Become Like Jesus

Do you remember where you were on August 21, 2017? Let me help you, this was the day when the solar eclipse was visible through much of the US. 250 million people watched this happen! Our house at that time in Bowling Green, KY sat right on the path of totality, and so us and some friends and my mom were all there on our back porch, looking out on this amazing clear day, when all of a sudden the Sun gets blacked out, and for a few moments, the day turned to night.

I don’t know about you all, but this was one of the most incredible things I have ever witnessed. It’s impossible to overstate the sheer wonder and awe of seeing it, and we were, all of us, just hooting and hollering about how crazy it was. My mom especially, was just hollering.

But of course the big thing when you are watching a solar eclipse is you don’t want to hurt your eyes, so we all had to wear those special glasses—to see it safely. Seeing something so amazing, so glorious, so beautiful, so frightening, it produces a response in us, it changes us. And with the eclipse, if we saw it wrongly, it could even harm us.

Today I want us to consider a pretty audacious claim that scripture makes; it’s wildly optimistic. The claim that’s being made by Paul in 2 Corinthians 3:12-18, is that you and I, by looking at Jesus, can become like Jesus.

Turn to your neighbor and say, You can become like Jesus.

It’s such a wild idea. But if it’s true, if God really means what God is saying through this passage, which God inspired Paul to write, then that means we can have an entirely new life. We can become an entirely new person. We can be like Jesus. If we can see him.

We have a veil.

Story of Moses from Exodus 34

Exodus 34 NIV

When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the covenant law in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the Lord. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him. But Moses called to them; so Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him, and he spoke to them. Afterward all the Israelites came near him, and he gave them all the commands the Lord had given him on Mount Sinai. When Moses finished speaking to them, he put a veil over his face. But whenever he entered the Lord’s presence to speak with him, he removed the veil until he came out. And when he came out and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, they saw that his face was radiant. Then Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with the Lord.

Such a cool story, Moses climbs up to the mountain to be in the presence of the Holy God, to be in the midst of his glory, for forty days and forty nights, and when he comes down his face shines, radiates with the glory of God. Moses is turned into a mirror of God’s glory on the mountain! But he’s shining too bright! And the people can’t look on him! And so as a concession to them, and their hearts, he veils himself—they can’t see what he has seen, not even a reflection of it. Moses goes up, beholds the presence, comes down, reflects that presence of God, but he shines too bright and the people can’t see it.

Paul brings that story into his own time. He says that for many of his brothers and sisters, there was a veil over their hearts. And that means something separating them from seeing God. He saw it in his friends, his brothers and sisters, who could not receive Christ. And he mourned over this, he was deeply grieved at this veil; he longed for everyone to see God’s glory.

And there is a sense in which all of humanity, including you and and me, enters this world with a veil over our faces and our hearts. There is this separation, a wall, a blinder, between us and the glory of God. The veil is a kind of spiritual blindness, it’s an inability to see God that we are born into.

So like our inability to see the Sun; we can’t look at it without being harmed; we need a special filter to see it, but in that sense we are not really seeing it.

There’s a similar thing with us and God; we are so like the Israelites looking upon Moses, and we couldn’t even look on the reflection of God’s glory, the secondhand glory, let alone look upon the glory himself! And so we needed a veil—we couldn’t see.

A veil closes us in on ourselves—instead of looking outward, we look inward. The veil keeps us from seeing God, but the veil also prevents us from seeing God’s glory reflected in creation…instead we are blind, we are self-contained, and it makes our minds dull, it makes our worlds small, it makes our souls puny and small.

This is the reality of what we were born into, we begin with a veil over our hearts because we live in a fallen world and we have a fallen, sinful nature.

I wonder if you have a veil, something in you, keeping you from seeing God? Is there something, coming between you and God, and causing you to look away from him, because his light is too blinding, or too painful, or you don’t want to be brought into his light?

The veil over our hearts, it’s similar to how we don’t want to go to the doctor, because we don’t want to get bad news, and we would rather have a little bit more time of just being ignorant of our disease—the veil is this unhealthy, unholy way we run from God, because we are afraid of what God might see in us or what we might see in him…do you have a veil over your heart today?

If you do, the gospel is this: Jesus can remove your veil.

The New International Version Chapter 3

13 We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away. 14 But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. 15 Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. 16 But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.

When we turn to Jesus, he removes the veil.

So this is the gospel message here. Moses goes up to the mountain to be in the presence, and when he comes down the people can’t even see his reflection. Because of their sinful hearts, and the blindness of their souls to God.

So what God does, because he loves us, is God the Father sends God the Son down to us. The presence, the glory of God, in Jesus the Christ, comes down to us in a form we could see. A human being. So from the mountain of glory God sends his Son to us, we see him, we touch him, we hear from him, and then because we couldn’t bear to see this glory, we killed him on a cross, to put out his light!

