Image of Christ

But Christ does not receive his glorified humanity merely for himself but for the sake of the Church. In the language of Romans 8:29, the resurrection makes him the image to which believers are predestined to be conformed, so that he, the Son, might be "firstborn among many brothers." Specifically the exalted Christ is that image into which Christians are even now already being transformed (2 Cor. 3:18) and which they will one day bear bodily in their future resurrection at his return (1 Cor. 15:49).

 

Richard Gaffin, Resurrection and Redemption: How Eschatology and The Gospel Relate, Modern Reformation (Philadelphia, PA: Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, 1999), 24