . . . with the angels of His power.' 'Flaming fire' shall
herald His coming; vengeance shall be in His hands, punishment shall
follow His sentence; everlasting destruction shall be the issue of evil
confronted with 'the face of the Lord'--for so the words in the previous
verse rendered 'the presence of the Lord' might more accurately be
translated.

And all these facts and images are, as it were, piled up in one half of
the Apostle's sky, as in thunderous lurid masses; and on the other side
there is the pure blue and the peaceful sunshine. For all this terror
and destruction, and flashing fire, and punitive vengeance come to pass
in the day when 'He shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be
wondered at in all them that believe.'

There be the two halves--the aspect of that day to those to whom it is
the revelation of a stranger, and the aspect of that day to those to
whom it is the glorifying of Him who is their life.

I. The remarkable words which I have taken for my text suggest to us,
first of all, some thoughts about that striking expression that Christ
is glorified in the men who are glorified in Christ.

If you look on a couple of verses you will find that the Apostle returns
to this thought, and expresses in the clearest fashion the reciprocal
character of that 'glorifying' of which he has been speaking. 'The name
of our Lord Jesus Christ,' says he, 'may be glorified in you, and ye in
Him.'

So, then, glorifying has a double meaning. There is a double process
involved. It means either 'to make glorious' or 'to manifest as being
glorious.' And men are glorified in the former sense in Christ, that
Christ in them may, in the latter sense, be glorified. He makes them
glorious by imparting to them of the lustrous light and flashing beauty
of His own perfect character, in order that that light, received into
their natures, and streaming out at last conspicuously manifest from
their redeemed perfectness, may redound to the