“To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.”
The Throne Room in Revelation 4 and 5 gives us a sampler of an eternal reality soon to collide with our mundane carnal concerns. The small Passover Lamb slain, mocked by righteous rulers of Israel, will soon reign as King. Not a probability, it is a certitude arriving on divine schedule.
Ours is an intimate relationship with the coming summit John writes concerning in Revelation. The images and meanings are supernatural realties. That is to say, it is truth beyond the grasp of our mind, yet, at the same time, it is part of our contemporary experience through redemption. We grapple with its reality because we are rooted in attitudes, idols, carnality and a life of compulsion. We live too often in an isolated “now,” absent from the fellowship of His presence, while at our heart’s door, He continues to knock.
External things rule our habit. Our world is governed by pride, self worth and our due diligence. Pray these externals do not define our character in our redeemer, the slain Lamb with whom we are joined. Is it faith, or sin!
God is defined by qualities both common and uncommon to His created life in us. Some divine things are transferable to created beings and some are not. God is incomprehensible, there is no one comparable to Him. He is both self-sufficient and self existent. He is not changeable and is all knowing, occupying space everywhere simultaneously. He is sovereign and reigns by the word of His mouth. These divine attributes are what make Him God and not transferable to us.
Other qualities of God fall into the realm of our domain and are transferable. These qualities include His wisdom, His goodness, His love and grace, His mercy and holiness. These are what theologians call communicable attributes. This is important to us because when we are born again, created new in Him, these God traits are created in us to do. Our living engagement, in Him, nurtures His qualities bringing us to the point where we are reveled in His Glory.
But we can’t do it! It is His person and work of the Holy Spirit within the soul of man as well as His church. If we want to understand Revelation, it is through the gateway of the Holy Spirit. If we want to know, as we are known, it is via the Holy Spirit. If we want to have His wisdom, grow in His grace, be holy as He is holy, access truth and righteousness in Christ, it is in the Person of the Holy Spirit.
Our participation in God’s grace is in the Person and work of the Holy Spirit. In order for us to be who we are intended to be, requires our Holy Spirit’s active participation in heart and mind. We like to think it is all about us … maybe it is just a little bit, but only because He made us.
Turn with me to 2Corinthians 3:18. This drill down verse should be on our priority list. One of the sanctification principles we need to grapple with is Transformation. Laid out for us in this verse is the continuous work of the Holy Spirit drawing us into an eternal state of glory by transformation.
“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”
The subject of this verse is the “glory of the Lord” but it is not the glory we saw in the throne room. It is something communicable, it is something common to our realm and practical in our experience. It is a God quality we absorb into our person, changing our orientation. A 2Corinthinas 5:17 person has received a divine sense fundamentally changing his perception of God. This super-natural task is super-vised by the Person of the Holy Spirit. He changes us from what is natural to what is spiritually eternal, pure and whole, Philippians 1:6.
We can parse 2 Corinthinans 3:18 into its constituent parts.
And we all. Paul is addressing corrupt Christians in Corinth. He is including all of us who have been justified by faith.
With unveiled face. The veil has been pulled aside so that we can now see what before was hidden from our view. We have been created new within so that we now have spiritual eyes to see the divine nature and discern the darkness which had been our light.
Beholding the glory of the Lord. This is one place both the ESV and RSV are off the mark. The Greek manuscript uses a word which means to create an image by reflection as a mirror. The New King James is better, “beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord.” This is very important because the reflection mirror we look into is the scripture. God’s Word reflects God’s glory by revealing to our person with an unveiled face, with spiritual eyes, the righteous truth of what God is like. In order for us to see His reflection requires our “beholding,” which is continuously an act of faith.
Are being transformed. Key to this process is the One doing the transforming. Notice the object person is beholding (continuous present tense) the glory of the Lord in order to be transformed. We tend to take responsibility for doing work that only the Holy Spirit can do!
Into the same image. Here is the transformation where the things of self are replaced by divine attributes when we are consuming grace in the Holy Spirit. Christ becoming manifested in our actual experience is the result of “transmutation” by the Holy Spirit.
From one degree of glory to another. This life-long endeavor is one of the most challenging journeys humans can walk. The perfections of divine attributes into our own actual experience could not be realized in many life times, and then only under the resurrection power of God’s-own grace and mercy.
This comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. The most vital element in the life of the believer is the Person of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is our connection to the realities in Christ being experienced while living in these containers of flesh. He not only does the transforming, but He did our regeneration, He quickens, guides, protects, comforts, teaches, cleanses, He unites us in the Father and the son and Himself but, He requires our faith!
The context of this verse draws us into both law and grace. Paul uses the illustration of Moses to illustrate the glory of God through the law. After Moses came from the presence of the Lord on the mountain his face was so radiant people could not look upon it. He put a veil over his face and left it on so people wouldn’t notice that the glow was fading. This is the effect of God’s presence. So perfect and pure is God’s Light, physical confrontation will reflect its reality.
If this is true of the Old Testament Law, Paul argues, how much more brilliant is the life giving Spirit of God producing righteousness within our hearts by the living Holy Spirit. The veil has been removed. We can see clearly into God’s light of life producing His character in the lives of His people. If we can see the effects of what is externally reflected in the face of Moses, how much greater the effects when we have within us the One who stands in the Throne Room as the Lamb of God. He is the One living in our container of flesh and the One taking away the sin of the world!
One day we will all be in the “throne room” of heaven standing in the presence of God the Father, the lamb and the Holy Spirit. I suspect the spiritual eyes we take with us into His presence will be according to the amount of grace we consume walking on earth in our flesh of sin.