Haley Goranson Jacob - Conformed to the Image of His Son: Reconsidering Paul’s Theology of Glory in Romans

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T he letters of Paul are notoriously complex. However exciting and stimulating the subject matter, there always seems to be more going on than meets the eye of the casual reader, even of the Christian reader used to hearing sermons and other expositions of well-known texts. It is therefore always worthwhile investigating even the most familiar passages to be sure they have yielded up their secrets. This is what Haley Goranson Jacob has done in this remarkable work, and the results are striking. If she is rightand I am convinced that she isthen the standard assumptions about a central Pauline passage will need to be revised.

You can hardly get a more central Pauline passage than Romans 8, and it is a measure of the authors courage that she has dived into the heart of this astonishing chapter, full as it is of converging and interlocking themes, biblical allusions and echoes, powerful rhetoric, and complex literary structure. The rich arguments of Romans 18and, with them, some of the major themes in all of Paulcome to their astonishing climax here, and many generations of preachers and teachers have thrilled their hearers with Pauls triumphant conclusion: those whom God justified he also glorified (Rom 8:30).

But wait a minute, asks Dr. Jacob: What does glorified actually mean here? And what, in particular, does Paul mean in the previous verse when he says that God had always planned that believers would be conformed to the image of his son, so that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters? It turns out that almost all exegetes (including the present writer) have taken for granted that glorification is more or less a synonym for salvation, with most (though not including the present writer) seeing salvation itself in terms of going to heaven when we die, with the glory in question being the status, and perhaps the radiance, that believers will possess in that new location. (The past tense in glorified, in verse 30, is then normally read in terms of assurance: because God has promised it, it is as good as done.) Being conformed to the image of the son would then be a matter of sharing Jesus resurrection life, and/or his holiness, and/or the radiance of his divine glory.

But is that what Paul meant by glorification? And what else might conformed to the image of the son be getting at? There are several clues to the fresh answer, but perhaps the most important is found in Pauls echoing of Psalm 8, which in turn brings into play his sense of