First, we believe upon the LORD Jesus Christ by the faith and grace which God provides.  God is sovereign and brings this “saving faith” to “many” in his own good time.  When we believe God imparts the seed of the Holy Spirit into our spirits.  This is our first salvation, the salvation of the spirit.

Second, as we have seen in most of the preceding blogs of this series, we work out the next step of our salvation in fear and trembling.  This is the salvation of our soul and is distinct from the salvation of our spirit.  Man’s free will becomes exercised in this salvation.  He learns that he now has a choice, he can willingly choose to serve and obey God, or he can go his own way.  If a man chooses to walk in God’s way, then he chooses God’s fire in this life.  He chooses the path of the overcomer.  If a believer simply walks the world’s paths after believing in Jesus, then he remains a carnal Christian.  He will have his part in the lake of fire in the age to come, but he will be “saved.”

Those who go in with God to the saving of their souls, the second salvation, become the first to partake of the third salvation, the glorification of their bodies.  Then, says, Jesus, we will be as the angels in heaven.  Literally, we will be elohim, the gods which God created in his image.  This is the goal of creation and this is the final step which Christians constantly deny.  “God-makers” they deridingly call those who teach this truth, but the truth is that God indeed is a “god-maker.”

Anyone who understands the beginning also understands the end.  God created all living things with seed within them so that they could, and would, recreate after their own kind.  When God created man, he made man in his own image, his own likeness, after his own kind.  But, he could not make man perfect without teaching man good and evil.  If he made man such that he would always choose the good, with no temptation to choose the bad, then he would not be as God.  Thus man had to be created with a free will and God had to create a tempter to tempt man to do evil.  Thus we see that God’s plan indeed required that man eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil before he could partake of the Tree of Life.  Only then could man “become like us” as God said after he ate of that tree.

God’s plan also included receiving the seed of the Holy Spirit when one became convicted of their evil and believed that Jesus (God) could save them from their sins.  This seed the Bible calls “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”  Following the pattern of seed in all God’s creation we then understand that this spiritual seed which we believers carry will ultimately give birth to the sons of God.  Sons are like their fathers.  We will be like God.  All the Bible teaches this and I have shown many verses about this in my writings on this site.  Consider again, then, what Paul teaches:

³⁴Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame. But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?  Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die:  And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain:  But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.  All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.  There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.  There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory.

So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption:  It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power:  It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.  And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.  Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven.  As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.

And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. (I Cor. 15:34-49)

And the image of the heavenly is the image of God.

Beloved, now are we the children of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. (I John 3:2)