Christ has put a deposit of His life in you, which gives you hope of a glory, yet to come. I'll say that again. God has put a measure of Christ in you, and that gives you hope, that this is a glory yet to come; no one sees it, because it's veiled. Remember how with Jesus, the glory was within Him, but it was veiled; yet they were on the Mount, it was revealed. It’s the same for us - the glory is hidden; but there is a day when it will be revealed; and our job is to walk with Him, and serve Him now, so we qualify for that day.
Ephesians 1:13-14 - “In Him you trusted, after you heard the word of truth; the gospel of salvation, whom having believed (here it is, here...) you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise...”.
That word ‘sealed’ means: ‘to put an ownership mark on you’; and the Holy Spirit is the guarantee, or it's called the ‘earnest’ of our inheritance - “...until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory”.
What does that mean? Well that word ‘guarantee’, or ‘earnest’, is the deposit you give someone when you're buying a house. If I'm going to buy your house, then we seal the deal by paying a deposit. That means, if you have the deposit, it's the guarantee that I will return with all the money, and it will all be completed. I will take ownership of the house fully, and what you will receive is the rest of the money. What he's saying is: the anointing, or presence, of the Spirit of God, that you have in you now, is the down-payment.
It's the down payment until God redeems your body - the rest of the glory comes at that time; he connects then, that coming glory, or that hope ahead of us, with the coming day of resurrection. You all have a ‘deposit’ of God. It's not a matter of how big it is, it's what you do with what you have, is what counts. The glory that is within us, reminds us of a greater glory, that we're called to take hold of.
Notice what Paul said: that it's ‘until’ - so we've got that measure... ‘until’. Paul then says: “...about therefore we preach, we warn every man…” - that means: confront them with the truth. “We teach every man with all wisdom”. Notice what he's doing? Preaching, proclaiming the truth, warning, or talking about people, to get them right in their lives; teaching every man, with all wisdom. Why? So we may present everyone as perfect in Jesus Christ.
So what he's saying then is: Paul was motivated by this prize, to persevere, in his calling to mature people. The hardest thing in pastoring is just to mature people. They forever want to stay childish, but the work of the ministry is to preach; to proclaim the word of God, believing God to honour it. It's to confront, or to warn people; to face them up with what's going on in their life; and it's to teach them, instruct them in how to walk and become mature in God; presenting every man perfect.
All believers in the coming kingdom will manifest different levels of glory. We saw Jesus manifested a full glory, but we will manifest different levels of glory. No matter where you are now, it doesn't matter what it looks like to everyone, or how important or whatever you are - only Jesus really knows what you're qualified for. No one can say! It's got nothing to do with anything external, it has to do with your journey.
Philippians 3:21 - “He will transform our lowly body, that it may be conformed to His glorious body”
In the coming resurrection, we will have a body like Jesus. He's going to transform our body.
1 Corinthians 15:47-49 - “Just as we've borne the image of the man of dust, we'll also bear the image of the heavenly Man”.
What he's saying is that yeah, when we look around, we can see that we're carrying the image of the fallen Adam. However, it's absolutely certain that one day, we will carry the image of God. We'll just be like in the image of Jesus Christ.
1 John 3:2 - “Beloved, we are children of God now, but it has not yet been revealed what we shall be”.
You don't know; but we do know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him. I've given you three scriptures that indicate very clearly: we will be like Him, in our resurrection body; and then it says: whoever has this hope in himself, purifies himself. In other words, knowing that there's a hope of being like Him, in resurrection, we are responsible to get our life right; to walk with Him, to allow our life to be purified, to become clean vessels, with no compromise.
In the resurrection all our abilities will be enhanced, so it's not just your body that changes. Everything about you changes; your mental abilities will be enhanced - no memory problems! Your ability to understand; your ability to think... They say only about 10% of our brain is currently used, probably as a consequence of the fall, which means 90% remains unused. I presume the Lord, in resurrection, since our body is transformed, the full capacity of our creativity and thinking will be released.