[3.] The conjunction is more intimate between the object and faculty. Here the conjunction is by faith and imperfect love, there by clear vision and perfect love : ' He that is joined to the Lord by faith and love is one spirit.' Oh, but what a conjunction will this be, when we shall be joined to the Lord by clear immediate sight and perfect love ! Our sight is clear : 1 Cor. xiii. 12, ' Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face.' Vision shall then succeed faith, and possession hope, and the soul adhereth to him by love, without weakness, weariness, and distraction. Surely then our vision and fruition must needs be greater, and the soul filled up with all the fulness of God, Eph. iii. 19. Well, then, gather up the severals of this argument. The understand- ing is sanctified ; God is near to us, and liveth with us and in us ; and we live near to him, and in him. We see him whom we love, and love him whom we see. Heaven and earth doth not yield one tempting object to divert us from him : Ps. lxxiii. 25, 'Whom have I in heaven but thee ? and there is none on earth I desire besides thee.' And. therefore our sight is clearer and more comfortable and full. Surely the mind is filled with as much light, and the heart with as much love and joy, as the capacity of it is able to contain. Here we are in an expecting, waiting, longing posture ; but there is presence, vision, union, and fruition, our light and love being then perfect.
Secondly, Assimilation or transformation into the image of God and Christ.
VeR. 2.] SERMONS UPON 1 JOHN III. 463
Here I shall show — (1.) What likeness is; (2.) How it is the fruit of vision ; for it is rendered as a reason of it, it being said, We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.'
1. What this likeness is. This was man's first ruin, this aspiring to be like God : Gen. iii. 5, ' Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil ; ' not in a blessed conformity, but in a cursed self-sufficiency. This was the design of the first transgression : Isa. xiv. 14, ' I will ascend above the height of the clouds, and will be like the Most High.' It was the cause of the fall of Lucifer : I will be like the Most High ; who was therefore brought down wonderfully. The men of the world aspire to be like God in greatness and power, but not in goodness and holi- ness. We affect or usurp divine honour, and to sit upon even ground with God. Christ came not to gratify our sin, but to make us like unto God, not equal with God. The creature is not deified, but glori- fied ; and that glorification lieth in such a likeness and conformity as is proper to the creature. Man was at first made like God : Gen. i. 26, 27, ' Let us make man after our own image and likeness.' Now, when we fell from that, Christ came to repair what Adam lost, and to restore the image of God again, which was defaced in us ; yea, to put more glory upon us than ever we had or could have had in Adam. This work is begun in us in this world : 2 Cor. iii. 18, ' Beholding the glory of the Lord as in a glass, we are changed into his image and like- ness from glory to glory.' But it is perfected in heaven ; we are there made more like to God. Briefly, we shall be like him in two things — in holiness and felicity.
[1.] In holiness and purity ; for that is the chief thing wherein God will be resembled by his creatures. We are made holy as he is holy. Now at that day this is accomplished in the most perfect degree ; for it is said, ' He will present us faultless before the presence of his glory,' Jude 24 ; and ' holy, unblamable, and unreprovable in his sight ; ' Col. i. 22, ' Or without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing ; but that ye should be holy, and without blemish,' Eph. v. 27. There is a complete similitude snd transformation. Here sin is mortified, but there it is nullified ; here grace is mingled with corruption ; we are like God by the first-fruits of the Spirit, but unlike him by trie remain- ders of sin ; but in heaven we are wholly like him. Here we resemble Christ, but we also resemble Adam, yea, and often show forth more of Adam than Jesus ; but there we only show forth the holiness and purity of Christ ; his image shineth in us without spot and blemish.
[2.] We are like him in happiness and glory, that is, in a glorious condition : 1 Cor. xv. 49, ' And as we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.' Now the image of the heavenly is glory and immortality. So in the parallel place : Col. iii. 4, ' We shall appear with him in glory ; ' that is, not only as pure and holy creatures, but as glorious and happy creatures. And more particularly it is said, Phil. iii. 2, ' That this vile body shall be fashioned like unto his glorious body, for splendour, beauty, and immor- tality. This is a consequent of the former ; for if we be like him in holiness, we shall be like him in felicity ; for God, that is a pure and holy being, is also a perfect and happy being : ' And Christ will be glorified in his saints, and admired in them that believe,' 2 Thes. i. 10*