Romans 8:30

“And those He predestined, He also called; those He called, He also justified; those He justified, He also glorified.”

Here we see the different phases of our salvation. We discussed yesterday how God predestined us, according to His foreknowledge, to be conformed to the likeness of His Son. And so He called us, knowing how we would respond. When we responded to Him in repentance, He justified us. This is the first step of the salvation process. The blood of Christ was applied to our lives and our sins were forgiven. We we made to stand before God in His favour, not His judgement. We were ‘just if I’d’ never sinned.
Now to us, all these events are in the past. Has God finished His work – have we been conformed to the likeness of Jesus? I know I haven’t. But God is still working on me. This ongoing work of sanctification – making holy, setting apart, ironing out the creases – will continue until we take our last breath in this body. Then we look forward to the day when we are released from this body of death (Rom. 7:24) and receive our new glorified body, and finally that work of conformation will be complete. The Bible refers to this as glorification.
The interesting thing here, is that Paul refers to us having been glorified – in the past tense. The only way this makes sense is to remember that God is outside time. Just as before the world was created, He saw and knew us, so too from where we are now, He sees what will happen in the future. Past, present and future are all the same to Him. We are safe in His hands – He has promised to take us home.