Glorification vs. development (also the deep subject of bodies)

This is not a comment on effort, the efficacy of it, but is a comment on something that needs to be recognized: the ultimate goal of glorification, or heavenly perfection, requires an act of God. Adam in the Garden would have required an act of God to be glorified with eternal life (if he hadn't disobeyed and broken God's command). He couldn't have developed into it without ultimately an act of God effecting the change. The same with us. Glorification is eschatological and requires an overt act of God. Just as nature can't glorify itself by developing (or evolution or whateveer) but needs God to create a new heaven and new earth. An act by God of new creation. Man needs an act of God to become a new creation as well.

Sort of in a similar way it was an act of God that gave you the current body you inhabit at your physical birth. And also in a similar way it is an act of God when you are regenerated. Glorification and all that it encompasses, glorified body, eternal life, heaven, etc. requires an act of God to be effected for you.

So what part does effort play while still in the flesh? The Bible is extremely clear that there are degrees of both level of being and reward in the afterlife. Though the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than the greatest here in this world, still there is degree of being in Heaven. There is also the command to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. I.e. to be what you are given to know and understand. To also increase what you've been given and not bury your talents (silver) in the ground. I put it this way a long time ago: when you die your essence is a seed you sow; the better the seed you sow the better your spiritual body.

Of course real development gets mysterious the more real it gets. God does it, and you make efforts, and there's no boasting still on your part, because it is not self-will effort, but God's will. Your effort and God working in you merge. And you become a real individual with real freedom.

The main point of this post is to highlight the fact that we can't develop into glorification. Glorification requires a specific act of God. It's like the end of the world, God saying: the time has come, the end of the Age is now, and...blam. An act of God. So, while we do develop as we are able we know that the goal isn't to develop into glorification but just to develop and wait on the Lord for effecting eschatological glorification in us, at the appointed time, which only God knows, and making us truly new beings capable of having eternal life in both heaven and earth.

Separating these two things (God's eschatological act of glorifying us and our own effort in developing) keeps us on the straight and narrow in foundational ways.

There is a deep subject here about being given bodies by God. We were given a body of flesh by God. We'll be given an eternal glorified body when we die (I speak of those no longer in rebellion). A body is a cosmos, like a galaxy even. God creates them. Mansions. Paul the apostle says some bodies are like planets, some like stars... He is giving some insight on this subject, but leaving it in mystery intentionally. He was given a view of the third heaven but said he couldn't speak of what he learned there...