“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.“ – Revelation 1:5b-6.
The heavenly Throne Room seen in Revelation 4 and 5 gives us a sampler of eternal reality soon colliding with our mundane carnal concerns. The small Passover Lamb slain, mocked by “righteous” rulers of Israel, will reign as King. Not a probability, a certitude arriving on divine schedule.
The coming union John writes in the Revelation of Jesus Christ concerns an intimate relationship between God and man. How intimate? As intimate as is agape love and eternal judgment! We are His kingdom of priests in training to reign with Him and His God forever and ever. Amen.
These Revelation images and meanings are supernatural realties. This is to say, it is truth beyond the grasp of human minds. Yet, it is part of our contemporary experience through redemption. We are a redeemed people grappling with eternal realities because of our biased attitudes, idols, our carnality in a life full of compulsions. We live too often in an isolated “now,” absent from the fellowship of His presence, while at our heart’s door, His knock continues.
Governed by pride, self worth and our due diligence of external things, self fights to rule our habit. These externals do not define our character in our redeemer, our slain Lamb with whom we are joined. It is only by “beholding” Him in faith that our pride is subdued into submission. By beholding Him we learn to live in His resurrection power.
How can this be? How can we live in earthly flesh being already redeemed into the glory of His divine presence. Such is the mystery of Godliness in us!
God is defined in us by His qualities common to His created life in us. Some divine things are transferable to created life in us 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.
God also defines us by His life in us!
God is also love and light, Spirit and truth. These Godly things are imparted into His created “us” by His Holy Spirit. These transferable qualities of God fall into the realm of our personal domain. These qualities include His truth and wisdom, His goodness, His agape love and righteous holiness. These are what theologians call communicable attributes. This is critically important to us because when we are created new in Jesus, these God traits are also created in us to work out into our manifested living. He nurtures in us His qualities, bringing us to the point where we reveal His Glory because His Glory is being revealed in us. Here is where we explore the joy of our salvation!
But we can’t do it! It is His person and work of His Holy Spirit within the soul of man; we are all one, collectively in His body, we are His church. It is God loving us with agape love through His Holy Spirit.
If we want to understand Revelation, it is through the gateway of His 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, being holy as He is holy, accessing righteous truth in Christ, it is through 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, our spirit’s active participation in our heart and mind must be in sync with His Holy Spirit … who is living in us! We like to think it is all about us … maybe it is just a little bit, but only because He made us, He bought us, and we gave our heart and life to Him!
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 our 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 this glory we see in the throne room. It is something communicable, it is something common to our realm and practical to our experience. It is a God quality we absorb into our person, changing our orientation. A 2Corinthinas 5:17 person has received, and continues to receive, a divine sense fundamentally changing our understanding of God. This super-natural task is super-vised by the Person of the Holy Spirit. He changes us from what is naturally earthly to what is spiritually eternal, pure and whole.
We can parse 2Corinthinans 3:18 into its constituent parts.
1. And we all. Paul is addressing corrupt Christians in Corinth. He is including all of us who have been justified by faith.
2. With unveiled face. The veil has been pulled aside so that we can now see what before was hidden from our view. We are created new so that we now have spiritual eyes to see our divine nature and discern darkness which had been our light.
3. 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 an act of faith continuously agape loving our Jesus.
4. 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! We must be in the state of “beholding” to be in the state of being transformed.
5. Into the same image. Here is the transformation where things of self are replaced by His divine Person. Jesus Christ being manifested in our actual experience is the result of “transmutation.” This is the kind of change we witness in a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. It becomes a new creation!
6. 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 cannot be realized except under the resurrection power of God’s own grace and mercy. It is both holy and glorious!
7. This comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. One vital element in the life of the believer is the Person of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is our connection to divine realities being experienced while living in these containers of flesh. He not only does the “transforming,” but already has performed our regeneration. He quickens, guides, protects, comforts, teaches, cleanses; He unites us in the Father and the Son and Himself but, He requires our “beholding” 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 leaving it on so people wouldn’t notice the fading glow. 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 God’s living Holy Spirit. Our veil has been removed. We can see clearly into God’s light of life producing His character in our lives. 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 living in our container of flesh and the One Taking away the sin of the world!
We all have unveiled faces within us. Now we walk in the glory of His new creation. But now, within this created glory, we experience new glory, over and over because His divine power produces all things pertaining to life and godliness … when we walk in it! Whatever is not of faith is sin!
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 bring into His presence will be according to the amount of grace we consume walking and beholding Him while in this fleshly container of sin.
How glorious is the lover of our soul!