Transformed by Beholding

But we all, with unveiled face reflecting as a mirror (A.V. beholding as in a glass) the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit (A.V. even as by the Spirit of the Lord).—2 Corinthians 3:18.

It is certain that there is nothing but character that we can carry out of life with us, and that our prospect of good in any future life will undoubtedly vary with the resemblance of our character to that of Jesus Christ, which is to rule the whole future. We all admit that; but almost every one of us offers to himself some apology for not being like Christ, and has scarcely any clear reality of aim of becoming like Him. Why, we say to ourselves, or we say in our practice, it is really impossible in a world such as ours to become perfectly holy. One or two men in a century may have become great saints; given a certain natural disposition, and given exceptionally favouring circumstances, men may become saintly; but surely the ordinary run of men, men such as we know ourselves to be, with secular disposition and with many strong, vigorous passions—surely we can really not be expected to become like Christ, or, if it is expected of us, we know that it is impossible. On the contrary, St. Paul says, “We all.” Every Christian has that for a destiny—to be changed into the image of his Lord. And he not only says so, but in this one verse he reveals to us the mode of becoming like Christ, and a mode, as we shall find, so simple and so infallible in its working that a man cannot understand it without renewing his hope that even he may one day become like Christ.

In order to understand this simplest mode of sanctification let us look at an incident in the Book of Exodus (Exodus 34:29-35). St. Paul had been reading how, when Moses came down from the mount, where he had been speaking with God, his face shone so as to dazzle and alarm those who were near him. They at once recognized that that was the glory of God reflected from him; and just as it is almost as difficult for us to look at the sun reflected from a mirror as to look directly at the sun, so these men felt it almost as difficult to look straight at the face of Moses as to look straight at the face of God. But Moses was a wise man, and he showed his wisdom in this instance as well as elsewhere. He knew that this glory was only on the skin of his face, and that of course it would pass away. It was a superficial shining. And accordingly he put a veil over his face, that the children of Israel might not see it dying out from minute to minute and from hour to hour; for he knew these Israelites thoroughly, and he knew that when they saw the glory dying out they would say, “God has forsaken Moses. We need not attend to him any more. His authority is gone and the glory of God’s presence has passed from him.” So Moses wore the veil that they might not see the glory dying out. But whenever he was called back to the presence of God he took off the veil and received a new access of glory on his face, and thus went “from glory to glory.”

That, says St. Paul, is precisely the process through which we Christian men become like Christ. We go back to the presence of Christ with unveiled face; and as often as we stand in His presence, as often as we deal in our spirit with the living Christ, so often do we take on a little of His glory. The glory of Christ is His character; and as often as we stand before Christ, and think of Him, and realize what He was, our heart goes out and reflects some of His character. And that reflection, that glory, is not any longer merely on the skin of the face; as St. Paul wishes us to recognize, it is a spiritual glory, it is wrought by the Spirit of Christ upon our spirit, and it is we ourselves that are changed from glory to glory into the very image of the Lord.

There are different ways of looking at Jesus, degrees in looking. Our experiences with Jesus affect the eyes of the heart. When John as an old man was writing that first epistle, he seems to recall his experience in looking that first day. He says, “that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld.” From seeing with the eyes he has gone to earnest, thoughtful gazing, caught with the vision of what he saw. That was John’s own experience. It is everybody’s experience that gets a look at Jesus. When the first looking sees something that catches fire within, then does the inner fire affect the eye, and more is seen. Looking at Jesus changes us. Paul’s famous words in the second Corinthian letter have a wondrous tingle of gladness in them. “We all, with open face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are changed from glory to glory.” The change comes through our looking. The changing power comes in through the eyes. It is the glory of the Lord that is seen. The glorious Jesus looking in through our looking eyes changes us. It is gradual. It is ever more, and yet more, till by and by His own image comes out fully in our faces.

That sentence of Paul’s had also this meaning. “We all with open face reflecting as in a mirror the glory of the Lord are changed.” We stand between Him and those who do not know Him. We are the mirror catching the rays of His face and sending them down to those around. And not only do those around see the light—His light—in us, but we are being changed all the while. For others’ sake as well as our own the mirror should be kept clean, and well polished so that the reflection will be distinct and true.1 [Note: S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Service, 17.]

