From Glory to Glory
We, with unveiled face, behold the Lord's glory as we are transformed in His image.
3:18. Greeks told many stories of people who became “metamorphosed” or “transformed,” but Greek philosophers spoke of being transformed toward divinity by contemplating divine things. The Dead Sea Scrolls spoke of the righteous reflecting divine splendor. But although Paul could be relating to his readers in such culturally relevant images (minus the divinization), the basis of his image is simply how Moses reflected God’s glory, as in the context. Those under the new covenant behold God’s glory even more plainly than Moses could (Ex 33:20); thus, like Moses, they are transformed to reflect God’s glory by the Spirit. On the “mirror” (NASB, NRSV) see comment on 1 Corinthians 13:12.
Jesus as the Image of God
One of the meanings of the phrase “image of God” means that people are created as God’s image—or, as His imagers (Gen 1:27). The image of God language in the New Testament brings this into focus: Jesus is described as God’s imager, and believers are to image Christ.
Two passages refer to Jesus as the image of God: 2 Corinthians 4:4 and Colossians 1:15. These passages speak of the incarnation of Christ—the eternal God becoming a human being. Having been “found in appearance like a man” (Phil 2:7; compare Phil 2:1–11), Jesus—through the incarnation—made it so that God was accessible to our human senses. He accomplished the plan of redemption on the cross, and offers salvation to humanity.
The language, however, suggests more. Paul writes that believers are destined to be conformed to the image of God’s son, Jesus Christ (Rom 8:29). This language is a call to act as Jesus would—to live like him. Acting like Jesus points to the functional idea of the image of God; it suggests we think of the image of God as a verbal idea. By “imaging God,” we work, serve, and behave the way God would if He were physically present in the world. In Jesus, God was physically present. Thus, we are to imitate—or, image—Christ.
God wants all humans to believe in Christ and be conformed to the image of Jesus. As Jesus imaged God, so must we image Jesus. In so doing, we fulfill the rationale for our creation: we image God (Gen 1:27). This process is a gradual one: “And we all, with unveiled face, reflecting the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory into glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:18). In this passage, being filled with the Spirit is linked to imaging Christ—the ultimate fulfillment of our status as God’s imagers. One day, our imaging of Christ will transcend our life on earth. As Paul also says: “just as we have borne the image of the one man who is made of earth, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly” (1 Cor 15:49).
MICHAEL S. HEISER
b. In beholding Christ, believers are transformed into His image. The phrase “we all” means believers, those who have turned to Christ …
• who have had the veil removed from their face
• who stand face to face with the glory of the Lord
When a believer receives Jesus Christ as his Savior, he is given the privilege to stand face to face with Christ. This simply means that he is given the privilege to know and understand Christ. Note several points.
1) The phrase “open face” means that the believer is given the privilege of standing face to face with Christ, the privilege of knowing Christ personally and learning all about Him. There is no veil over the face or eyes of the believer, nothing to keep him from knowing the Lord.
2) The object of the believer is to behold the glory of the Lord. This means to behold the Godhead and deity of the Lord, the splendor, brilliance, and excellence of His person and Being. Jesus Christ is the Son of God who became Man. His “glory” refers to the glorious fact that He as the Son of God did become Man. When a person grasps this fact, he understands the “glory of the Lord,” the incomprehensible fact that the Lord paid the supreme and ultimate price, the unbelievable price, for the salvation of man.
“And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” (Jn. 1:14).
3) The believer, however, never grasps the full glory of the Lord. No man, who is only finite and flesh, could ever understand the Lord, who is infinite Spirit. The believer only sees and understands the glory of the Lord as in a glass or a mirror. That is, he only sees a reflection of the Lord, not the full image. Presently, the believer is able to see the Lord only through the Word and the Holy Spirit; in the future, he shall stand face to face with the Lord throughout all eternity. Then he will know the Lord even as the Lord now knows him.
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Co. 13:12).
4) The believer is changed or transformed into the image of Christ from glory to glory. This probably means two things.
⇒ When the believer beholds (grasps, understands, studies, lays hold of) the glory of the Lord, the same glory is created in him.
⇒ When the believer beholds the glory of the Lord, the believer progresses and grows from one stage of glory to a higher stage.
UNVEILED CHRISTIANS (WE, CHRISTIANS) (3:18)
3:18 Paul concludes this section by combining the text of Exod 34:35 with a commentary. Moses wore the veil over his shining face until he went in to speak with the Lord; and Paul asserts that all Christians can, like Moses, approach the glory of the Lord with unveiled faces and experience the same transformation. The emphatic “we all” refers to the experience of all Christians, not just that of apostles or Christian ministers, because Paul is not simply contrasting himself with Moses.465 It is “we” as opposed to the unbelieving Jews. In contrast to the Israelites who have a veil shrouding their hearts (3:15), Christians have the veil taken away (3:16).466 Christians are “able to bear the bold, direct revelation of God’s glory” because the state of their heart has been changed.467
It is also “all” in contrast to the one, Moses. All Christians may approach the Lord as Moses did when he went up Mount Sinai into the presence of the Lord. The results are similar. Beholding with an unveiled face the glory of the Lord causes us to be transformed into the same image.
The NIV interprets the rare verb katoptrizomenoi to mean “reflecting as a mirror does.”468 This rendering implies that Paul continues to contrast himself with Moses. Unlike Moses, Paul’s face is unveiled so that he reflects the Lord’s glory to the people. But we have argued that Paul includes the Corinthians with the emphatic “we all,” and lexical evidence tips the scale toward the translation “beholding in a mirror.”469 This meaning of the mirror image is found in 1 Cor 13:12: “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”470 In 4:3–4 Paul repeats the three themes of the veil, glory, and image and writes that those who have been blinded by the god of this age “cannot see the light of the glory of the gospel of Christ” (4:4). Paul therefore is talking about the effects of the ministry of the Spirit: all who believe may now see, by means of a mirror, that glory.
To see by means of a mirror does not mean we see only “ ‘indistinctly’ or ‘in a distorted way,’ but indirectly as over against our eschatologically seeing him ‘face to face.’ ”471 In this mirror we see an image, a reflection of the glory of God, which is as close as human beings can ever get to this ultimate reality. As such it is provisional. Direct vision of God is “not for this world” but awaits the end of the age.472 Christ, however, is the image of God (4:4; Rom 8:29; Col 1:15), and we have the privilege to see the glory of God in the face of Christ (4:6; cp. John 14:9). Therefore, Christ mirrors God for believers.473 God is no longer isolated on a faraway mountaintop but may be met in the heart of the believer who turns to the Lord.474 Lambrecht argues that “beholding” is “decidedly more than a visual or intellectual activity.”
It must be related with that existential confrontation which is contained in the preaching of the gospel. We are thus confronted with what God did in Christ. We see Christ as in a mirror, in the gospel and in that specific Christ way of life the gospel inspires. It is also an interior experience of God’s active, “splendid” and forceful presence with us in Christ.475
We can never encounter God and remain unchanged. Beholding this glory effects our transformation as we are changed into a veritable likeness of him. In 1 Cor 11:7 Paul calls man “the image and glory of God” (see Gen 1:26–27; 5:1; Wis 2:23; Sir 17:3). The fall tarnished that image and glory, but not irreparably. Now it is being restored.476 This transformation is brought about through Christ as the image into whom the believers are to grow (Eph 4:24). Kent writes, “No wonder the apostle exulted as he did at being involved in Christian ministry which could accomplish such a feat.”477
We might have expected Paul to write “into the same glory” instead of “into the same image.” Paul chose his words carefully because he knew that it is not our physical appearance that is being changed but our inner being! Outward appearances remain deceptive (5:12, 16). God shines the divine light in hearts (4:6), and consequently it is only in our hearts where true glory can reside and only hearts that count with God. It is a moral axiom that we become like the gods we serve (see Rom 1:18–32). In beholding the true glory of the Lord reflected in Christ, our minds become transformed (Rom 12:2) so that we are not conformed to this world and its perceptions and values but conformed to Christ and the paradoxical pattern of his suffering and resurrection (Rom 8:29; Phil 3:10, 21). The passive voice, “are being transformed,” indicates that this transformation is something done by God, and Paul’s exegesis makes clear that it happens through the Spirit.
Fitzmyer correctly emphasizes that the individual is “not transformed into Christ himself, as the pagan myths might suggest; rather, through that constant subjection to the reflected glory the person is gradually being transformed into a likeness of him.”478 Unlike the mystery religions, Christianity was primarily concerned with the moral reformation of persons (see Col 3:10). Hafemann remarks, “The dawning of the new covenant is thus the beginning of that obedience to God in response to his merciful redemption and restoration which characterizes the new creation (2 Cor 3:18; 5:17).”479 The transformation is not instantaneous but must continually be made actual. Paul laments over the regression of the Galatians in this process: “My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you” (Gal 4:19). Clearly, this process will not be completed until the resurrection: “And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven” (1 Cor 15:49). But Paul’s point is that through the Spirit we are able now to live a more Christ-like life, to join in Christ’s saving enterprise (5:20), and to bring greater glory to God.
