“As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness.” – Psalm 17:15

The reader would very likely be best served to continue no further, but having hidden this verse in your heart, with unfeigned lips to call upon the Holy One whose balance is equal in all things, to meditate day and night only in this one essential and eternal object; Christ in that coming day when we see Him glorified – remade like Him.

The Kingdom of God now is only a like figure. Be not high-minded about this; it could be you on skid row, but we have a heavenly city. If not for the Scriptures, how could the believer understand the war within themselves, this relentless drawing and calling, the tug on the heart ever looking for Christ with the earnest expectation of the old creature we desire to forsake all the vanity of unholiness, yet to be fully converted into a son of God.

It’s love, for God is love, that demands our attention to Him and attrition of our wicked desires. Though instantly converted to life everlasting at the moment of faith in Christ’s shedding of blood for our sins and believing upon His resurrection, without His patience and ongoing mercies, how could the believer understand what is to become of himself? Many today are confused beyond reason. They seek not His face, clawing like a beast holding to their sins against the Spirit who demands that they turn to the living God. The ongoing creation of the new being growing with increasing rapidity, expecting Him, just Him, and having been made righteous, searching for the day when there will be nothing else but the presence of His visage.

“For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.” – Romans 8:19

Romans 8:16-25 can be a difficult passage. But for context, we have the sublime simplicity of the verse from our Psalm. Assuredly the Romans passage has an apostolic context and a broader sense because the making of heirs, we sons of God, is ongoing even to this day.

Proving our heart, visiting us to give hope, Christ, trying and purifying the believer as we purpose in our mind to abandon sin after sin that holds us against the day of His likeness. The world appears all the more evil and decrepit when in the earnest prayer of desire to be like Him, especially in searching of His holy word. These two rein in our dead creature, ever quickening us, yearning for the time, to wit the redemption of our bodies to be glorified with Christ our King.

His marvelous lovingkindness to those saved by His right hand is terrifying without knowing where our transformation leads. One day, there will be nothing else but Him because nothing else matters in the least. In this one verse from the Psalm, you can see the historical redemptive plan of the ages unfolding: made in His image at creation, yet fallen into sin, saved and seeking after the great day of the final homecoming to be fully reconciled to God, the sons of God will be like Christ.

The creature itself will be finally delivered from the bondage of corruption into the final estate, the abode of many mansions. Fear not, for He is faithful and true, the mighty God, Lord of heaven and earth.

Nothing will satiate the hunger in the souls of those awaiting the manifestation of the sons of God. No evil could fulfill the desires of that lost sinner, having yet to know the Saviour through the second birth. And nothing will ever satisfy the converted soul; nary a thing can appease us from the one immutable desire; to be entirely remade without spot, without a rough and rowdy past, all sin purged from us as it is today already in the mind of the Father.

Satisfied, at rest, full of contented love for the Saviour; oh that the sons of men would be converted. They trifle at nothing to no good end. All the more thankful is the heart that is His, looking to that final day: no temple, neither sun nor moon; the Lamb is the light thereof. Purpose in your heart to mean this: ‘as for me,” follow Christ in hot pursuit, longing for the last day, making Him the one object of your desire.