CHANGE THROUGH THE WORD

Tuesday 18 March

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 by the Spirit of the Lord. 2 Corinthians 3:18 (NKJV)

But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does. James 1:25 (NKJV)

Have you ever heard the statement, change is the only constant? Apart from Christ of course. Change is always happening around us as the pace of life through science and technology is getting faster and faster. We even have quantum computers that can download and upload information at previously unheard of rates of speed via the internet.

The Bible even says in the last days many will run to and fro and knowledge shall increase. In other words, travel will be more prevalent. What used to take days with a horse and cart takes hours in a car and what took weeks by sea can take a day by aeroplane.

All these advancements have brought change to the quality of life in our modern era. With all these outward changes affecting society, there is still only one material that can effect change from the inside out and that is the Word of God.

Let’s break down these two verses and excavate or cut straight into what is there.

‘But we all with unveiled face’ speaks of the removal of the veil of the law. Remember Moses came down with the stone tablets with the 10 commandments inscribed on them. From that time whenever Moses was speaking with the people, he put the veil on and when He went into the tabernacle to speak with God his face was unveiled.

Why? Because Moses had Christ while the people who had rejected Christ at Mt Sinai only had the law of Moses. All of us who are in Christ are the ones with open or unveiled faces because the veil has been taken away by Christ. We even see the veil in the Temple after Jesus crucifixion was torn from top to bottom signifying that there was no more veil between God and His people.

Next we are to look into the mirror of the Word. Now I don’t know about you, but when I look into the mirror in my bathroom I see myself. It is the same with the Word of God. When we look and keep on looking in the Word of God like a mirror, we see ourselves. This time however we are not seeing physical features but the spiritual image of who we have become in Christ.

Some people have a religious idea that they see God in the revelation of the scriptures. If this is true then why did Apostle Paul give the analogy of a mirror and Apostle James talk about ‘looking into the perfect law of liberty’?

There are two main roles that the Holy Spirit plays in the life of the believer. He reveals Christ to you and He reveals you to you. The more you know Him, the more you know yourself. We learn about Christ but we see ourselves. Through contemplation of our new identity as a new creation in Christ we are ‘changed’. The Greek word is metamorphoo which means a metamorphosis. Like a caterpillar to a butterfly, from glory to glory.

Catch this. While you are looking at the perfect image of what you look like in Christ, your spirit and soul are being brought into alignment with what you saw in the Word which is causing internal transformative change.

1 John 3:2 says ‘Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.’

This is powerful! When we finally see Jesus Christ in all his glory we will fully realise that we are exactly like Him. So even though we have been looking at our new creation selves, the truth is that we were always recreated after His image!

That’s why we should always tell the truth about who we are and who He has made us.

‘Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.’ Colossians 3:9-10

Jesus who lives in the believer through His Spirit causes us to go from glory to glory, strength to strength, faith to faith and grace to grace. We achieve this by seeing ourselves in the Word and then acting according to the image of what we see. Keep looking and keep doing!

APPLICATION

Read and study our two text scriptures and practice looking at yourself in the Word, knowing that you are now in the image of Christ.