I once had a very impressive and a very memorable drive with the late Dr. Parker. Part of the journey lay through a somewhat narrow defile, and as twilight was falling we moved through the gathering gloom, and here and there the encompassing hills were broken and the valley was illumined, and we passed through areas of sunlit brightness. But at length the straitened defile ended, and we emerged before a western sky of amazing breadth, and of unspeakable grandeur and glory, and I remember that, as we issued from the pass and came face to face with the glory, Dr. Parker raised his hand in great wonder and just said, “Light, Light.” I cannot tell you why or how it is, but that little incident has during the last two weeks returned again and again to my mind as I have been meditating upon the words in this text. It seems to have offered itself again and again as a symbolism to express the journeyings of the Apostle’s mind, for in the early part of this letter, when the Apostle’s thought moves through a somewhat narrow defile, needfully touching upon gloomy themes, broken here and there by radiant patches, and at last emerging face to face with ineffable light and splendour, it is just at the point of emergence that we catch the Apostle in my text. The gloom is behind, the grandeur is before. The Apostle is held in awed amazement. He has come out of the narrow defile, and “we all, with unveiled faces reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory.”2 [Note: J. H. Jowett, in The British Weekly, March 2, 1911.]

I

The Beholding

“We all, with open face beholding as in a glass.” In the Revised Version of this verse there are four changes, three of which are clear gains: “unveiled” instead of “open,” “mirror” instead of “glass,” and “transformed” instead of “changed.” But “reflecting” for “beholding” is of doubtful advantage; Chrysostom, followed by Theodoret, expounds the word as meaning “reflect like a mirror.” But it is not found in this sense in any independent passage. This meaning was suggested to Chrysostom probably only by this verse. The verb in question is never predicated of the reflecting mirror; but always in the active voice of him who causes the reflection, and in the middle voice of him who sees reflected in a mirror either himself or some object beneficial (or hurtful) to himself. Of these two meanings of the middle voice, the latter is in the passage before us suggested at once by the accusative, “the glory” governed by the verb. And that this is the sense designed by the Apostle is made clear by the context. For, if the unveiled ones are already reflecting the glory of Christ, it is needless and meaningless to say, as the Revisers make St. Paul say, that they “are being transformed into the same image”: for the change would be already effected, especially as the word “image” suggests outward form, not inward essence. The other rendering, now pushed into the margin, states appropriately the means of the change, viz. contemplation of the reflected glory; and thus supplies the link connecting the unveiled face with the progressive transformation into the same image. It also keeps up the contrast, suggested by “we all,” of the unveiled Christians and the veiled Jews; while the word “transformed” reminds us of Moses returning unveiled into the presence of God, and thus rekindling his faded brightness.

The analogy is taken from the effect of a mirror—not of glass as ours are, but of burnished metal. The effect described is that of sunshine thrown back from polished metal. You may stand before a mere painting of light and colours, but there is no transmission of the light to you. On the other hand, stand before a mirror whence the sun is reflected, and you too are bathed in light and dazzled with the glory.

1. We all behold. Notice the emphasis on the universality of this prerogative: “We all.” This vision does not belong to any select handful: the spiritual aristocracy of God’s Church is not the distinction of the lawgiver, the priest, or the prophet; it does not depend upon special powers or gifts, which in the nature of things can belong only to a few. There is none of us so weak, so low, so ignorant, so compassed about with sin, but that upon our happy faces that light may rest, and into our darkened hearts that sunshine may steal.

In that Old Dispensation, the light that broke through clouds was but that of the rising morning. It touched the mountain tops of the loftiest spirits—a Moses, a David, an Elijah caught by the early gleams, while all the valleys slept in the pale shadow, and the mist clung in white folds to the plains. But noon has come, and, from its steadfast throne in the very zenith, the sun which never sets pours down its rays into the deep recesses of the narrowest gorge, and every little daisy and hidden flower catches its brightness, and “there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.” We have no privileged class or caste now; no fences to keep out the mob from the place of vision, while lawgiver and priest gaze upon God. Christ reveals Himself to all His servants in the measure of their desire after Him. Whatsoever special gifts may belong to a few in His Church, the greatest gift belongs to all. The servants and the handmaidens have the Spirit, the children prophesy, the youths see visions, the old men dream dreams. “The mob,” “the masses,” “the plebs,” or whatever other contemptuous name the heathen aristocratic spirit has for the bulk of men, makes good its standing within the Church as possessor of Christ’s chiefest gifts. Redeemed by Him, it can behold His face and be glorified into His likeness. Not as Judaism with its ignorant mass, and its enlightened and inspired few; we all behold the glory of the Lord.

2. We behold with unveiled face. The words refer to the immediate and clear view which we obtain in the New Testament of the character and work of Christ. Under the Jewish dispensation Christ was exhibited, but it was as it were through a veil. In the infancy of the Church it was instructed by the Law as a schoolmaster, after the manner in which the teacher is accustomed to instruct his younger pupils, by means of vivid representations, by signs and by symbols. But, just because the teaching was by means of shadows, there was a mystery attached to it. The people could not worship except through a priesthood and sacrifice. From their holy temple the light of day was excluded, and the only light was that supplied by the seven-branched golden candlestick. Into the holiest of all, representing the Divine presence, the high priest alone entered, and this only once a year, and not without blood. In the service of the synagogue, the worshippers sat with their heads veiled in deepest reverence when the Law was read. But now, when Christ came, the mystery which had been hid for ages was revealed. At the hour when Jesus said, “It is finished,” the veil, which hid the holiest of all and the innermost secrets of the covenant, was rent in twain from top to bottom.