Many Christians have lost or never learned a sound doctrine of regeneration. They believe that the only thing that matters is their standing with God or with the church. They assume that a past decision for Christ or a decision to affiliate with a congregation determines their standing with God. Having made that decision, they make no effort to allow the Spirit to renew them. The Spirit is not imposed upon us, and Christians must engage in spiritual disciplines that make the Spirit’s work possible in changing our lives at the fundamental level. God’s Spirit empowers us to do what we want to do and makes what we want to do to be what is right so that Christlikeness flows from us naturally.
Paul’s concluding words in this verse read literally “as from the Lord of Spirit,” which is rendered as a genitive of apposition by the NIV, “which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”480 For Paul, human transformation can only be done by the Spirit. The Spirit’s work is what distinguishes his ministry from that of Moses (3:6, 8) and makes it so much more glorious.481 God has made him sufficient by giving him a Spirit-endowed, Spirit-empowered ministry to those who are Spirit equipped. Fee summarizes well Paul’s argument:
Paul’s ministry belongs to the time of the fulfilled promise, in which the Spirit is now available to all. The coming of the Spirit has brought the old to an end and has appropriated the work of Christ through whom the effects of the Fall have been radically reversed. Indeed, through Christ and by the Spirit we are being transformed so as to bear the likeness for which we were intended at the beginning. In the freedom that the Spirit provides, we have seen the glory of God himself—as it is made evident to us in the face of our Lord Jesus Christ—and we have come to experience that glory, and will do so in an ever-increasing way until we come to the final glory.482
Assuming, then, that v. 17a relates in the first place to v. 16 and that ὁ κύριος is the subject in v. 17a, we may sketch the two main interpretations of the statement ὁ δὲ κύριος τὸ πνεῦμά ἐστιν. The still dominant view identifies the κύριος of vv. 16 and 17a as the risen Lord Jesus.96 Proponents of this view must immediately address the questions: Does τὸ πνεῦμα refer to the Holy Spirit? If so, does ἐστίν serve to identify the risen Christ as the Holy Spirit? Almost all those who see here a reference to the Spirit carefully distinguish between functional equivalence or dynamic unity or “economic” identity on the one hand, and personal identification on the other,97 for the phrase τὸ πνεῦμα κυρίου that immediately follows in v. 17b prohibits any such equation of persons, as does Paul’s regular differentiation between Christ and the Spirit.98 The two are functionally or dynamically or experientially equivalent in that the Spirit mediates to believers the presence and power of the absent and exalted Lord, applying the benefits of Christ’s redemption. Others regard τὸ πνεῦμα as the life-giving Spirit or spirit (cf. πνεῦμα ζῳοποιοῦν, 1 Cor. 15:45) of the new era, so that Christ is here described as the source of spiritual life and blessing.99 Some equate τὸ πνεῦμα with the heavenly mode of existence or sphere or “substance.”100 Yet others identify τὸ πνεῦμα in 3:17a with τὸ πνεῦμα in 3:6: the Lord Christ is the inner, true meaning of Scripture, “the spiritual and prophetic sense hidden under the letter.”101
The second main interpretation views v. 17a as a clarifying “update” on v. 16. “The ‘Lord’ (= Yahweh) of Exod. 34:34 is, in the present era, the Spirit mentioned in 3:3, 6, 8.” In this case the article with κύριος is anaphoric:102 “Now the Lord of whom this passage speaks is the Spirit” (NEB, REB), “Now what is signified by ‘Lord’ here is the Spirit” (Cassirer). Whereas in the old dispensation Moses was in the habit of removing the veil from his face whenever he entered “the tent of meeting” to converse with Yahweh, in the new order, when a person turns to the Spirit, the veil over the heart is forever removed. Support for this general understanding of v. 17a has been gaining momentum since Dunn’s influential defense of the position in 1970.103
This view has two advantages: it ties v. 17a more closely to the immediate context than do competing interpretations, and it affords a more satisfying explanation of the use of the article with κύριος in vv. 16–18: the four anarthrous uses of κύριος refer to Yahweh, as does the one articular (= anaphoric) use in v. 17a. But it also prompts two questions. First, would Paul have “updated” Exodus 34 in such a bold manner? Comparable contemporizing of the biblical text is found at Qumran (“pesher” exegesis) and in Philo (“allegorizing” exegesis).104 And Paul himself elsewhere engages in similar contemporization by way of an exegetical gloss in, for example, Gal. 3:16; 4:25 (τὸ δὲ Ἁγὰρ Σινᾶ ὄρος ἐστὶν ἐν τῇ Ἀραβίᾳ); Rom. 10:6; 1 Cor. 15:56. Within 2 Corinthians we find the repeated ἰδοὺ νῦν of 6:2 contemporizing Isa. 49:8. Second, are there biblical parallels for the idea of “conversion to the Spirit”? In both Testaments an individual’s “turning” in repentance is normally “to God.”105 But if human beings may rebel against the Spirit of God (Ps. 106:33), resist him (Acts 7:51), grieve him (Isa. 63:10; Eph. 4:30), and insult him (Heb. 10:29), presumably they may also “turn” to him in the sense of responding to his gracious overtures and in particular his gentle urging of the claims of the Messiah. When a person turns to the Spirit, he (the Spirit) immediately removes the veil of ignorance concerning Christ. Dunn proposes that turning to the Spirit simply means receiving the Spirit.106
Having supplied his brief exegetical gloss (δέ, “now”) in v. 17a, Paul adds (δέ, “and”) that the Spirit to whom people turn in the new dispensation brings them freedom. Wherever the Spirit of the Lord (God) is present and active, liberty is enjoyed and compulsion is absent. Although we might expect οὗ (“where”) to be followed by ἐκεῖ (“there”) (as in Matt. 18:20; Rom. 9:26), this is not always the case in Paul (see Rom. 4:15; 5:20). Because the expression πνεῦμα (τοῦ) κυρίου is so common in the LXX, in reference to the Spirit of Yahweh,107 and is never used by Paul,108 it is probable that κύριος here refers not to the Lord Jesus but to Yahweh. In the light of the canon of Apollonius, the anarthrous κυρίου may appear irregular, but since κύριος, like θεός, has virtually become a proper noun in the NT, the imprecision of articular usage that attaches to proper names has affected κύριος also.109
What is the nature of the ἐλευθερία that the Spirit mediates? First of all, it is doubtful that it includes hermeneutical freedom, as Hays argues—freedom from reading Scripture “slavishly according to the gramma,” a freedom that involves “a transformed capacity to perceive the telos of Scripture” through Spirit-inspired reading.110 It is significant that ἐλευθερία is unqualified, which suggests that Paul would not wish to exclude any type of freedom that is implied in the context, such as the freedom to speak and act openly (= παρρησία, v. 12);111 freedom from the veil (vv. 14–16),112 whether the veil of spiritual ignorance concerning truths of the new covenant113 or the veil of hardheartedness (vv. 13, 14);114 freedom from the old covenant (v. 14)115 or from the law and its effects (v. 6);116 freedom to behold God’s glory uninterruptedly (v. 18) or to conform to Christ (v. 18);117 or freedom of access into the divine presence without fear.118
3:18 ἡμεῖς δὲ πάντες ἀνακεκαλυμμένῳ προσώπῳ τὴν δόξαν κυρίου κατοπτριζόμενοι. “And all of us, with unveiled faces, looking at the glory of the Lord as in a mirror.” As he now develops (δέ, “and”) the concept of freedom (ἐλευθερία, v. 17), especially the notions of freedom from veiling and freedom of access to God, Paul explicitly extends his thought to all Christian believers (ἡμεῖς … πάντες), whether or not they are Jews or apostles or gospel ministers.119 With regard to access to God, πάντες eliminates all distinction between God’s messengers and those to whom they are sent (cf. 1:21–22; 5:10). The one and the many of Exodus 34 (Moses and the Israelites) have become the “all” of 2 Corinthians 3. It was the privilege of Moses alone to glimpse Yahweh’s glory when he saw his “form” (Num. 12:8) and his “back” (Exod. 33:23),120 but now all Christians without distinction are privileged to witness that glory. Moreover, although Moses’ face was unveiled when he was conversing with God and was reporting God’s words to the congregation, it was thereafter veiled until he returned to the Lord’s presence (Exod. 34:33–35). Christians, however, see the divine glory with permanently uncovered faces. The perfect participle ἀνακεκαλυμμένῳ stresses the permanence and irreversibility of their unveiled state. προσώπῳ is a distributive singular121 and refers figuratively (by metonymy) to recognition and understanding so that the whole phrase ἀνακεκαλυμμένῳ προσώπῳ (“with unveiled faces”), which expresses accompanying circumstances122 or manner123 in relation to κατοπτριζόμενοι,124 refers to the unimpeded vision of Christians in contrast to the impeded vision of Jews (vv. 14–15). An unremoved veil prevents recognition of the glory of the new covenant. A removed veil not only guarantees recognition of that glory but also enables participation in that glory.125
In the active voice, the verb κατοπτρίζω (from κάτοπτρον = ἔσοπτρον [1 Cor. 13:12], “mirror”) means “produce a reflection in a mirror”; in the middle, the sense is “look at oneself/something in the mirror.”126 In Hellenistic Greek both the active and the passive sense encroach on the domain of the middle, so that κατοπτρίζομαι as a middle could on occasion mean “reflect.”127 On the other hand, the ancient versions usually render this verb (which does not occur elsewhere in the Greek Bible) by “behold,” “observe,”128 and the notion of transformation by vision (κατοπτριζόμενοι … μεταμορφούμεθα) is more readily comprehensible than that of transformation by reflection, given a passage such as 1 John 3:2 (… ὅμοιοι αὐτῷ ἐσόμεθα, ὅτι ὀψόμεθα αὐτὸν καθώς ἐστιν). It is possible that the original reference to a mirror (κάτοπτρον) has been lost and that the verb simply means “look at” or “contemplate”129 and is therefore almost equivalent to ἀτενίζω (vv. 7, 13).130 But the real options are: “reflect like a mirror/as in a mirror”131 or “behold/see as in a mirror.”132 This latter alternative is to be preferred. Some find both ideas in the verb (“see and then reflect”),133 but the idea of reflection is rather contained by implication in the subsequent word εἰκών, which is a visible representation (or reflection) of some reality.
