At the very center of the world’s redemption is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The intention of God is to call others into the “ambit” of his Son, or to call humans to be “in Christ.” When all is done, God will be all in all and at the center of it all will the Son on the throne.
A central theme here is assurance: those whom God calls will be conformed. (Now don’t get cute and ask about Arminianism, because Paul is not talking about exceptions but about God’s intent and the effectiveness of his calling.)

There is a chain of words here, and they gave rise to the idea of an ordo salutis: the order of how things happen in the redemptive process. I’m not so sure that is what is Paul’s mind — he might be mostly listing what does in fact happen. Wright emphasizes not making this too mechanical and discounting the reality of human response.
Still, it begins in God’s intent with the Son, it leads to God’s destined purposes actually calling people through the gospel’s proclamation, and that leads to justification, and that to glorification.
The goal of this is to become Eikons by being conformed to the perfect Eikon: Christ. This process is at work now, and it the purpose of an Eikon to glow with God’s presence in the here and now so that God may be glorified through a family that is redeemed.
One can quibble here if this is corporate process or individual process, but I suspect it is both — with an emphasis here on the big corporate. But, it is silly to make them alternatives.
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