(1) Among the veils that need to be removed is that of ignorance. We do not mean the ignorance of the deeper things of God. Do you remember how the Apostle speaks of the need of the eyes of our understanding being enlightened, that we may know? There is a veil of ignorance that has to be lifted.

(2) There is also a veil of prejudice. We remember Nathanael. “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” Philip’s answer to him was the only wise answer, “Come and see!” To the man who looks through yellow glasses, all the world is yellow. Nothing can be done until they are laid aside. If we want God’s blessing, there must be the removal of the veil.

(3) And there is the veil of heart-sin. The condition of the vision of God is heart purification. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” How often we have seen some gross form of sin, some guilty passion, completely shut out from the life all care for spiritual things. We recognize it then; but it is equally true in the secret recess of the soul. When the sin is hidden there, there also must the cleansing be. And mark that the purification of the heart is by faith, not by effort. “Purifying their hearts by faith.” There is an immediate work of God that can remove the veil.

(4) One thing more—the thickest, heaviest veil of all—has yet to be mentioned. It is the veil of unbelief. “Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?”—the very thing you want to see. We must have faith for it, the vision of faith. We must venture to contradict our past experience, and live for a deeper and a better experience, than we have ever had, if our life is to be transformed.

Throw a napkin over a mirror, and it reflects nothing. Perfect beauty may stand before it, but the mirror gives no sign. And this is why in a dispensation like ours, the Christian dispensation, with everything contrived to reflect Christ, to exhibit Christ, the whole thing set agoing for this purpose of exhibiting Christ, we so little see Him. How is it that two men can sit at a Communion table together, and the one be lifted to the seventh heaven and see the King in His beauty, while the other only envies his neighbour his vision? Why is it that in the same household two persons will pass through identically the same domestic circumstances, the same events, from year to year, and the one see Christ everywhere, while the other grows sullen, sour, indifferent? Why is it? Because the one wears a veil that prevents him from seeing Christ; the other lives with unveiled face. How was it that the Psalmist, in the changes of the seasons even, in the mountain, in the sea, in everything that he had to do, found God? How was it that he knew that even though he made his bed in hell he would find God? Because he had an unveiled face; he was prepared to find God. How is it that many of us can come into church and be much more taken up with the presence of some friend than with the presence of Christ? The same reason still: we wear a veil; we do not come with unveiled face prepared to see Him.1 [Note: M. Dods, How to Become Like Christ, 23.]

3. We behold in a mirror. What is the mirror? Here are two mirrors.

(1) One is His Word, the Gospel-story which tells—

How He walked here, the shadow of Him Love,

The speech of Him soft Music, and His step

A Benediction.

This is the precious service which the Evangelists rendered to succeeding ages: they preserved the image of Jesus, painting His sacred form in imperishable colours as He appeared to the men who dwelt beside Him and saw His blessed face and heard His gracious voice. There are no Scriptures comparable to the holy Gospels. They are the shrine of the Incarnate Son of God, and we should be ever searching them, ever returning to them with fresh wonder and expectation, ever breathing their atmosphere and catching their spirit. They are the mirror of the Saviour’s face. The other Scriptures speak of Him; these reflect Him.

(2) And there is another mirror which reflects Him no less truly and, in a manner, more effectively, forasmuch as it is constantly before our eyes and we cannot help looking into it—the mirror of redeemed lives that wear His likeness and have been fashioned by the Holy Spirit after His image.

We have heard of a little child who had been thinking about the unseen Christ to whom she prayed. She was trying to picture to herself what He might be like. By and by she came to her mother with the question, “Is Jesus like anybody I know?” The question was not an unreasonable one, and it was one to which the child should have received the answer “Yes.” Every true disciple of Christ ought to be an answer, in some sense at least, to that child’s inquiry.1 [Note: G. B. F. Hallock.]

The Rev. Robert Paterson, who knew Mr. Morison as intimately as most of his friends, often observed a wonderful light in his face when he spoke of Jesus and His saving power. He says: “Speaking of light reminds me that the light, which never was on sea or land, in Morison’s face at times, was to me the grandest revelation of the invisible glory I have ever had. I have seen it more or less in the faces of all spiritually minded men and women, especially the intellectually great as well, but never in any face (except at the dying bed of a young man) at all approaching the appearance of it in that of Morison.”2 [Note: W. Adamson, Life of Principal James Morison.]