What Christians observe as though (reflected) in a mirror is “the glory of the Lord” (τὴν δόξαν κυρίου).134 As in the parallel expression τὸ πνεῦμα κυρίου in v. 17, κύριος probably refers to Yahweh, not Jesus. In LXX usage (ἡ) δόξα κυρίου frequently refers to the glory of Yahweh, including, significantly, passages that refer to Sinai (Exod. 24:17) and the “tent of meeting” (Exod. 40:34–35; Lev. 9:5–6, 23; Num. 14:10; 16:19). Also, in 4:6 Paul refers to ἡ δόξα τοῦ θεοῦ ἐν προσώπῳ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, a composite statement which shows how ἡ δόξα τοῦ θεοῦ is related to Christ as [ἡ] εἰκὼν τοῦ θεοῦ (4:4). “The glory of the Lord” is God’s glory as it is revealed in his image, Christ. If we must identify the “mirror” in which God’s glory is seen, it is more likely to be Christ as present in the gospel135 or the gospel, the essence of which is Christ,136 or the gospel along with the Christian life as lived in the Spirit,137 than gospel ministers138 or Christians in general.139
A. L. Connolly has noted that in Classical writers mirror imagery commonly symbolized three ideas: purity (associated with a mirror’s clean surface),140 self-knowledge (as also in Jas. 1:23), or indirect knowledge (as also in 1 Cor. 13:12; 2 Cor. 3:18).141 All “mirrored” knowledge is of necessity indirect knowledge, but indirect knowledge is not necessarily imprecise or inaccurate knowledge; a “mirror image” is indirect but may be perfectly clear. Significantly, there is here no ἐν αἰνίγματι (“dimly,” “with blurring”) as in 1 Cor. 13:12. The vision of God’s glory accorded Christians is indirect, for it is mediated through the gospel, but it is clear, for the Christ who is proclaimed through the gospel is the exact representation (εἰκών) of God (4:4).
τὴν αὐτὴν εἰκόνα μεταμορφούμεθα ἀπὸ δόξης εἰς δόξαν. “We are being transformed into the same image, from one degree of glory to another.” In the active voice the verb μεταμορφόω is followed by two accusatives, τινά τι, “transform someone into something”; in the passive, the accusative of the thing is retained—here τὴν αὐτὴν εἰκόνα.142 αὐτήν has no explicit antecedent, but means “the same image as we see mirrored,”143 that is, Christ as God’s glory or God in Christ, rather than “the same image as each other,”144 pointing to the family likeness of Christians. Although it is now the whole person rather than the face alone that reflects God’s glory, Paul must be thinking principally of the transformation of “the inner person” (4:16b), the whole person as a “new creation” (5:17) and as a participant in the life of the age to come, for he observes that “the outer person,” the whole person as a mortal creature, is being worn down (4:16a), not transformed. When Jesus was transfigured, the change was outwardly visible (Matt. 17:2), but when Christians are transformed, the change is essentially inward, the renewing of the mind (Rom. 12:2), and becomes visible only in their Christ-like behavior.145 The present participle κατοπτριζόμενοι defines the means of the ongoing transformation (μεταμορφούμεθα, present): it is by “seeing as in a mirror” that “change” is effected.146 For Christians, both now and in the hereafter, there is “transformation by vision.”147 But whereas the present transformation is continuous and progressive and the vision is of an image (Christ as εἰκὼν θεοῦ), the future transformation is instantaneous and complete and the vision is direct (1 Cor. 13:12; 15:49; 1 John 3:2).148
The progressive nature of this present μεταμόρφωσις is expressed by the phrase ἀπὸ δόξης εἰς δόξαν. If ἀπό denotes source and εἰς result, this beginning and this end must both relate to believers’ transformation and δόξα, for the whole phrase qualifies μεταμορφούμεθα. Therefore the meaning is less likely to be “from the Jewish vision of Yahweh’s glory to the Christian vision of the glory of the new dispensation”149 or from the splendor of the Lord to the splendor of the believer150 than from initial glory already received through regeneration to final glory to be gained at the parousia151 or from glory beheld to glory reflected.152 Alternatively, and preferably, ἀπὸ δόξης and εἰς δόξαν should be considered together as expressing the nature or direction of the transformation: “with ever-increasing glory” (NIV, REB) or “from one degree of glory to another” (RSV, NRSV).153 In stark contrast with the radiance on Moses’ face that faded (3:7, 13), the glory of the Lord that is reflected in believers’ lives gradually increases.154 Justified at regeneration, believers are progressively sanctified until their final glorification at the consummation (Rom. 8:29–30; 12:2; Eph. 4:23; Col. 3:10).155 Christian transformation is neither instant deification nor mystical divinization. The ultimate δόξα, the last in the series ἀπὸ δόξης εἰς δόξαν, will be the believer’s acquisition as the result of a final μετασχηματισμός, of τὸ σῶμα τῆς δόξης (Phil. 3:21; cf. Col. 3:4), a body suffused with the divine glory and perfectly adapted to the ecology of heaven (1 Cor. 15:43–44). Resurrection, according to Paul, was the acceleration and climax of the process of “Christification.”156 Through daily spiritual renewal (4:16) that leads to resurrection (5:4), believers regain the divine image, which was and still is defaced by sin (cf. 1 Cor. 15:49; Gal. 4:19).157
18. But we all. All Christians. With open face. Without a veil. Beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord. Looking to Jesus and beholding in his covenant, in our hearts and minds as in a mirror, and contemplating his glory. Are changed. To look to Jesus has a transforming power. If we gaze upon him, we will become like him. As Moses unveiled before the Lord shone with the glory of the Lord, so we shall reflect the glory of Christ, and show forth his likeness. From glory to glory. Developing from one stage of glory to a higher one. Even as by the Spirit of the Lord. Rather, “The Lord the Spirit,” as in the Revision. Verse 17 declares the Lord is the Spirit. Our glory is from the Lord the Spirit. The figure here is a very beautiful one. By gazing upon the Lord we become like him and show forth his glory.
3:12–4:6 NEW COVENANT INTIMACY
3:12–18 The Removal of the Old Covenant Veil
Paul did not not need letters of commendation because of his firsthand intimacy and its ensuing boldness (3:12) and stability (4:1). Paul’s boldness in speech is elaborated in 3:12–18.
Paul compared his own speaking with the speaking of Moses (3:12–13). But the comparison is really between two ministries, not just two ways of speaking. Skip from 3:13 to 3:18 in order to see that 3:14–17 is an explanatory digression. The “but” of 3:14 is then put in perspective. The continual use of the veil blinds, deafens, and dulls the minds of the people to God’s glory in Christ (see 2:11; 4:4; Rom. 11:7, 25). The Corinthians should have realized the temporary nature of the old covenant’s glory.
In 3:13 Paul explained the purpose of Moses’ veil—to conceal the reality that the glory was fading (cf. Exod. 34:33–35). The “veil” (3:13–18) also had been used to interrupt the people’s vision of God’s glory. Moses put his veil on after he had spoken to the people of Israel (see Exod. 34:29–35). But in the new covenant, the veil is no longer needed (3:16). The glory is given through the Spirit, hidden but powerful (2 Cor. 3:3, 6, 8, 16–18; cf. 1 Cor. 15:45). The Spirit is the new means of covenant ministry. Moses beheld God’s glory and his face was changed temporarily (2 Cor. 3:18; cf. 3:13). New covenant believers behold the glory of the Lord, though imperfectly, and are supernaturally transformed into the same image of glory. The idea of reflection (3:18) best fits the context of Moses’ reflection of glory and Paul’s reflection of the glory in perishable containers (cf. 4:7).