And it is on the cross, it is in the sacrificial death of Jesus, that the separation between us and our Creator is overcome. We couldn’t go up to God, and so God comes to us in Jesus, he gives up his life in our place, and at his death, the veil in the temple is torn in two. The veil which was between the Holy of Holies where GOd was believed to dwell,

Matthew 27:45–56 NIV

And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open.

This splitting of the veil at the temple, it was a sign that now God’s presence would not be contained on a mountain or in a temple, but that God’s presence would be spread throughout the earth through a new temple, his people. The new creation, the people of God, Jews and Gentiles who would be joined together into the life of Jesus, it’s the Church, the gathering of people in Jesus, this is where God’s presence would now be found!

God comes down to us in Jesus. Jesus dies for us and the veil is torn. Jesus after his resurrection, ascends up to heaven to be with the Father. Why? So that Jesus could send the Holy Spirit down to us, so that the veils on our hearts could be torn, broken, and removed.

Paul says whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.

Do you still have a veil, do you still have something keeping you from running to God, from seeing God’s glory? Turn to the Lord, turn to Jesus. He will kindly, gently, and definitively remove that barrier; and you will see for the first time who he is. You will see God’s glory.

And this is the meat of the passage here. Okay?

When we turn to Jesus, when we say yes to Jesus, when we surrender and say, like, I’m all in, I’m putting all my chips into this one Jesus basket, I’m not looking back, when we turn to him and when he finally removes that veil from us, what happens is we see him.

And it’s like that moment of the solar eclipse, when everything is stripped away and undone, light and darkness, and we suddenly realize the wonder and awe of being in the presence of a HOly God who loves us—and there are no words to describe his majesty. It’s like the first time you ever saw the ocean, if you can remember that, and you are struck at the same time of the grand beauty of what you are seeing, a terrible beauty, one that inspires fear and awe and wonder all at once, but imagine if that beauty, that glory, turns out to be a person who loves you!

See, for so many of us we have heard that Jesus saves us from our sins, but we didn’t really understand why? Do you know why Jesus wants you to turn to him, do you get why he wants to remove the veil from your heart? It’s because he loves you—and he wants you to see his glory, and he wants you to share in his glory, he wants you to be lifted up with him into the divine life, the divine love, the eternal dance between Father and Son and Spirit, he wants you and me and everyone who has ever lived to share in their glory…

Now how does this happen? It happens by the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit frees us to see God’s glory and to reflect it.

The Holy Spirit, the presence of God himself, the third person of the Trinity, he is sent to us from the Father and the Son, and what the Holy Spirit is enables us to see Jesus, the risen Jesus. The Holy Spirit directs us to fix our attention upon Jesus, because when we see Jesus we are seeing God; and when we see God, we are seeing glory; and when we really, truly, fully see glory with unveiled eyes and unveiled hearts—we cannot stay the same.

The New International Version Chapter 3

17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 And 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.

The Spirit enables us and frees us to see Jesus, to see the glory of the risen Lord. And the more we see him, the more we attend to him, the more we contemplate Jesus, the more we will become like Jesus.

That word contemplate, the Greek word, is only used once in the New Testament. And it’s a word that has to do with seeing yourself in the mirror; it’s like the word reflect. It’s to see deeply someone else that helps you more rightly see yourself. And when we contemplate the glory of Jesus by the Spirit, what happens is we begin to reflect Jesus; what happens, is that presence that Moses was with on the mountain, the presence of the Holy God, when we see Jesus and fix our attention on Jesus, what happens, is we become reflectors of God’s glory.

This kind of attention upon the Lord, this contemplation of the Lord, that the Holy Spirit makes possible, at it’s heart what it is, is worship, worship at the deepest level our hearts.

Richard Foster said “the contemplative life is the steady gaze of the soul upon the God who loves us.”

Teresa of Avila said it’s ​“an intimate sharing between friends.”

St. Paul says it’s living an unveiled life, gazing upon God’s glory together, being transformed into the image of Jesus, with ever-increasing levels of glory, all through the power and majesty of the Holy Spirit. As God spoke to Moses face to face, like a friend, so we too, because of the grace of Jesus, in the Spirit, speak that intimately with God.

I wonder what you have been paying attention to, in your life. I wonder who or what has your eyes? I wonder if you realize that you become what you pay attention to; you reflect what you look at, like mirror; as James K.A. Smith says, you are what you love.

The Holy Spirit has one thing on his mind. He wants, with all of his power, to direct our attention to Jesus. He wants to fix our affections upon Jesus. He wants us to love Jesus and to follow Jesus, because in Jesus we can share in the love of our Father. The Holy Spirit, he longs for you to live a life of contemplating Jesus because he wants you to reflect Jesus, reflect the glory and the hope and the justice and the truth and the light of Jesus to this world that he loves. The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. The Holy Spirit wants to free you and to change you and to make you a glorious reflection of the love of God.

Practical Application:

Contemplative Prayer

Spend ten minutes of silence with the Lord (silence distractions and set a timer)

Try the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.”