Behind the message, there was the man, so cleansed from self and sin, so enamoured of Christ. “He was the meekest, calmest, and holiest believer that ever I saw,” one who knew him wrote to his mother. From Morar, a Highland laird, who was Roman Catholic in faith, Aeneas Ronald Macdonell, bore the same testimony in an ingenious accent of his own. “I only once, and that but for a very short time, enjoyed the company of your dear departed Robert, yet I can honestly declare that I never was so much prepossessed in favour of any one. And when I heard his fervent eloquence in the pulpit, the candour and sincerity of his discourses so plainly spoke of the piety of his heart that I could not help saying to myself, ‘That man is booked for Heaven!’ ” “Assuredly”—it is Dr. Candlish’s tribute—“he had more of the mind of his Master than almost any one I ever knew, and realized to me more of the likeness of the beloved disciple.”

Dr. MacDonald of Leith bears similar testimony. “Mr. M‘Cheyne’s holiness,” he says, “was noticeable even before he spoke a word; his appearance spoke for him. There was a minister in the north of Scotland with whom he spent a night. He was so marvellously struck by this about him that, when Mr. M‘Cheyne left the room he burst into tears, and said, ‘O, that is the most Jesus-like man I ever saw.’ Robert M‘Cheyne would sometimes say but one word, or quote a text; but it was blessed. I never got even a note from him that I could burn. There was always something in it worth keeping; God seemed to bless all he wrote.”1 [Note: Alexander Smellie, Robert Murray M‘Cheyne, 221.]

4. Now in order to behold in a mirror we have to observe two simple conditions.

(1) We must stand squarely in front of it.—We know that if a man looks into a mirror obliquely, if a mirror is not set square with him he does not see himself, but what is at the opposite angle, something that is pleasant or something that is disagreeable to us; it matters not—he does not see himself. And unless we as mirrors set ourselves perfectly square with Christ, we do not reflect Him, but perhaps things that are in His sight monstrous. And, in point of fact, that is what happens with most of us, because it is here that we are chiefly tried. All persons brought up within the Christian Church pay some attention to Christ. We understand too well His excellence and we understand too well the advantages of being Christian men not to pay some attention to Christ. But that will not make us conform to His image. In order to be conformed to the image of Christ we must be wholly His.

The most important part of the training of the Twelve was one which was perhaps at the time little noticed, though it was producing splendid results—the silent and-constant influence of His character on them. It was this that made them the men they became. For this, more than all else, the generations of those who love Him look back to them with envy. We admire and adore at a distance the qualities of His character; but what must it have been to see them in the unity of life, and for years to feel their moulding pressure? God was about Him like the atmosphere He breathed, or the sunlight in which He walked.2 [Note: James Stalker.]

It is not worth while being religious unless we are altogether religious. It won’t do to be merely playing at religion, or having religion on us as a bit of veneer. It must saturate us. Some seek first the Kingdom of God, and second the Kingdom of God, and third the Kingdom of God. I don’t think a man makes anything of it if he seeks the second time. For then prayer-meetings are dull, and fellowship gatherings are uninteresting. But the moment a man begins to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, all things are right.1 [Note: Henry Drummond.]

(2) We must stand steadily and long.—What does a photographer say? “Quite still, please.” Some of us are half losing our souls because we are not taking time enough alone with God. “The secret of religion is religion in secret.” In this hurrying, restless age, there is no message, however simple it be, that needs to be reiterated more constantly and pressed more frequently upon every Christian conscience than this—we must, if we want to live a Christian life, be alone with God.

A missionary who had returned home after living many years in a heathen land said that what impressed him most when he came back to America was not the stately buildings, the mechanical improvements on every hand, or the handsome girls, but the beautiful old ladies. Heathen women grow ugly as they grow old. This he attributed not so much to hard work as to a vacant mind and unimproved heart. The reverse is often seen in our country. Not that certain charms which belong to youth can be retained with advancing years, but other and better ones replace them.2 [Note: G. B. F. Hallock.]

II

The Glory of the Lord

1. This is the object of the beholding. What is it? “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.” But we look in vain, in creation, for the glory of which we are in search. What is this glory? It is not the essential glory of God. We cannot see that. “No man can see my face and live.” It is the moral glory that we have to behold and reflect; and creation is not a sufficient guide to that glory. It does exhibit His glory; but there are mysteries all around us in nature which baffle us when we seek to read in them the character of God. We remember the words of the beloved Apostle: “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us; and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” It is in Christ that the glory of God is seen—in the face of Jesus Christ.

The meaning of the phrase, “the glory of the Lord,” is made plainer in the next paragraph of the Epistle, when the Apostle affirms that, while “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” is veiled from those who do not believe, Christ in the eternal brightness of His Person and work has dawned upon his own soul, and thereby given “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God.” This, then, is the all-blessed vision which is stamping upon him the image of itself and assimilating his whole character into its own likeness.