12–18 Ex. 34:33–35 tells how Moses veiled his face after communicating God’s law to the Israelites, so that they would not have to look upon its brightness. Paul interprets this as an attempt to conceal from the Israelites the fading nature of the splendour which accompanied the old covenant, and he contrasts Moses’ lack of boldness with the boldness he himself has as a minister of the new covenant (12–13). He also sees in the veiling of Moses’ face something analogous to the veil which lay over the minds of many of his Jewish contemporaries, who could not properly understand the law of Moses when it was read in their synagogues (14–15). Believers, those who have turned to the Lord, have the veil removed from their minds (16), and so with unveiled faces they reflect (or perhaps contemplate) the glory of the Lord, and in so doing are being transformed into his likeness (18).
Paul’s primary purpose in highlighting the superior splendour of the ministry of the new covenant was to explain why he was very bold and did not lose heart (12; cf. 4:1). He may also have wanted to use this argument to counteract the teaching of his opponents at Corinth, who placed great stress on their Jewish ancestry (cf. 11:21b–22).
18. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord. Paul takes up again his exposition of Exodus 34:33–35 (in which we are told how Moses removed his veil when he went in before the Lord). While Moses may have lacked boldness before the Israelites and so veiled his face (v. 13), when he went in before the Lord he did so with confidence and freedom symbolized by the removal of the veil.28 Like Moses, then, Paul and all believers approach God in confidence and freedom with unveiled face, and like Moses also they behold the glory of the Lord. To express the latter Paul uses the middle participle katoptrizomenoi. The middle form of the verb katoptrizō generally means ‘to look at oneself or something as in a mirror’, although there is evidence to show it could also be used to mean ‘to reflect as in a mirror’. However, the idea of beholding fits the context better. In Exodus 34:33–35, which forms the basis of Paul’s exposition here, we are told that it was when Moses went in before the Lord that his face was unveiled, and at that time he was beholding, rather than reflecting, the glory of the Lord. Further, Paul’s idea of being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another (v. 18b) is better understood to occur while believers are beholding rather than reflecting the glory of God. Finally, in 4:6 it is certainly the beholding of the glory of God that Paul has in mind.
If we were to ask Paul in what way believers behold the glory of God, his answer would be that they do so as the ‘veils’ are removed from their minds so that the truth of the gospel is no longer hidden from them. Thus it is in ‘the light of the gospel’ that they behold ‘the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God’, and they see ‘the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ’ (4:3–6).
And we all … are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another. It is important to note that the changing into his likeness takes place not at one point of time, but as an extended process. The verb metamorphoumetha (‘we are being changed’) is in the present tense, indicating the continuous nature of the change, while the words from one degree of glory to another stress its progressive nature. The verb metamorphoō is found in three other places only in the New Testament. It is used to describe Jesus’ transfiguration in Matthew 17:2 and Mark 9:2, and Paul uses it in Romans 12:2 to denote moral transformation (‘Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind’).
Paul speaks often of the transformation of believers in other passages, though words other than metamorphoō are employed. In some cases he has in mind the future transformation of believers’ bodies to be like Christ’s glorious body (1 Cor. 15:51–52; Phil. 3:21). In other cases it is clearly a present moral transformation that is in view (Rom. 6:1–4; 2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15). The Old Testament prophets who spoke beforehand of the new covenant certainly anticipated a moral transformation of those who were to experience its blessings (Jer. 31:33; Ezek. 36:25–27), and Paul saw this expectation fulfilled in the lives of his converts (1 Cor. 6:9–11; 2 Cor. 3:3). These last references, together with Romans 12:2 cited above, provide the clue to Paul’s meaning in the present context. The continuous and progressive transformation by which believers are changed from one degree of glory to another is the moral transformation which is taking place in their lives so that they approximate more and more to the likeness of God expressed so perfectly in the life of Jesus Christ.
For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. The reference to the Lord who is the Spirit may be taken to mean God, who under the new covenant is present, and experienced by believers, as the Spirit (see commentary on v. 17). The Spirit’s activity is the major characteristic of the new covenant and the transformation of believers is wholly attributable to his work in their lives (cf. Rom. 8:1–7).
7 But if othe ministration of death, pwritten and engraven in stones, was glorious, qso that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away:
The apostle is manifestly comparing the ministry of the gospel with the ministry of the law, and showing the excellency of the former above the latter. In the former verse he had called the law, the letter; and the gospel, in opposition to it, he had called, the spirit: here he calleth the ministration of the law, the ministration of death; because it only showed man his duty, or things to be done, but gave no strength or help by which he should do them; only cursing man, but showing him no way by which he might escape that curse: so it did kill men, and led them to eternal death and condemnation, without showing them any means of life and salvation. He also undervalueth the law, in comparison with the gospel, as being only written and engraven in stones; whereas (as he had said before) the gospel is written in the fleshy tables of men’s hearts. Yet (saith he) the ministration of the law (which was indeed but the ministration of death) was glorious: there was a great deal of the glory and majesty of God attended the giving of the law, of which we read, Exod. 19. So that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance: of this we read, Exod. 34:29, 30, When Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him. So as it was glorious to be but a minister of the law, that is, of the revelation of the will of God, as to man’s duty, which glory (saith the apostle) was to be done away: Moses’s face did not always so shine, neither was the glory of his ministration to abide always, but to cease by the coming in of the new covenant.
8 How shall not rthe ministration of the spirit be rather glorious?
How shall not that ministration, which is more spiritual, and the effects of which are much more spiritual, be accounted much more glorious? Thus the apostle doth not only magnify the gospel above the law, but he also magnifieth his offices in the ministration of the gospel; which ministration he reasonably concludeth to be a more glorious ministration than that which Moses had, in whom the Jews so much gloried.
9 For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration sof righteousness exceed in glory.
What the apostle before called the ministration of death, he here calleth the ministration of condemnation; and therein gives us a reason why he called it the ministration of death, because it led unto eternal death, as showing men sin, so accusing and condemning men for sinful acts. If it pleased God (saith the apostle) to make that ministration glorious, that the minister of the law (Moses) appeared so glorious in the eyes of Aaron and of the people; the ministration of righteousness (by which he means the gospel) must needs be more exceedingly glorious. He tells us, Rom. 1:16, 17, that he was not ashamed of the gospel—for therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith; that is, the righteousness wherein a soul must stand and appear righteous before God. The ministration of righteousness signifieth the ministration of that gospel, that doctrine, which revealeth righteousness. Righteousness is here opposed to condemnation; and therefore signifieth that which is opposed to it, viz. justification. For God doth not so freely remit sins, but that he declares his righteousness in the remission of them; and will show himself just, while he showeth himself the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus, Rom. 3:26. And from hence it appeareth, that the gospel is called the ministration of righteousness, because he that ministereth in it exhibiteth the righteousness to Christ to be reckoned to the soul, as that whereby it must be justified; for God could not otherwise declare his righteousness in the remission of sins, nor show himself just in justifying the ungodly. This ministration (he saith) must needs be more glorious in the eyes of men than the ministration of the law; for that ministration afforded nothing but terror and death, this affordeth relief, and comfort, and life.
10 For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth.
The law had in it something of intrinsic glory and excellency, as it was the revelation of the will of God to and concerning his creatures; there was an inseparable glory attending it upon that account: and it was made glorious in the ministration of it; as it pleased God that the giving of it should be attended with thunder and lightning, fire and smoke, and an earthquake, and a voice like to the sound of a trumpet, as we read, Exod. 19:16–18: this was an accidental and adventitious glory, and made that which was glorious in itself, glorious also in the eyes of the people, that saw and heard these things. But yet, saith the apostle, if we compare it with the glory of the gospel, it had comparatively no glory; so much doth that excel. For though the law was the revelation of the Divine will, as well as the gospel, yet the law was the revelation of the Divine will but as to duty, and wrath, in case of the non-performance of that duty: but the gospel is the revelation of the Divine will, as to grace and mercy, as to remission of sin, and eternal life. And although the gospel came not into the world as the law, with thunder, and lightning, and earthquakes; yet that was ushered in by angels, foretelling the birth and office of John the Baptist, and of Christ; by the great sign of the virgin’s conceiving and bringing forth a Son; by a voice from heaven, proclaiming Christ the Father’s only begotten Son, in whom he was well pleased. But that which the apostle doth here principally intend, is the exceeding excellency of it, in regard of its further usefulness and comfortable nature.
