Pulled Toward Glory

The Beatific Vision and the Future-Driven Shape of Sanctification (Part 4)

Sanctification is often spoken of as duty, discipline, or effort. While Scripture does call believers to strive, it consistently locates the energy for that striving not in fear or self-reliance, but in hope.

The New Testament does not motivate holiness by endlessly pressing Christians back upon themselves, but instead it pulls them forward, and the horizon toward which it pulls them is the promise of seeing God.

The beatific vision provides sanctification with its ultimate reference point, and without that reference, holiness easily collapses into moralism or spiritual self-improvement. With it, holiness becomes preparation as the Christian is being shaped not merely to behave better, but to behold God.

The Scriptural Logic of Transformation

John makes this connection when he writes that everyone who hopes to see Christ purifies himself (1 John 3:3). To be clear, he does not say that purification earns the vision; he says that the vision produces purification. In short, hope precedes obedience.

Paul reasons in the same way as he writes that believers are already being transformed by beholding the glory of the Lord in the gospel (2 Cor. 3:18). The Word sets Christ before us, and as we look to Him by faith, the Spirit reshapes us into His likeness. While this present transformation is real, it is incomplete; it is just the beginning of a process that will reach its fullness when faith gives way to sight.

The logic is consistent across the New Testament. What believers will one day see clearly, they are already learning to love now, and what they will one day behold without a veil, they are now beholding through ordained means.

As Geehardus Vos explains, sanctification is not the manufacture of holiness but the gradual alignment of the soul with the glory that is coming; it is glorification unfolding itself into our lives.

Thus, this connection becomes clearer when sanctification is viewed in light of glorification. Scripture does not present glorification as a reward given to the most successful Christians; rather, it is the promised completion of God’s saving work in all who belong to Christ. Paul states without qualification that those whom God calls, He also glorifies (Rom. 8:29)

This matters because holiness is required to see God as Hebrews states plainly (Heb. 12:14), but Scripture also insists that what God requires, He provides. The holiness necessary for the beatific vision is not a human achievement accumulated over time. Rather, it is God’s final act of grace, by which He conforms believers fully to the image of His Son. Sanctification moves toward this moment, but glorification accomplishes it.

When this order is grasped, the anxiety often attached to sanctification begins to loosen. The Christian strives not in order to qualify for glory, but because glory has already been promised.

The Future Pull of Glory

Again, Geerhardus Vos captures this dynamic by saying that the center of gravity of the Christian life lies not in the present but in the future. The believer is drawn forward by what God has promised; thus, Sanctification is not powered primarily by retrospection, by endlessly revisiting past failure, but by anticipation. The weight of coming glory pulls the believer onward, shaping desires, habits, and loves along the way.

Paul expresses this when he speaks of the eternal weight of glory that renders present suffering light by comparison (2 Cor. 4:17). He does not minimize pain, but instead, he re-situates it. Trials are endured not because they are manageable, but because they are temporary. The vision of God relativizes every hardship without trivializing any of them.

The point that the apostle (along with Peter) is making is that future-oriented sanctification produces resilience. The believer learns to live with patience, repentance, and hope because life is no longer confined to what can be seen now.

In light of this, scripture does not treat the human heart as a neutral engine that can be steered by rules alone; it assumes that we become like what we love. John Owen presses this point by arguing that the mind is inevitably shaped by the object of its contemplation. If the soul is fixed on lesser goods, it will be formed by them, but if it is fixed on the glory of Christ, it will be transformed accordingly.

The beatific vision, therefore, does not bypass desire; it sanctifies it. By setting before believers the promise of seeing God, Scripture trains their longings. The Christian life becomes a reordering of love, a slow detachment from lesser glories and a deepening attachment to the greatest good.

When sanctification is framed this way, its purpose becomes clear. God is preparing His people to see Him. Every act of repentance, every growth in love, every mortification of sin is part of this preparation. Not because sin somehow blinds God to us, but because sin blinds us to God.

The beatific vision thus rescues sanctification from both legalism and laxity. It guards against legalism by grounding holiness in promise rather than performance, and it guards against laxity by giving holiness a clear and compelling end. Believers pursue sanctification because they are being made ready for glory.

From Sanctification to Perseverance

This forward pull of the vision also explains why it strengthens perseverance. The Christian does not endure by sheer willpower; he endures by hope. The promise of seeing God supplies meaning when obedience is costly, and faith feels thin. The pilgrim keeps walking because the destination is certain and the destination is God Himself.

If the beatific vision shapes holiness by orienting the Christian toward future sight, it also reshapes the Lord’s Day. Weekly worship, rightly understood, is not merely instruction or inspiration. It is an anticipatory encounter with the glory that will one day be unveiled in full. We will cover this in part 5.

Harrison Perkins, “What Is Required to See God? The Beatific Vision and the Ordo Salutis,” Credo Magazine 14, no. 3 (2022).

Geerhardus Vos, Grace and Glory (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1994), 152.

Ibid.