As the glory of bright light, when it falls on a prism, splinters into its component rays, so the glory of God revealed in Jesus Christ divides into its essential and wondrous qualities—mercy and truth, righteousness and peace—as it strikes the Cross of Christ; and there we learn how God can be just, and the Justifier of him that believeth in Jesus. It is in Christ. Yes, it is in His life, in His lowliness. Have you ever meditated upon Matthew 11:28—the one place in Scripture in which Christ speaks of His heart? “I am meek and lowly in heart.” Half the difficulties in the way of accepting the revelation of God to-day would disappear if men, like their Saviour, were lowly in heart. Remember there is only one way of being lowly. It is by the indwelling of the Lowly One. Ponder the lowliness and the loyalty. He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem until, as His disciples followed Him, they were afraid. Something about Him awed them. Yet they followed Him. They were drawn after Him by the irresistible force of love.1 [Note: E. W. Moore.]

The whole nature follows love. Whithersoever it goes, all the faculties troop after it. It is the magnet of human nature. Where the heart is, there are all the treasures of mind and will and moral nature. Let this love be planted in Christ—won and fixed by our ever deepening sense of truth and goodness and all moral beauty—and we begin to go over to Him upon it as upon a bridge. Using this love as it were some broad stream, the truth, the strength, the humility, the sympathy, the very righteousness of Christ float down into us and become our own.2 [Note: Theodore T. Munger.]

I beheld

From eye to eye thro’ all their order flash

momentary likeness of the King.1 [Note: Tennyson, Idylls of the King.]

2. Or we may say it is the glory of Christ in all the events of His life.

(1) St. Paul is contemplating the glory of the coming of Jesus. He marvels at the manner of His coming, for, mark you, there is a glory to be found in the possession of glory. There is a greater glory to be found in laying a glory by. You may lay aside a crown, and by the very surrender you may ascend a loftier throne. Queen Victoria was clothed in one glory when she wore her crown and the regalia of regal splendour at some brilliant function of State; she wore another glory, deeper, richer, when, laying aside the crown, she wore the weeds of common sorrow and went into a peasant’s cottage in the Highlands, carrying to the sick and to the broken the balm of human comfort and the consolations of Divine grace. There is a glory that comes from surrender of glory; there is a glory that exalteth.

(2) The Apostle contemplated the glory of the living of Jesus, the glorious manner of His life, and when the Apostle Paul looked at the manner of the life of Jesus, what was he more especially gazing at? With what was he concerned? If we look through the eyes of St. Paul at Jesus at work in His ministry among men, what do we see? What is there glorious to look upon? Well, there is the Master, not playing with trifles on the outskirts of experience, but gloriously ministering to earth’s sternest realities in the very centre of human need. What is He doing that Paul calls glorious? We see Him dealing with human guilt and overwhelming it by the energies and the grace of firmness. We see Him dealing with human sin and making weaklings invincible by the impartation of the strength of His own soul. We see Him dealing with human fears, driving them away, just as night birds are driven away by the coming of the dawn. We see Him dealing with human death, speaking to death as nobody else has ever addressed it, speaking to death as its Master; commanding it, calling upon it to loose its hold upon its victim, and to let its captive free. As we look through the eyes of the Apostle Paul we see Jesus dealing with guilt and sin and fear and sorrow and death—and Paul said, “Glory, the glory of the Lord.”

(3) Not merely the glory of the manner of His coming, and the glory and the manner of His doing and living, but the glory of His dying, the gloriousness of the manner of His death. To St. Paul the death of Jesus was not merely awful; it was altogether unique. He had seen Stephen die, and die gloriously, and he scarcely referred to it again. The Saviour’s death he could not get away from. It was never out of his sight, never out of his mind, for in that dark pit St. Paul found his sun rise. “Out of the strong came forth sweetness; out of the eater came forth meat.” Stephen’s death was a martyrdom, and a glorious martyrdom, too. Jesus’ death was more than a martyrdom, and therefore surpassing in glory.

(4) But even that contemplation would be very imperfect, if to the Apostle’s conception of Jesus Christ as glorious we did not add the Apostle’s conception of Jesus Christ as glorified. In the Apostle’s conception of Jesus Christ, Jesus not merely walked into death, He walked out again. The glorious Jesus emerged as the glorified Lord. As St. Paul says, “Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow.” And again, he speaks of “his mighty power which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come.”