11 For if that which was done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious.
The apostle, by another argument, proveth the ministration of the gospel to be much more glorious than the ministration of the law, because it is more durable and abiding. The strength of the argument dependeth upon this principle, that any durable good is more excellent and glorious than that which is but transitory, and for a time. The ministration of the law is done away; the law, contained in ordinances, is itself done away, and therefore the ministration of it must needs cease. There are now no priests and Levites, no worldly sanctuary, nor any ministrations in it, or relating to it. But our Saviour hath told us, that the gospel shall be preached to the end of the world; so as that ministration must (according to all principles of reason) be more glorious, as that which is eternal is more glorious than that which is fluid and vanishing.
12 Seeing then that we have such hope, twe use great ‖plainness of speech:
Hope here signifieth nothing but a confident, certain expectation of something that is hereafter to come to pass. The term such referreth to something which went before: the sense is, We being in a certain confident expectation, that our ministration of the gospel shall not cease, as the ministration of the law hath done; and that the doctrine of the gospel brings in not a temporary, but an everlasting righteousness; that there shall never be any righteousness revealed, wherein any soul can stand righteous before God, but that which is revealed in the gospel to be from faith to faith; we are neither ashamed nor afraid to preach the gospel with all freedom and boldness. We do not, as Moses, cover ourselves with a veil when we preach the gospel to people, but we speak what God hath given to us in commission to speak, unconcernedly as to any terrors or affrightments from men: we know, that great is the truth which we preach, and that it shall prevail and outlive all the rage and madness of the enemies of it.
13 And not as Moses, uwhich put a vail over his face, that the children of Israel could not stedfastly look to xthe end of that which is abolished:
We have the history to which this passage of the apostle relateth, in Exod. 34:33, 35, where we read, that when Moses had done speaking, he put a veil on his face. The apostle here elegantly turns that passage into an allegory, and opens to us a mystery hidden under that piece of history. That shining of Moses’s face, in a type, prefigured the shining of Him who was to be the light of the world; as he was from eternity the brightness of his Father’s glory. Moses’s covering himself with a veil, signifies God’s hiding the mystery of Christ from ages. Moses did not put a veil on his face for that end, that the children of Israel might not look upon him; but this was the event of it, which also prefigured the blinding of the Jews; they first shut their eyes and would not see, then God judicially sealed their eyes that they should not see, that Christ was the end of the law for righteousness, the true Messiah, and the Mediator betwixt God and man; they could not (as the apostle expresseth it) see to the end of that which is abolished; to the end of the legal dispensation, to the end of all the types of Christ which were in the Levitical law. Now, (saith the apostle,) we do not do so, but make it our business to preach the gospel with as much openness, and plainness, and freedom, as is imaginable. The whole history of the gospel justifieth what this text affirmeth concerning the Jews; that they could not see that Christ, by his coming, had put an end to the law, and the righteousness thereof. We find upon all occasions how much the Pharisees, and those who adhered to that sect, stuck in the law, to the hinderance of their receiving of, or believing in, the Lord Jesus Christ.
14 But ytheir minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which vail is done away in Christ.
Here the apostle expoundeth what he meant before by the mystical veil, viz. the blinding of the eyes of the Jews; of which we read often in the New Testament, Matt. 13:14; Mark 4:12; Luke 8:10; John 12:40; Acts 28:26; Rom. 11:8: see the notes upon all those texts. And (saith the apostle) to this day the veil remaineth not taken away; that veil, which was signified by the veil with which Moses covered his face. In the reading of the Old Testament, is, when the Old Testament is read: some part of which was wont to be read in the synagogues every sabbath day. But we shall meet with this in the next verse more fully. But (saith he) this veil is done away in Christ. It is really taken away upon the coming of Christ; that is, the veil, that covered the face of Christ, is now truly taken away upon his coming; the types are fulfilled in him, as their complement and antitype; the prophecies are fulfilled in him, as he whom they concerned, and of whom the prophets spake. But the veil, that is drawn over men’s hearts, is not taken away, till they come to receive Jesus Christ, as the end of the law for righteousness, to close with him, and to believe in him. God hath taken the veil off from Christ, by sending him personally to fulfil all righteousness; but Christ profiteth nothing particular souls, until they come to believe in him, then it is taken away from their souls, and not before. Which was the reason that it remained still upon the Jews, among whom he came, as among his own, but they received him not.
15 But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart.
The veil, mystically signified by the veil upon Moses’s face, which hindereth them from seeing or discerning the Messiah to be come. But why doth he say, when Moses, that is, the books of Moses, or rather of the Old Testament, are read? Possibly he thereby hinteth, that it was their duty, when in the synagogues they heard the chapters of the Old Testament read, which contain the types and prophecies of Christ, they ought to have looked through those veils, and have considered Christ as the end of those things; so the law, as a schoolmaster, should have led them to Christ: but it was quite otherwise. When they heard those portions of the Old Testament read, through the veil upon their hearts, they could not see through the veil of those types, prophecies, and ritual performances, but rested in them as things in the performance of which they laid their righteousness. Or, if they before had some little convictions upon their spirits, yet when they again came into the synagogues, and heard the law read, the veil again appeared over their hearts, so as they could not see Christ.
16 Nevertheless zwhen it shall turn to the Lord, athe vail shall be taken away.
When it shall turn, may be understood of the whole, or of the generality (at least) of the Jews; when they shall be converted to the faith of Christ, or when any particular person shall be converted to Christ, then the veil shall be taken away; not the veil with which God covered and veiled the mysteries of the gospel, (that was already taken away upon Christ’s coming in the flesh,) but the veil of blindness, which they had drawn over their own souls. Though the light of the gospel shineth clearly, and Christ be unveiled, yet until men, by a true faith, receive Christ, and turn from sinful courses to the obedience of the gospel, they see little or nothing of Christ. The taking away of this veil, and the turning to the Lord, are things done in souls at the same time; therefore nothing is to be concluded here, from the apostle’s naming the removal of the impediment, after the effect of which that is a cause.
17 Now bthe Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
The Lord Christ was a man, but not a mere man; but one who had the Divine nature personally united to his human nature, which is called the Spirit, Mark 2:8. But some think, that the article here is not merely prepositive, but emphatical; and so referreth to ver. 6, where the gospel (the substance of which is Christ) was called the Spirit. So it is judged by some, that the apostle preventeth a question which some might have propounded, viz. how the veil should be taken away by men’s turning unto the Lord? Saith the apostle, The Lord is that Spirit, or he is that Spirit mentioned ver. 18; he is a Spirit, and he gives out of the Spirit unto his people, the Spirit of holiness and sanctification. And where the Spirit of the Lord is, (that holy, sanctifying Spirit, which is often called the Spirit of Christ,) there is liberty; for our Saviour told the Jews, John 8:36, If the Son make you free, then shall ye be free indeed: a liberty from the yoke of the law, from sin, death, hell; but the liberty which seemeth here to be chiefly intended, is a liberty from that blindness and hardness which is upon men’s hearts, until they have received the Holy Spirit.
18 But we all, with open face beholding cas in a glass dthe glory of the Lord, eare changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as ‖by the Spirit of the Lord.
Some by we here understand all believers; others think it is better understood of ministers: but the universal particle all rather guideth us to interpret it of the whole body of believers, of whom the apostle saith, that they all behold the glory of God with open face; that is, not under those dark types, shadows, and prophecies, that he was of old revealed under, but as in a looking-glass, which represents the face as at hand; not as in a perspective, which showeth things afar off. We behold him in the glass of the gospel, fully opened and preached; and this sight of Christ in the gospel is not a mere useless sight, but such a sight as changeth the soul into the image and likeness of Christ, from glory to glory; carrying on the souls of believers from one degree of grace to another; or making such a glorious change in the heart, as shall not be blotted out until a soul cometh into those possessions of glory which God hath prepared for his people. And all this is done by the Spirit of the Lord, working with the word of God in the mouths of his ministers, but so as the Spirit hath the principal agency and efficiency in the work.
