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24. But the Apostle John says, "Beloved, now are we the sons
of God; and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know
that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see
Him as He is." Hence it appears, that the full likeness of God is
to take place in that image of God at that time when it shall receive
the full sight of God. And yet this may also possibly seem to be said
by the Apostle John of the immortality of the body. For we shall be
like to God in this too, but only to the Son, because He only in
the Trinity. took a body, in which He died and rose again, and
which He carried with Him to heaven above. For this, too, is
called an image of the Son of God, in which we shall have, as He
has, an immortal body, being conformed in this respect not to the
image of the Father or of the Holy Spirit, but only of the Son,
because of Him alone is it read and received by a sound faith, that
"the Word was made flesh." And for this reason the apostle says,
"Whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to
the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many
brethren." "The first-born" certainly ''from the dead," accord
ing to the same apostle; by which death His flesh was sown in
dishonor, and rose again in glory. According to this image of the
Son, to which we are conformed in the body by immortality, we also do
that of which the same apostle speaks, "As we have borne the image of
the earthy, so shall we also bear the image of the heavenly;" to
wit, that we who are mortal after Adam, may hold by a true faith,
and a sure and certain hope, that we shall be immortal after Christ.
For so can we now bear the same image, not yet in sight, but in
faith; not yet in fact, but in hope. For the apostle, when he said
this, was speaking of the resurrection of the body.
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