It will not be questioned, by those who are at home in St. Paul’s thoughts, that “the Lord” means the exalted Saviour, and that the glory must be something which belongs to Him. Indeed, if we remember that in the First Epistle, chap. 2 Corinthians 2:8, He is characteristically described by the Apostle as “the Lord of glory,” we shall not feel it too much to say that the glory is everything that belongs to Him. There is not any aspect of the exalted Christ, there is not any representation of Him in the Gospels, there is not any function which He exercises, that does not come under this head. “In his temple everything saith, Glory!” There is a glory even in the mode of His existence: St. Paul’s conception of Him is dominated always by that appearance on the way to Damascus, when he saw the Christ through a light above the brightness of the sun. It is His glory that He shares the Father’s throne, that He is head of the Church, possessor and bestower of all the fulness of Divine grace, the coming Judge of the world, conqueror of every hostile power, intercessor for His own, and, in short, bearer of all the majesty which belongs to His kingly office. The essential thing in all this—essential to the understanding of the Apostle, and to the existence of the apostolic “gospel of the glory of Christ” (chap. 2 Corinthians 4:4)—is that the glory in question is the glory of a living Person. When St. Paul thinks of it, he does not look back, he looks up; he does not remember, he beholds in a glass; the glory of the Lord has no meaning for him apart from the present exaltation of the Risen Christ. “The Lord reigneth; he is apparelled with majesty”—that is the anthem of his praise.

Once, years ago in Normandy after a day of flooding rain, I beheld the clouds roll up and depart and the auspicious sky reappear. Once in crossing the Splügen I beheld that moving of the mists which gives back to sight a vanished world. Those veils of heaven and earth removed, beauty came to light. What will it be to see this same visible heaven itself removed and unimaginable beauty brought to light in glory!1 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti, The Face of the Deep.]

III

The Transformation

This is the effect of beholding the glory of the Lord: “We are transformed into the same image from glory to glory.” When any man, learned or unlearned, high or low, in sincerity and simplicity, turns his mind and heart to the glory of Jesus, he is transformed, he receives the impress of the glory. There is nothing unreasonable about it. In some respects it comes within the plane of common experience. All life that is simple and sincere is plastic. You can mould it. You can shape it. And all life that presents itself to the Lord Jesus as simple and sincere is plastic, and the glorified Jesus is impressive, and like a seal on wax He conveys His glory to the mind and heart of those submitted to Him. And we are to be not merely transfigured but transformed, a very much deeper word. It is not that the Lord Jesus just sheds a lovely light on us. It is not merely that when we contemplate the glory a brilliant glow falls upon us like sunlight upon the waste. The glorified Lord does not regild us; He refashions us. We change into the same image, and that word image means stuff of His stuff; quality of His quality; partakers of the Divine nature; new creations in Christ Jesus.

Once let us learn to know ourselves and we cry with Seneca, “I would I were not so much bettered as transformed.” Like Job, who had heard of God “with the hearing of the ear,” and then beheld Him with open eyes, we “abhor” ourselves and “repent in dust and ashes.” Nothing but a change that will remake us, and restore the beauty which has been defaced by sin, will satisfy a conscience which confesses with Isaiah, “Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.” It is not enough that character should be patched up into a pitiable semblance of what it ought to be; it is not enough that we should be, as it were, made up to act in the drama of life, carrying the while a corrupt soul within. The springs of evil are in our very natures, welling up from the depths of thought and will. The stream must be cleansed at the fountain, if it is to become pure; the heart smitten with disease must be healed, if the life is to be made whole. Transformation is the only reasonable—nay, the only possible—way to attain to the holiness which must be ours if we are ever to live and walk in fellowship with God. This thought is constantly coming to the surface in St. Paul’s Epistles. “Be ye transformed,” he says, “by the renewing of your mind.” “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, they are become new.” “In Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature.” The same idea of a complete transformation of character is present in the mind of St. John when, looking forward to the final perfecting of the saints in light, he says, “We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” With St. Paul there is a gradual change taking place in the experience of life; his verb is in the present tense, “We are being transformed.” With St. John the process has reached its climax in the open vision of Heaven.

In every eye that beholds the flame of the lamp there is a little lamp-flame mirrored and manifested. And just as what we see makes its image on the seeing organ of the body, so the Christ beheld is a Christ embodied in us; and we, gazing upon Him, are “changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit.”1 [Note: A. Maclaren, The God of the Amen, 94.]

It is a truism that we grow, slowly but surely, into the likeness of the people we admire and deliberately associate with. Even physical nearness seems to have the effect of making two people look alike, but those who are living in close spiritual fellowship cannot fail to grow in similarity of soul. And of course the stronger nature draws the weaker into ever closer touch with it. That is the reason why it is very important to be particular in one’s choice of friends. As Moberley says, we gain unspeakably from friendship with those who are “exceptionally and conspicuously beautiful.” One who lives continually in the sunshine of God’s presence cannot fail to reflect as a mirror the glory of the Lord. To choose Christ as one’s dearest Friend is to mould the whole life—not only consciously but unconsciously—into His image. The transformation is slow but sure; working, as every life does, from within outwards. No one can deliberately and consciously lean back on God for years, without being transformed by His Spirit. He pours love, joy and peace into a soul that is careful to keep the avenues of communication open. One who keeps in touch with God can go out into the world and inspire his fellows, for the very Life of God is pouring through him into them. No one can walk with God, eagerly and persistently, without helping others to see His face more clearly.