Ver. 18. But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image.—
Mirrors of Christ:—1. We should substitute “reflecting” for “beholding.” Christians are represented not as persons looking into a mirror, but as themselves the mirrors. They who uncover their souls to the influence of Christ reflect His glory, and by continuing to do so they attain to that glory. It is as if by some process the image of a person who gazes into a mirror should not be merely reflected for the moment, but permanently stamped upon it. 2. Recall the incident which suggested the figure. When Moses came down from the Mount his countenance shone so as to dazzle beholders; he acted, as it were, like a mirror to the glory of God. But Moses knew that the reflection would pass away, and therefore he put on a veil, that the people “might not see the end of it.” Had they done so they might have supposed that God had retired from him, and that no more authority belonged to him, and therefore Moses put on the veil; but when he returned to receive new communications from God he met God with unveiled face. But, says Paul, the wrong-headedness of the Jews is perpetuating this veil. When the O. T. is read, there is a veil preventing them from seeing the end of the glory of Moses in Christ; they think the glory still abides in Moses. But when they return, as Moses used to return, to the Lord, they will lay aside the veil as he did, and then the glory of the Lord shall shine upon, and be reflected by, them. This reflection will not fade away, but increase from one glory to another—to perfect resemblance to the original. This is a glory not skin-deep like that of Moses, but penetrating the character and changing our inmost nature into Christ’s image. 3. The idea, then, is that they who are much in Christ’s presence become mirrors to Him, reflecting more and more permanently His image until they themselves perfectly resemble Him. This assertion rests on the well-known law that a reflected image tends in many circumstances to become fixed. Your eye, e.g., is a mirror which retains for a little the image it has been reflecting. Let the sun shine upon it, and wherever you look for a time you will still see the sun. The child who grows up with a parent he respects unconsciously reflects a thousand of his attitudes, looks, and ways, which gradually become the child’s own. We are all of us, to a great extent, made by the company we keep. There is a natural readiness in us all to reflect and respond to the emotions expressed in our presence. If another person laughs, we can scarcely refrain from laughing; if we see a man in pain, our face reflects what is passing in him. And so every one who associates with Christ finds that to some extent he reflects His glory. It is His image which always reawakens in us a response to what is good and right. It is He who saves us from becoming altogether a reflection of a world lying in wickedness, from being formed by our own evil-heartedness, and from persuading ourselves we may live as we list. His own patient lips seem to say, “Follow Me; be in this world as I was in it.” Our duty, then, if we would be transformed into the image of Christ, is plain.
I. WE MUST ASSOCIATE WITH HIM. Even one thought of Him does some good, but we must learn to abide with Him. It is by a series of impressions that His image becomes fixed in us. As soon as we cease to be conscious of Christ we cease to reflect Him, just as when an object passes from before a mirror, the reflection simultaneously goes with it. Besides, we are exposed to objects the most destructive to Christ’s image in us. As often as our hearts are exposed to some tempting thing and respond to it, it is that reflection which is seen in us, mingled often with the fading reflection of Christ; the two images forming together a monstrous representation.
II. WE MUST BE CAREFUL TO TURN FULLY ROUND TO CHRIST. The mirror must be set quite square to that which it is to reflect. In many positions you can see many other images in a mirror without seeing yourself. And so, unless we give our full front, our direct, straightforward, whole attention to Christ, He may see in us, not His own image at all, but the images of things abhorrent to Him. The man who is not wholly satisfied in Christ, who has aims or purposes that Christ will not fulfil for him, is not wholly turned towards Christ. The man who, while he prays to Christ, is keeping one eye open towards the world, is a mirror set obliquely; so that he reflects not Christ at all, but other things which are making him the man he is.
III. WE MUST STAND IN HIS PRESENCE WITH OPEN, UNVEILED FACE. We may wear a veil in the world, refusing to reflect it; but when we return to the Lord we must uncover our face. A covered mirror reflects nothing. Others find Christ in the reading of the Word, in prayer, in the services of His house, in a number of little providences—in fact everywhere, because their eyes are unveiled. We may read the very same word and wonder at their emotion; we may pass through the same circumstances and be quite unconscious of Christ; we may be at the communion table side by side with one who is radiant with the glory of Christ and yet an impalpable veil between us and him may hide all this from us. And our danger is that we let the dust gather upon us till we see and reflect no ray of that glory. We do nothing to brush off the dust, but let Him pass by and leave no more mark on us than if He had not been present. This veil is not like a slight dimness occasioned by moisture on a mirror, which the warm presence of Christ will itself dry up; it is rather an incrustation that has grown out from our own hearts, thickly covering them and making them thoroughly impervious to the light of Heaven. The heart is overlaid with worldly ambitions; with fleshly appetites; with schemes of self-advancement. All these, and everything which has no sympathy with what is spiritual and Christ-like, must be removed, and the mirror must be kept clean, if there is to be any reflection. In some persons you might be tempted to say that the mischief is produced not so much by a veil on the mirror as by a lack of quicksilver behind it. There is no solid backing to the character, no material for the truth to work upon, or there is no energetic thinking, no diligent, painstaking spiritual culture. Conclusion: 1. Observe the perfectness of this mode of sanctification. It is perfect—(1) In its end; it is likeness to Christ in which it terminates. And as often as you set yourself before Christ, and in presence of His perfect character begin to feel the blemishes in your own, you forget the points of resemblance, and feel that you cannot rest until the likeness is perfect. And so the Christian goes from glory to glory, from one reflection of Christ’s image to another, until perfection is attained. (2) In its method. It extends to the whole character at once. When a sculptor is cutting out a bust, or a painter filling in a likeness, one feature may be pretty nearly finished while the rest are undiscernible; but when a person stands before a mirror the whole face is at once reflected. And in sanctification the same law holds good. Many of us take the wrong method; we hammer and chisel away at ourselves to produce some resemblance to Christ in one feature or another; but the result is that either in a day or two we quite forget what grace we were trying to develop; or, succeeding somewhat, we find that our character as a whole is more provokingly unlike Christ than ever. Consider how this appears in the moulding men undergo in society. You know in what class of society a man has been brought up, not by his accent, bearing, conversation, or look alone, but by all these together. The society a man moves in impresses on all he does and is a certain style and manner and tone. So the only effectual way of becoming like Christ in all points is to be much in His society. 2. Some of us lament that there is so little we can do for Christ. But we can all reflect Him, and by reflecting Him we shall certainly extend the knowledge of Him on earth. Many who do not look at Him, look at you. As in a mirror persons (looking into it from the side) see the reflections of objects which are themselves invisible, so persons will see in you an image of what they do not directly see, which will cause them to wonder, and turn to study for themselves the substantial figure which produces it. 3. The mirror cannot produce an image of that which has no reality. And as little can any man produce in himself dud of himself the character of Christ. (M. Dods, D.D.)
The gospel the reflective mirror of the glory of the Lord:—
I. WE MUST EXPLAIN THE OBJECT OF VISION. “The glory of the Lord.” Every discovery which the Lord has made of Himself to His rational creatures is for the manifestation of His own glory. The works of creation were intended to show forth His glory. In process of time the Divine Being gave a more complete revelation of His glory, by the ministry of Moses, to a nation whom He had ordained to be the repository of His truth.
II. THE REFLECTIVE MEDIUM. A glass or mirror. Divine revelation is a mirror in which we perceive, and from which is reflected, the glory of the Lord. The ministration of the Spirit exceeds in glory the ministration of death and condemnation, inasmuch as—1. Its discoveries are more satisfactory. 2. The miracles by which they were attested were more benevolent. 3. The grace of the latter is more abundant than that of the former. By grace here we mean the bestowment of spiritual life and salvation to the souls of sinful men. If we look at the general character of the Israelitish nation, from the time of Moses to the coming of Christ, we shall perceive but little manifestation of genuine piety towards God. But how abundant was the grace when Christ appeared, “in the fulness of time,” “to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself!” Then Jews and Gentiles received the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit in so copious a manner as to fulfil the beautiful predictions of the prophet: “Until the Spirit be poured on us from on high, and the wilderness be a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be counted for a forest.”
III. THE DISTINCTNESS OF ITS PERCEPTION. “With open” or “unveiled face.”
IV. THE TRANSFORMING POWER OF THIS VISION. “Changed from glory to glory.” Thus faith in Divine revelation is a holy perception of the mind, by which the glory of God in Christ is discovered, and this discovery has a powerful reaction upon the soul, and as the object is more distinctly perceived, the progressive sanctification of good men is advanced till they possess the perfect image of their Lord.
V. THE DIVINE AGENT BY WHICH THIS IS EFFECTED. “The Spirit of the Lord,” or “the Lord the Spirit.” 1. Here the personality and divinity of the Holy Spirit are asserted. 2. None but a Divine Being could accomplish His work. The Spirit of God creates the soul of every converted man anew. In improvement of the subject we have been considering I shall make only two observations. 1. How great is your privilege, and how awful your responsibility! 2. The Christian has to leave reflective mirrors for the full vision of the Saviour’s glory. (W. Jones.)
Mirrors of Christ:—
I. IN EVERY REFLECTOR THERE MUST BE AN EXPOSURE OF ITSELF TO THE SUN, SO THAT THE LIGHT MAY FALL FULL UPON IT. So if we would reflect the glories of God, we must make a full presentation of ourselves to God. How many of us fail to shire just because of some spiritual obliquity of aim and purpose!
II. A REFLECTOR CAN ONLY ANSWER ITS PURPOSE WHEN THERE IS NOTHING INTERPOSED BETWEEN IT AND THE SOURCE OF LIGHT. We need to have our face unveiled in order to receive the light as well as to reflect it. The introduction of some substance renders the reflector useless. Now observe, the sun is very seldom eclipsed, but when that is so the world itself is in no way accountable; another orb is interposed between the earth and the sun. Even so the Christian’s light may sometimes be eclipsed, not because of any fault of ours, but for some wise purpose which God has in view. But it is otherwise with self-caused darkness. The sun, while seldom eclipsed, is frequently beclouded, and by clouds which are due to exhalations arising from the earth. Alas! how many Christians live under a clouded sky, for which they have only to thank themselves. 1. Here is one who lives under the ominous thundercloud of care. 2. Here is another who dwells in the fog of earthly-mindedness. 3. Here is yet another who is wrapped round in the cold mist of doubts and fears, steaming up from the restless sea of human experiences.
