(Connecting Advent and Holiness)
The Eastern Church saw spiritual formation leading to deification. This does not mean that we become gods, but it does mean that we become like the Divine. Sanctification is the action and process of deification; it is our being shaped in the divine likeness. This must be our intentional pursuit. This is not something we fall into, but something we run after (Hebrews 12:14). Commit yourself to renew your intentional pursuit of the divine likeness. Everyone who has this hope of His second advent “purifies himself, just as he is pure” (1 John 3:2-3).
“How shall the ministry of the Spirit fail to be even more with glory?…Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord, is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.” (II Corinthians 3:8, 17-18).