We do not always know it when we have

The privilege to be God’s messengers,

Nor who shall be His messengers to us.

Those who always see the King in His beauty of holiness cannot fail to gain some of His radiance, even as Moses came down with shining face from his long communion with God in the Mount.2 [Note: Dora Farncomb, The Vision of His Face, 47.]

1. We are transformed into the same image. Same as what? Possibly the same as we behold; but more probably the phrase, especially “image” in the singular, is employed to convey the thought of the blessed likeness of all who become perfectly like Him. As if he had said, “Various as we are in disposition and character, unlike in the histories of our lives, and all the influences that these have had upon us, differing in everything but the common relation to Jesus Christ, we are all growing like the same image, and we shall come to be perfectly like it, and yet each retain his own distinct individuality.” “We being many are one, for we are all partakers of one.” Perhaps, too, we may connect with this another idea which occurs more than once in St. Paul’s Epistles. In the Epistle to the Ephesians, for instance, he says that the Christian ministry is to continue, till a certain point of progress has been reached, which he describes as our all coming to “a perfect man.” The whole of us together make a perfect man: the whole make one image. That is to say, the Apostle’s idea perhaps is that it takes the aggregated perfectness of the whole Catholic Church, one throughout all ages, and containing a multitude that no man can number, to set forth worthily anything like a complete image of the fulness of Christ. No one man, even though he be raised to the highest pitch of perfection and his nature be widened out to perfect development, can be the full image of that definite sum of all beauty; but the whole of us taken together, with all the diversities of natural character retained and consecrated, being collectively His body which He vitalizes, may, on the whole, be not a quite inadequate representation of our perfect Lord.

Just as we set round a central light sparkling prisms, each of which catches the glow at its own angle, and flashes it back of its own colour, while the sovereign completeness of the perfect white radiance comes from the blending of all their separate rays, so they who stand round about the starry throne receive each the light in his own measure and manner, and give forth each a true and perfect, and altogether a complete, image of Him that enlightens them all, and is above them all.

“When I was a little boy,” says Pastor Chu, “I saw a funny little insect like a piece of stick. My mother told me this was a mingling (a kind of caterpillar), and that it never had young ones. When I asked my father how this could be, he told me that when it wanted a young one, it stood opposite a piece of stick and spoke to it saying, ‘You’re like me, you’re like me,’ until finally little buds appeared and shaped themselves to arms and legs, and by-and-by the living insect stood before it. Of course, we know that this is a fable, made up by some one who saw a chrysalis or a mantis, but I will use it as an illustration. Here are we in the world, and Satan comes and stands opposite to us. ‘You’re like me, you’re like me’ he says to us, until—oh the shame and sorrow of it—we do grow like him by listening to him, and evil tempers bud forth and evil words and deeds, till we are very children of the devil. But, thank God, that is not all; for One comes down and stands opposite to us and He says ‘Be like me, be like me,’ until, thanks be to God, the evil tempers will fall away and holy tempers take their place; and by looking at Him we do grow like Him, changed from glory to glory into the same image.”1 [Note: Chu and Lo, Two Chinese Pastors.]

Madest Thou man in Thine own image, Lord?

How then has man defaced that work of Thine,

Until on that which Thy hand made so fair,

Thou lookest vainly for the marks divine?

Selfish and wayward, we have turned from Thee,

Albeit for Thyself Thou madest us—

Have fixed our thoughts and hopes on things below,

And lost the likeness to our Maker thus.

Yet Thou hast loved us with a love so strong—

Thou hast desired us, though we left Thy side,

That—changed, and marred, and sin-stained, as we are—

Apart from us Thou art not satisfied.

And Thou hast brought us to Thy feet again:

O now, at last, fulfil in us Thy plan!

Undone, and helpless, at Thy feet we pray,

Remake us, by our perfect fellow-Man!2 [Note: Edith H. Divall, A Believer’s Rest, 74.]

2. The transformation is “from glory to glory.” It is progressive. Holiness that is meant for such changing of the redeemed into the likeness of their Redeemer must be progressive rather than instantaneous.

It is as the leaven silently and gradually leavens the whole lump that the continual sight of a Saviour affects the entire character. Sanctification is a gradual work: it is going on all through life: it is not done, at least ordinarily, by great leaps;—as it is insensibly that the character deteriorates in bad company; as it is by imperceptible degrees that the strength is diminished in a relaxing climate or increased in a bracing one; so it is by a process insensible but sure that always looking at our Saviour makes us grow like Him.

