It is the reward that awaited Jesus when He finished His work on earth and returned to His Father’s Presence and glory. And it is the reward held out to all who take seriously the news that their lives have been hidden with Christ in God, that, believing in God, He will reward them with Himself, and thus cause them to increase, with unspeakable joy, in that great salvation which He is.

A Christian Guidebook: What Does It Mean to Be Saved? (6)

But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Hebrews 11.6

And it will be said in that day:
“Behold, this is our God;
We have waited for Him, and He will save us.
This is the LORD;
We have waited for Him;
We will be glad and rejoice in His salvation.” Isaiah 25.9

He is
For all who believe in Jesus, the apostle Paul reports that their lives have been hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3.3). It is easy to miss the incomparable and incomprehensible scope, majesty, and prospect of Paul’s words.

Our lives have been hidden with Christ in God. We have considered the greatness of Jesus, His sovereign splendor and glory, His exalted majesty and strength, His infinite and absolute beauty, goodness, and righteousness. The more we consider Jesus, the more immense and wonderful and mysterious He becomes, and the more our minds and hearts long to grow into His image.

We have been seated with Jesus in the heavenly places in God (Eph. 2.6). God the Father and God the Spirit and God the Son, the eternal triune God of heaven and earth, Maker and Sustainer of all things, infinitely powerful and wise and good, thrice-holy, in Whom the vast, immeasurable cosmos and everything in it are contained: Our lives have been hidden in Him.

Do you think there’s room to grow here?

A spiritual corollary to Parkinson’s law—which states that work expands to fill the amount of time available for it—might be, “Salvation expands, according to faith, to fill the one who possesses it.” The vessel within which your salvation resides is God. Jesus has hidden your life in God, in the safety, strength, and spiritual soil of His eternal being and glory.

So grow where you’re planted.

God is our salvation, and as we wait on Him, rejoicing and believing and working out our salvation in fear and trembling, we will grow in God and into God increasingly. The Orthodox branch of Christianity uses the term deification to describe this process—not that we become God, but that, as we increase in the salvation which God is, we become more like Him in every way. We see the world as He does. We engage with Him in bringing His Kingdom to earth as it is in heaven.

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