III. IF A MIRROR IS TO REFLECT IT MUST BE KEPT CLEAN. I saw an ancient mirror of polished steel in an old baronial hall. There it was, in just as good condition as when fair ladies saw their faces reflected in it in the days of the Plantagenets. But its preservation in the damp atmosphere of Cornwall was due to the fact that generation after generation of servants had always kept it clean. Just think how one small spot of rust in all these hundreds of years would have marred that surface for ever. Oh, Christian, no wonder that thou hast lost thy reflecting power. Thou hast been careless about little things; but nothing can be smaller than the dust which robs the mirror of its reflecting power. Or perhaps thou hast allowed the rust spots of evil habits to spoil thy surface. Let us see to it that we keep the mirror bright and unsullied! The most virulent corrosive acid can do but little harm to the surface of polished steel, if wiped off the moment it falls; but let it remain, and very soon an irreparable mischief is done. Even so you may be overtaken even in a very serious fault; but when it has been promptly confessed and put away, the truth is realised: “If we walk in the light, as He is in the light,” &c.
IV. NOTE THE WAY IN WHICH THE ANCIENT MIRRORS WERE FORMED. The metal had to be smoothed and polished by friction. 1. And are we not God’s workmanship in this respect, and does He not employ our trying experiences here just to induce this end? 2. The mirror needs to be polished by a skilled hand; and as long as we are in God’s hands, He can, and will, polish us for Himself. But when we take ourselves out of His hands, and only see chance or circumstances or stern old mother Nature, in our experiences, these clumsy operators only scratch the surface, which needs to be polished.
V. But there comes a point when the figure breaks down, for THE MIRROR ALWAYS REMAINS A MIRROR—dark itself, however much light it may reflect. BUT IT IS OTHERWISE WITH THE TRUE CHRISTIAN. 1. The light not only falls on but enters into him, and becomes part of himself. The true Christian is not only a light-giver—he is light. “Now are ye light in the Lord.” The Christian who puts a veil on his face because he does not care to give, will find that he is also precluded by his veil from receiving; but he who both receives and gives will also find that he keeps. 2. And that which he keeps proves within him a transforming power by which he is changed from glory into glory. Thank God for our capacity of change. There are some who seem to be proud of never changing. 3. We are familiar with the idea that God is to be glorified in each fresh stage of spiritual experience, but are we equally familiar with the thought that each fresh acquisition that faith lays hold of brings new glory with it to him by whom the acquisition is made? From glory unto glory. (1) Is it not glory when first the sinner, dead in trespasses and sins, hears Christ say, “He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live”? (2) Time passes on, and the soul cries again “Glory to God!” as he makes the discovery that the redemption of Christ entitles him to be free indeed from the tyrant power of sin. (3) Time flies on, and still we change. “Glory to God!” cries the working Christian, as he presents his body a living sacrifice, and feels the living fire descend and consecrate the offering. “Glory to thee, My child,” the Saviour still seems to answer; “thou art a worker together with Me; thy labour is not in vain in Me thy Lord.” (4) Still we change. “Glory to God!” cries the advancing saint, as he sees the prize of his high calling, and presses towards it. “Glory to thee, my child,” is still the Saviour’s response; “as thou hast borne the image of the earthly, so shalt thou bear the image of the earthly, so shalt thou bear the image of the heavenly. (5) Thus we press on from glory unto glory until it is all glory. “Glory to God!” exclaims the triumphant soul as he enters the eternal home. “Glory to thee, my child!” still seems the answer, as Christ bids His faithful follower share His throne. Oh, may we thus reflect His glory for ever! (W. Hay-Aitken, M.A.)
The transforming influence of faith:—
I. THE CONTEMPLATION OF CHRIST. “We all with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord.” 1. The object beheld. “The glory of the Lord,” “He is the Lord of all”—of all men, of all creatures, of all things. He is the rightful Proprietor of the universe. The primary meaning of glory is brightness, splendour; and the secondary meaning is excellence displayed, according to its subject, and the nature of the object to which it is ascribed. In which of these senses is glory here ascribed to the Lord Christ? In the latter, not in the former sense. It is not the glory of His might, nor the glory of His majesty, nor even the glory of His miracles, of which His personal disciples were eye-witnesses; but the glory of His moral perfections. God is “glorious in holiness,” and “the glory of the Lord” is His moral excellence, comprised and displayed in all His moral attributes. The former are displayed in His works; the latter shine brightest in His Word. In a word, the glory of the Lord was the manifestation of His Divine philanthropy—“of the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward men.” 2. The medium in which His glory is beheld. “Beholding as in a glass,” or rather, as in a mirror. What, then, is the mirror which receives the image, and reflects back on the eye of the beholders, the glory of the Lord? What, but the gospel of Christ. And Christ is at once the Author, the subject, and the sum of the gospel. It derives all the glory it possesses and reflects, from the glory of the Lord. It receives its being, its name, its character, and its efficacy from Him. It originates nothing; all that it is, all that it says, and all that it does, is from Him, about Him, and for Him. And the image of Him which the gospel receives as the image of the invisible God, the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person, it reflects back as from a burnished mirror, in all its lineaments, and fulness, and glory, and distinctness. The glory of the gospel of Christ, as a mirror, contrasts strikingly with the law as “a shadow of things to come.” The good things to come were seen by the Old Testament saints in the types and ceremonies of the law. The view was dim as well as distant; indistinct, uncertain, and unsatisfying. But the sight of the glory of the Lord in the mirror of the gospel is near and not distant, luminous and not dark, distinct and not obscure or uncertain, and transforming but not terrifying. 3. The manner. “With open face.” The face is said to be open when it is guileless, ingenuous, and benevolent, and not sinister, crafty, or malicious; or, when the face itself is fully exposed, and not covered. This last is obviously the meaning of the expression employed. With open, that is, with unveiled face. Those who apply it to the face of the Lord make a slight transposition of the words to make the sense more apparent. Thus: “We all, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord with unveiled face.” His face is unveiled, and His glory is thus undimmed. It shines forth in all its splendour. If the “unveiled face” be understood of the beholders, according to our version, then the reference is to the more immediate context in the fifteenth verse, and the contrast is between them, and “the veil which is upon the heart” of the unbelieving Jews. Now, all this serves to show that, while the most obvious reference may be to the veil over the face of Moses as contrasted with the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, it is not to the exclusion of the veil upon the heart of the Jews as contrasted with the open, unveiled face of the beholders of the glory of the Lord. “Which veil is done away in Christ?” Indeed, both veils are now removed, and done away in Christ:—the obscurity caused by the former is removed by the luminous exhibition of the gospel of Christ, and the blindness of mind caused by the latter is removed by the ministration of the Spirit. 4. The beholders. Who are the persons indicated by, and included in the “we all” who thus behold the glory of the Lord? Is it all we apostles only? or even all we whom He hath “made able ministers of the New Testament”? The expression includes all who are subjects of the new covenant, who are under grace, and in a state of grace, “all who have turned to the Lord” (Ver. 16). Not only do all who turn, or are converted to the Lord, possess, exercise, and maintain their Christian liberty, but they are all “light in the Lord.” The light of the glorious gospel of Christ, the medium of spiritual vision, is not only held up as a mirror before their eyes, as before the eyes of the world; but the organ of spiritual vision is opened, unveiled, and directed to the image beheld there, radiant with beauty, and reflecting back the glory of the Lord on the eyes of the beholders.