It is just the things which make the greatest change on us that work most imperceptibly. What a difference between the frail old man on the verge of the grave and the rosy little boy he used to be! And yet, though advancing hours made the difference, who could trace the change each hour made? And the influences which affect our character most are those which sink in, not those which come with a sudden shock.

The Associate Presbytery, in the middle of the eighteenth century, appointed the Rev. Ebenezer and Ralph Erskine, and James Fisher to draw up a commentary on the Westminster Shorter Catechism, the explanations being in the form of questions and answers. A few of these may be quoted:—

“Why are the saints said to be built up in holiness?—Because the work of sanctification, like a building, is gradually carried on towards perfection at death.

“How doth the Spirit make the reading and preaching of the word an effectual means of building up the saints in holiness?—By giving them in the glass of the word such clear and repeated discoveries of the glory of Christ, as thereby they are more and more transformed into the same image with Him.

“How doth He by means of these ordinances build them up in comfort?—By conveying with power unto their souls the great and precious promises which contain all the grounds of real and lasting comfort.

“Through what instrument is it that the Spirit makes these means effectual for building up the saints in holiness and comfort?—It is through faith.

“What instrumentality has faith, in the hands of the Spirit, for building up the saints in holiness and comfort?—It rests upon God’s faithful word for the promoting of both—‘The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me.’ ”1 [Note: D. C. A. Agnew.]

3. The transformation is not accomplished by beholding, but while we behold; it does not depend on the vividness with which we can imagine the past, but on the present power of Christ working in us. We are transformed “even as from (or by) the Lord the Spirit.” The result is such as befits the operation of such a power. We are changed into the image of Him from whom it proceeds.

Left to ourselves, we might look at Christ for ever, yet never come to resemble Him at all. And we might even sincerely admire His character as a matter of sentiment without being drawn to imitate it. If we want to find perhaps the most eloquent panegyric that ever was spoken by uninspired lips upon the moral loveliness of our Saviour’s character, we may find it in the writings of an avowed infidel, who utterly rejected Him. The sight of Christ draws all its efficacy to affect the character from the working of the Holy Ghost. He is the Sanctifier; the means of grace and holiness are nothing without Him. Where His presence was wanting, men have listened week by week to the faithful preaching of the Word; have read the Bible till every word of it was familiar; have seen, as far as the natural man can see, the glory of God made manifest in the Saviour; and the natural tear has sometimes started at the thought of Him who is fairer than the sons of men, and altogether lovely; but in a little time the impression wore away, and left the heart less likely to be impressed again. And it will be just so with us, unless we pray daily and earnestly for the presence in our hearts of the great Sanctifier, Enlightener, and Comforter.

Set even the life of Christ Himself in all its beauty before you as a monument of perfection erected in a distant past, and, while it may touch you with a moral suasion which is all its own, it will leave you still unlike it, battling with a weary sense of inability to do more than struggle to conform to what it was. But once realize that the “image” of Jesus is a personal life which may permeate your being with its present power, and the Spirit of Jesus will “quicken your mortal body,” that you also may “walk in newness of life.” John Smith, the Cambridge Platonist, has given memorable expression to this truth in these words: “God has provided the truth of Divine revelation. But besides this outward revelation, there is also an inward impression of it, which is in a more special manner attributed to God. God alone can so shine upon our glossy understandings as to beget in them a picture of Himself, and turn the soul like wax or clay to the seal of His own light and love. He that made our souls in His own image and likeness can easily find a way into them. The Word that God speaks, having found a way into the soul, imprints itself there as with the point of a diamond.” “God alone”; yes, God in His personal action upon our very selves, God in Christ dwelling “in the heart by faith,” God by His Spirit strengthening us “with might in the inner man.”

William Denny was not a heretic, but neither was he orthodox. He attached little importance to dogma, and was accustomed to judge all things by moral tests. The spirit of Christ, not His metaphysical relation to Deity, was what he valued. The spirit of self-sacrifice was what he saw in the Cross, Christ teaching us to bear others’ burdens. That spirit he believed to be Divine, and endeavoured to put in practice. Tested by the measure in which he made that spirit the law of his life, he was, I make bold to aver, one of the most Christlike men of this age.1 [Note: A. B. Bruce, The Life of William Denny, 478.]

Too long have I, methought, with tearful eye,

Pored o’er this tangled work of mine, and mused

Above each stitch awry, and thread confused;

Now will I think on what in years gone by

I heard of them that weave rare tapestry

At royal looms, and how they constant use

To work on the rough side, and still peruse

The picture pattern set above them high:

So will I set my copy high above,

And gaze, and gaze till on my spirit flows

Its gracious impress, till some line of love

Transferred upon my canvas, faintly flows;

Nor look too much on warp or woof, provide

He whom I work for sees their fairer side!2 [Note: Dora Greenwell.]

Transformed by Beholding

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