Imagine. With Peter, James and John, you’re on the mountain at the invitation of Jesus. Suddenly the appearance of His face is altered,1 and it shines like the sun.2 His clothes become “radiant, intensely white, as no one on earth could bleach them.”3 Moses and Elijah, long since dead, appear and speak with Jesus, and a bright cloud4 comes and overshadows all of you.5 Then from this cloud comes a voice, the Heavenly Father affirming His Son.6 Like the disciples, you are terrified and fall on your face.7 If ever a noun needed an adjective, the Transfiguration, as this historic event is called, might be it. “Breathtaking,” “mind-boggling,” or “magnificent,” perhaps?
It was a triumphant moment for Jesus—and therefore all mankind—for His human form was glorified and His Father’s love for Him proclaimed. Of that moment, Peter would later write, “We were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For when He received honor and glory from God the Father, such a declaration as this was made to Him by the Majestic Glory: ‘This is My beloved Son with whom I am well pleased’—and we ourselves heard this declaration made from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain.”8 Yet Jesus came down from the mountain where there awaited Him more challenges from His distractors to thwart, more truth for His followers to grasp, and great suffering to incur on our behalf.
The Bible teaches us “if anyone is in Christ, this person is a new creation,”9 and “together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory.”10 Then as we are new, so also are we changed, for as Paul writes, the gospel of Jesus Christ “is bearing fruit everywhere by changing lives, just as it changed your lives from the day you first heard and understood the truth about God’s wonderful grace.”11 Yet often amid our trials and sufferings in this world, we don’t feel new, we don’t see change, and inheritance in God’s glory seems unfathomable. In times like these, we must understand that, despite life’s challenges, our transformation indeed is true and its process continues as we look to the glory of Christ. For “we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”12 Then regardless of our circumstances, may we look to Him through prayer and the Word, steadily becoming more like Him with a glory that becomes more glorious. Breathtaking. Mind-boggling. Magnificent. And true.
We know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” —1 John 3:2.
Father, Your ways are the best ways. Grace us to see the face of Christ through the eyes of faith, that contemplating His glory, we would become ever more like Him. In His name we pray. Amen.
1 Luke 9:29 ESV
2 Matthew 17:2 ESV
3 Mk 9:3 ESV
4 Matthew 17:5 ESV
5 Luke 9:34 ESV
6 Matthew 17:5 ESV
7 Luke 9:34 ESV
8 2 Peter 1:16-18 NASB
9 2 Corinthians 5:17 NASB
10 Romans 8:17 NLT
11 Colossians 1:6 NLT
12 2 Corinthians 3:18
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Categories
The New Live-stream
Driving my son to his friend’s house—he was in high school at the time—I took the opportunity to share an observation with him: “Music can influence you to accept thoughts and worldviews that you would never entertain had they not been put to lyrics with a pleasing melody. You have to be careful about what you take in through music.” After silent pause Matthew replied, “You’re right.” (A rare and welcome confession from a teenager.) Whether from audio files or radio frequencies, music reaches our ears, each song purposefully planting its own message into our soul and ultimately influencing how we think, speak, and act.
In our March 22 post (The Artist at Work in Us), we observed that God is the actor in our transformation—in kindness and love He steadily changes us to the image of His Son. Yet we also have an active role in this divine work: we participate in the renewing of our minds. Paul urged believers in Rome, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind;”1 likewise to the Ephesians he wrote, “be made new in the attitude of your minds.”2 For our minds have a default “frequency”—the alluring “music” of our flesh. Paul warns us, “the mind set on the flesh is death . . . because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so.”3 But “the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace”4—this is the new “live-stream” accessible to all who are born of the Spirit5 and made new through faith in Christ Jesus.6 What we choose matters.
So Paul exhorts us: “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.”7 Our life is in Christ and our citizenship is in heaven,8 so we align our minds accordingly, setting them on the Spirit through the truth of the Word and the power of prayer. As we draw near to God relationally, “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”9 God renews our minds as we set them on Him.
Gird up your minds, be sober, set your hope fully upon the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 1:13 RSV
Father, send Your Spirit to dispel lies with truth, that we would reset our minds from our flesh to Your Spirit. Renew our minds as we set them on You. In Christ we pray. Amen.
1 Romans 12:2
2 Ephesians 4:23
3 Romans 8:6-7 NASB
4 Romans 8:6 NASB
5 John 3:6
6 2 Corinthians 5:17
7 Colossians 3:1-3
8 Philippians 3:20
9 Philippians 4:7
Categories
This Not-So-Little Light of Mine
Amy1 was an atheist when Peggy and I first met her. Our young friend had been raised with a scientific worldview, leaving no room for spiritual matters. Yet at Peggy’s invitation she decided to join us for a weekly Bible study. Absorbing the Word over time, Amy began to believe in God, and several years later she entrusted her life to Christ, accepting for herself the forgiveness of sins and newness of life that are found in Him. As she finished praying to receive Jesus into her heart, Amy looked up and remarked, “Everything looks lighter!” A little surprised (and a lot curious!), Peggy asked, “Do you mean inside yourself, or physically around you?” “Both!” Amy replied. It seemed to me a divine gift, an assuring flicker of new life.
In last week’s post, we saw that our transformation into the image of Christ is God’s work of grace in us; it is His doing. Note He accomplishes this not by improving our sin nature (“flesh”)—that self-willed desire to live life on our terms and not God’s—for as Paul teaches us, “the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other. . .”2 “The flesh is hostile to God,” he wrote to Roman believers, “it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.”3 God doesn’t change us into Jesus’ image by making us better versions of our “old self”4 or by demanding the same from us, as if we could become like Him by trying a little harder in our own limited power. For no matter how many “second chances” we might be given, we would certainly fall short of His glory every single time.
In grace, rather, God makes us new, His Spirit breathing life where there was none and shining light where darkness once reigned. Paul urges us to “to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”5 We offer ourselves to His Spirit, who is new life in us; He will always lead us in God’s ways, as Jesus himself proclaimed, “Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”6 Then this verse is practical, guiding light for us: “Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness.”7 This is worth memorizing, for God’s Spirit leads us in His light—day by day, moment by moment. We offer ourselves to Him.
Father, Your Spirit lives in me and draws me, that I would offer myself entirely to You. Grace me to say “yes” to You and “no” to any temptation to do otherwise. In Christ I pray. Amen.
1 Name has been changed.
2 Galatians 5:17
3 Romans 8:7
4 Ephesians 4:22
5 Ephesians 4:24
6 John 8:12
7 Romans 6:13
Paul Nordman—Author 