II.  The unveiling of the sons of God.

That unveiling is in the text represented as coming along with the glory which shall be revealed to usward, and as being contemporaneous with the deliverance of the creation itself from the bondage of corruption, and its passing into the liberty of the glory of the children of God.  It coincides with the vanishing of the pain in which the whole creation now groans and travails, and with the adoption—­that is, the redemption of our body.  Then hope will be seen and will pass into still fruition.  All this points to the time when Jesus Christ is revealed, and His servants are revealed with Him in glory.  That revelation brings with it of necessity the manifestation of the sons of God for what they are—­the making visible in the life of what God sees them to be.

That revelation of the sons of God is the result of the entire dominion and transforming supremacy of the Spirit of God in them.  In the whole sweep of their consciousness there will in that day be nothing done from other motives; there will be no sidelights flashing in and disturbing the perfect illumination from the candle of the Lord set on high in their being; there will be no contradictions in the life.  It will be one and simple, and therefore perfectly intelligible.  Such is the destined issue of the most imperfect Christian life.  The Christian man who has in his experience to-day the faintest and most interrupted operation of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has therein a pledge of immortality, because nothing short of an endless life of progressive and growing purity will be adequate to receive and exemplify the power which can never terminate until it is made like Him and perfectly seeing Him as He is.

But that unveiling further guarantees the possession of fully adequate means of expression.  The limitations and imperfections of our present bodily life will all drop away in putting on ’the body of glory’ which shall be ours.  The new tongue will perfectly utter the new knowledge and rapture of the new life; new hands will perfectly realise our ideals; and on every forehead will be stamped Christ’s new name.

That unveiling will be further realised by a divine act indicating the characters of the sons of God by their position.  Earth’s judgments will be reversed by that divine voice, and the great promise, which through weary ages has shone as a far-off star,—­’I will set him on high because he hath known my name’—­will then be known for the sun near at hand.  Many names loudly blown through the world’s trumpet will fall silent then.  Many stars will be quenched, but ’they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament.’