The Knowing That Is Already Yours

The glorified body that Scripture describes — shining like the sun in the kingdom of the Father, radiant with a light that comes from within, like the preview three friends saw on the mountain when the veil lifted for a moment and the glory that had been inside Him all along blazed through — that body is not a different creature from the one reading these words. It is this creature, with the veil lifted permanently.

John saw it and wrote it plainly:

"Dear friends, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that whenever it is revealed we will be like him, because we will see him just as he is."

— 1 John 3:2 (NET)

The likeness is caused by the seeing. The glorified body shines because it finally beholds the One who is Light without any veil between them, and the beholding completes what the Spirit began. The shining is the abiding, carried into forever. Take the branch off the vine and it does not shine. It withers. The glow is the indwelling, made permanent and visible.

And here is the sentence the whole of this has been walking toward, the sentence that does not belong only at the end of things but is already true, right now, at the vine, in poverty of spirit, on the ordinary road between the kitchen and the door:

"Now this is eternal life — that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent."

— John 17:3 (NET)

Eternal life is not what begins after death. It is the knowing that begins right now. The glorified body does not receive a different kind of life from the life already given at the vine. It receives the same knowing, made permanent and visible — the same knowing the branch already has, finally unhindered. The shining body is the abiding disciple with the veil lifted. The tree and the fruit are continuous. The throne at the end is this road, grown to its fullness.

The kitchen is the training ground for the throne. The forgiveness at the table is the governance the council refused. The poverty of spirit that opens the hand every morning is the posture of the being who will one day sit with the Son on His seat. And we are only just beginning — which is not a discouragement. It is the gentlest true thing I know to say. You do not have to have arrived. You do not have to love perfectly yet, or understand all of it, or be anything other than a first-day student with your hands open and your face turned toward the Teacher. The One teaching is not in a hurry. He is not going to stop. And He chose you — not despite the dust, but knowing it, for reasons that originate entirely in what He is and not at all in what you are.

Stay close. Let it flow. The vine is alive and you are the branch and that is enough — more than enough — for everything that follows.