49. It is therefore for the promotion of us,
the assumed humanity, that God shall be all in all. He Who was
found in the form of a servant, though He was in the form of God, is
now again to be confessed in the glory of God the Father: that
is, without doubt He dwells in the form of God, in Whose glory He is to
be confessed. All is therefore a dispensation only, and not a
change of His nature; for He abides still in Him, in Whom He ever
was. But there intervenes a new nature, which began in Him with
His human birth, and so all that He obtains is on behalf of that nature
which before was not God, since after the Mystery of the Dispensation
God is all in all. It is, therefore, we who are the gainers, we
who are promoted, for we shall be conformed to the glory of the body of
God. Further the Only-begotten God, despite His human birth, is
nothing less than God, Who is all in all. That subjection of the
body, by which all that is fleshly in Him, is swallowed up into the
spiritual nature, will make Him to be God and all in all, since He is
Man also as well as God; and His humanity which advances towards this
goal is ours also. We shall be promoted to a glory conformable to
that of Him Who became Man for us, being renewed unto the knowledge of
God, and created again in the image of the Creator, as the Apostle
says, Having put off the old man with his doings, and put on the new
man, which is being renewed unto the knowledge of God, after the image
of Him that created him Col. iii. 9, 10.. Thus is
man made the perfect image of God. For, being conformed to the
glory of the body of God, he is exalted to the image of the Creator,
after the pattern assigned to the first man. Leaving sin and the
old man behind, he is made a new man unto the knowledge of God, and
arrives at the perfection of his constitution, since through the
knowledge of his God he becomes the perfect image of God. Through
godliness he is promoted to immortality, through immortality he shall
live for ever as the image of his Creator.