Some words from Geerhardus Vos

From the Pauline Eschatology:

When desiring to construct from Paul's statements an organic bond between the entire Christian life here upon earth and the resurrection at the end, we feel perhaps that what has been said above renders us in a degree unsatisfied. The leap we had to make from Jesus' resurrection to the believer's leaves, as it were, the intermediate spaces unfilled, and thus threatens to destroy the true organic coherence.

What we desire is to be able to show, that the believer's whole ethico-religious existence, the sum-total of his Christian experience and progress, all that is distinctive of his life and conduct demands being viewed as a preparation for the crowning grace of the resurrection. Only by showing this can the Apostle's teaching be fully cleared of the charge of incoherency between his religion and his eschatology.

The passages in which the entrance upon the Christian state is represented as a being raised with Christ come here under consideration. As shown before, they are semi-eschatological in import; they take for granted that in principle the believer has been translated into the higher world of the new aeon. Still, for this very reason they establish a real, a vital relationship between what is enjoyed already, and what will be received at the end, for it is this characteristic of the principle to lead on unto the final fulfillment.

Thus, according to Romans 6:5, the likeness ("the image made like") of the Saviour's resurrection is to be reproduced in the Christian. Even now believers are to reckon themselves alive unto God in Christ Jesus, the Lord (v. 11). Those who have the vision of the glorified Christ are through it "transformed into the same image from glory to glory" (2 Cor. 3:18).

Whatever may be the exact meaning of these mysterious words it is at any rate plain, that a transforming influence proceeds from Christ, such an influence as He could bring to bear upon us only in the capacity of the glorified, i.e., the risen Christ, and which has for its goal the acquisition of the same glory-image on the part of believers. (pp. 156-157)