Transformed by the Word

2 Corinthians 3:7-18

Well last week began this look at how a sinful people can be in the presence of God. It’s quite the question isn’t it? God is perfection, he his holy, he is eternally glorious. I am sinful, impure, tarnished. How can God dwell with me?

This is the question introduced in 1 John 3. Before even answering the question you have to wonder what is even the motivation of God to dwell with a people like us? Don’t you? Think about what perfection means! He’s not lacking anything. Think about what holiness and purity is! There is nothing missing in his otherness.

So what could possibly be the motivation? It certainly can’t be as the Greeks would answer, that God needed us for servants, or for something to fill up what is lacking in him. That makes no sense. To even desire those things is to prove that he isn’t God.

And even that God is triune explains and displays that he is perfectly satisfied in the expression of his perfections amongst the three in one. The Father perfectly loves the Son.

John tells us that the motivation for saving us and calling us children is that he loved us. Some of you can’t fathom this type of love. In reality none of us can truly think it through. But someone loving you simply because they do. He says that’s why you’re his child, believer. And that this love is expressed in the most profound way in God allowing the fall so that he could sum up all things and redeem us in Christ.

This has a certain effect, doesn’t it? He allowed sin, so that you could be wowed even further at the display of his love.

Well before we go too far down that, let’s look at our text this morning as we see this work that God does in his people now. There is a transforming aspect to this love of God expressed in his glory.

The reality of the fall is such that the fallenness of our hearts (mind, affections, and will) is such that we cannot behold the glory of Christ even now. We talked last week about the future where we will see Christ and be fully like him, but there is a beholding of Christ that takes place now wherein God’s people are sanctified. But the reality is that apart from the saving work of Christ our fallenness has resulting in our inability to see Christ even veiled by flesh as we are now.

Remember the scene in Isaiah 6 once again as Isaiah is in the throne of God and sees YHWH high and lifted up. Well God commissions him after that and explains what his ministry will be to the people which Jesus takes and applies to his earthly ministry in the gospels.

Isaiah is told that seeing they will not see and hearing they will not hear. They will not understand. That’s the reality of fallen human hearts. We cannot see. We don’t want to see. Our desires are such that we willingly and purposefully do not see God in the world. We as Paul says in Romans 1 suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

So here in this text Paul describes this by comparing the old covenant with the new covenant ministry of the Spirit of God. He does this by using this illustration from Exodus 34. Moses would receive the law from God come down the mountain and his face would shine. He beheld the glory of God in his presence and his face reflected that. And that when he would be in the presence of the people he would veil his face so that they would not see the glory of God.

The purpose of this was in a sense a type of acted out picture for them. In the same way that the veil over the holy of holies blocked them from viewing the glory of Christ, Moses would block his face from their view. God had purposed that the people would be glorified as he dwelt among them, but rather than listen and obey they chose to be stiff necked and rebel and in turn were not to be transformed by this renewing beholding.

So Paul explains this about the old covenant ministry. And he uses it as a foil to explain sinners in their fallen state. Believer this was you and me before we turned to Christ. I love when someone gets saved and they come up to me and say “I had heard that so many times but I never got it until today.” I know what’s going on, a miraculous work of God has taken place, he has removed the veil that was over your heart and allowed you to behold Christ in his word that you heard proclaimed.

This isn’t because someone finally phrases it right or someone finally uses the right illustration or yells loud enough or jumps up and down correctly or shakes the person hard enough, its because the Spirit has sovereignly chosen to remove the veil.

This is why we keep preaching the same gospel. He uses his word. I get up here each week after laboring in the word, after beholding God’s glory here in the word during the week, and put on a display of God’s glory in his text before your eyes. God chooses when and who to save.

But notice this, Paul isn’t using this to explain justification necessarily, the act of saving someone, instead I think rather he is applying this to the ongoing ministry of the Spirit in you now believer.

We know this by experience. God saves us, but at the moment of salvation none of us are instantly glorified are we? Perfectly sanctified to be just like Christ? No he does this through the gradual work of the Spirit of God in us.

And he says he does it in this way. He removes the veil from our hearts so that we behold Christ at salvation, and then the Spirit causes us to behold Christ and be transformed to be like him.

The Puritans would use this scheme of transformation through observation. I think this is exactly right. We’ve talked about the faculties of the human heart for weeks now. What is it that we do to fill our minds? We behold, we see, we observe, we touch we feel, we taste. We have senses that we use to fill our minds. How do we fill our minds with the thing of God, we behold.

So you might say this from our previous discussions. How can I be filling my mind with the things of God that the Spirit might use it in me to change me? I try to think about Christ but my mind keeps wandering. Listen to the word, Read the word… Use your eyes and ears to supply your minds with what it needs.

We have one of the biggest opportunities right after the service today to do this most effectively. I wonder how many of the conversations here will be on Christ. Are you going to help your brother or sister be filling their minds with Christ?

College football starts soon, politics are heating up, theres probably a new marvel movie coming out soon, the weather is always a big topic… Plenty of things to talk about that won’t fill our minds with Christ’s glory. Will you be draw away to lesser things?

If we are not beholding Christ now we won’t behold him in death.

But see this is not a burdensome work nor is it without help. He has supplied us with the Spirit who gives the knowledge of Christ. Paul pictures him in his glory as a light that shines into our hearts. It is the primary work of the Spirit to glorify the Son and the work that he does in this is to transform you into the image of Christ.