II. CONFORMITY TO CHRIST. The change thus produced is—1. Spiritual in its nature. All the glory seen on the summit, and around the base, of Mount Sinai, was of a material and sensible kind. Moses saw the glory of the Lord with his bodily eyes; the shekinah, or symbol of the Divine glory, made the skin of his face to shine. It is otherwise with the glory beheld, with the medium, the manner, and the organ of vision here—all is spiritual, and not material in its nature. The gospel reveals, and holds up to view, the things of the Spirit. And spiritual things must be spiritually discerned. They do not act as a charm. Nothing can possibly affect, impress, or influence us mentally, any longer than it is in our thoughts; or, morally, any longer than it is in our memory and in our heart. The gospel of Christ operates according to the attention and reception given to it, and the use we make of it. 2. Transforming in its influence. It is a law in nature, and a truth in proverb, that “like produces like.” The man who is much at court, naturally and almost unconsciously catches the air, impress, and polish of the court, so that he become courtly, if not courteous in spirit, in address, in manners and deportment. In going to the house of mourning, which it is better to go to than to the house of feasting, we almost insensibly catch the spirit of sympathy, and feel the spirit of mourning creeping over us. The heart softens; the countenance saddens; the eye moistens. Constituted as we all are, how can it be otherwise? Looking steadfastly and intently at such moral excellence we admire; admiring we love; loving we long to imitate it; imitation produces likeness to Him in mind, in disposition, in will, in walk, and way. Do we thus behold the love of Christ? “We love Him, because He first loved us.” Do we behold Him as “the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world”? We become “dead to sin, and alive to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” 3. Glorious in its progress. The glory of Moses’ countenance became more and more dim, by distance of time and of place from the scene and sight of glory, till it entirely disappeared. But the glory of the Lord remains the same, and the glory of the gospel reflecting it remains the same, and the more steadfastly and earnestly we behold it, the more will we be changed into the same glorious image. The expression employed is an evidence that grace and glory are not only inseparable, but in substance identical. So far from differing in kind they are so essentially the same, that the sacred writers sometimes use the words interchangeably. Paul here uses “glory” for grace in speaking of the glorious transformation of believers from grace to glory; and Peter uses “grace” for glory in speaking of the glory “that is to be brought unto us at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” And the reason is no less plain than the lesson is instructive and important. The partaker of grace is “also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed.” 4. Divine in efficiency, “Even as by the Spirit of the Lord,” or as the margin has it more literally and properly. “Even as by the Lord the Spirit.” It is His prerogative, and it becomes His spiritual dominion to open and unveil the heart, to enlighten the eyes of the understanding, to fix them on the glory of the Lord, to quicken the spirit, and thus to make His subjects “a willing people in the day of His power.” This subject sets before us the privilege of gospel hearers, and the honour of gospel believers, and the doom of gospel despisers. It shows—1. The privilege of gospel hearers. All who have the Word of God, who read or hear the gospel of Christ, are “not under the law, but under grace.” They are more highly privileged than were the Jews who were under the law, or the Gentiles who have not the law, and know not God. 2. The blessedness of gospel believers. They are the blessed people who know the joyful sound; they walk in the light of God’s countenance. 3. The doom of gospel despisers. They make light of the gospel of Christ; despise the Saviour it presents, and the salvation it proffers, and turn away from “the glory of the Lord.” (Geo. Robson.)
The physiognomy and photography of Christianity:—
I. THE PHYSIOGNOMY OF THE TEXT. 1. The open face. This is the antithesis of the covered face of Moses, and must therefore be Christ’s (chap. 4:6). The idea is physiognomical, face reading. Men profess to comprehend each other’s temperaments and dispositions by the study of their faces. Thus a man’s face is his character, at least the key to it. In this face of Jesus Christ shines the resplendent glory of God; it is an index of the Divine mind and feelings towards a sinful world. The human face becomes a profound mystery apart from the soul within. Its wonderful expressions cannot be understood except on the supposition of an indwelling spirit. When the sky is overcast, suddenly, maybe, a beam darts through, shedding a glow of beauty over the spot upon which it gleams. The mystery of that ray could not be solved except by the existence of a sun behind. It is only in the same way that the character of Christ can be understood. Denied His Divine nature Christ becomes a profounder mystery than when regarded as God incarnate. 2. It is an open face in a glass. Once it was an open face without any intervening object, when “He dwelt among men and they beheld His glory.” But now that His bodily presence has departed we have His face reflected in the gospel-mirror (chap. 4:4). It is through Christ we know God, and it is through the gospel that we know Christ. The sun, when it has set, is invisible to us. We then look up to the heavens, and there we observe the moon, which reflects the, to us, invisible sun. This moon is the sun’s image. Again, looking into the placid waters of the pool, we observe in its clear depth the moon’s reflection. God is imaged in Christ, and Christ is imaged in the gospel. Now, the superiority of the gospel over the Old Testament is represented by the difference between the glass and the veil. The veil obscures the face, the glass reveals it. In fact the mirror is of all instruments the one which gives the most correct representation of the original. The idea of a person conveyed by a mirror is immeasurably superior to that conveyed by the best painting. The face in the painting may represent a dead one, but the face in the mirror must represent a living one. If the mirror excels so much the best painting, how much must it excel a shadow! The Old Testament was only a “shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things.” A person’s shadow will give but a very indifferent idea of him. What, however, would be thought of the person who essayed to draw a picture of another from his shadow? Yet, this the Jews attempted to do in relation to Christ. So “to His own He came, and His own received Him not,” because His appearance did not harmonise with their preconceived conceptions of Him drawn from His shadow. Men, therefore, should seek Him in the gospel mirror, where alone He can be seen as He is.
II. THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF THE TEXT. “But we all … are changed into the same image,” &c. Here the apostle explains the effects of this transparent clearness of the gospel teaching. Beholding the Lord in the gospel transforms the beholder into His own image. This is in accordance with the analogy of natural photography. The light falls upon the object, that object again reflects it in its own form upon the prepared glass. The resplendent glory of God falls, so to speak, upon Christ in His mediatorial character; Christ reflects it upon the believing mind; the mind beholding Him in faith. The mind thus reflected upon by the incomparable beauties of Christ’s character is transformed into the same image. The work is progressive, but the first line of it is glory, and every additional one the same—“from glory to glory.” (A. J. Parry.)
The image:—
I. THE IMAGE. We must lay Exodus 34:33, &c., alongside of this chapter. So the sight of Christ’s glory does far more for us than the sight of God’s glory did for Moses. The skin of his face was lighted up; but our very souls are changed into likeness to Christ; and this change does not soon pass away, but continues growing from glory to glory, as might be expected, seeing it is the Spirit of the Lord who works the change in us. 1. Christ, as we see Him in the New Testament, is the most perfect image in the world. Only a little of God’s glory was revealed by Moses, but Christ is “God manifest in the flesh.” (1) God is Light, i.e., that is holiness, and how plainly that glory is imaged in the sinless Jesus! (2) God is Love, and that love is made perfectly plain by the life of Christ from the cradle to the cross. A poor African could not believe that the white man loved him. His heart was not won by cold far-off words about a far-off people. But love for the African became flesh in David Livingstone, and his life was a glass in which they saw the true image of Christian love. 2. This image is not like the image of the ascending Christ, which faded into heaven while the disciples gazed after it on the Mount of Olives. This is an unfading portrait. Age cannot dim it, earth’s mildew cannot discolour it, man’s rude hand cannot destroy it; it only grows brighter as it gathers fresh beauty from the blessed changes it is working in the world.
II. BEHOLDING OF THE IMAGE. I never saw the beauty of the sun so well as one day in a Highland lake, whose surface was like a mirror of polished glass. To see the naked sun face to face would have blinded me. When John saw Christ’s glory directly, though it was only in a vision, he fell down as a dead man, and the same glory blinded Saul of Tarsus. The Bible is a glass in which you may gaze without fear upon the glory of the Lord therein reflected, Moses was the one privileged man in his day. But now all Christians can draw as near to God as Moses did, for where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is this liberty. How can I rightly behold the glory of the Lord? 1. With an open or unveiled face, just as Moses took Off his veil when he turned to speak with Jehovah. A lady visiting a picture gallery on a wintry day shields her face from the biting blast with a thick veil; but, upon entering the gallery, she lifts up her veil that with open face she may fully behold the images created by sculptor and painter. Many veils hide Christ’s glory. The god of this world is busy blinding our minds by drawing a veil of prejudice, false shame, ignorance of an earthly mind over them (chap. 4:4). 2. You are to behold the image in the glass of the Bible. A picture or statue often serves only to remind me that the man is dead or far away, not so the image of Christ in the Bible. Some images, however, fill us with a sense of reality. Raphael painted the Pope, and the Pope’s secretary at first took the image for the living man, knelt and offered pen and ink to the portrait, with the request that the bill in his hand might be signed. The image we behold is drawn by the Divine hand, and should be to us a bright and present reality. 3. This beholding must be steady and life-long. Unless you look often at this image and love to do so, you will not get much good from Christ. Even man-made images impress only the steady beholders of them.
III. THE BEHOLDERS. 1. “They are changed into the same image.” Some people think that the beholding of beautiful pictures must do great good to the beholders; but when Athens and Rome were crowned with the most splendid pictures and statues, the people were the most wicked the world has yet seen. But the right beholding of this image gains a life of the same make as Christ’s. We become what we behold. Two boys had been poring over the life of Dick Turpin and Jack Sheppard. In that glass they beheld the image of lawless adventurers. They admired: they would be bold heroes too. They are soon changed into the image they gaze upon from shame to shame, even as by the spirit of the devil. Here is a gentle, lovely girl. Her mother is to her the very model and mirror of womanly perfection. She gladly yields herself up to her mother’s influence, and the neighbours say, “That girl is the living image of her mother”; for she receives what she admires, and silently grows like what she “likes” best. When some newspaper compared Dr. Judson to one of the apostles, he was distressed, and said, “I do not want to be like them. I want to be like Christ.” 2. This change is to be always going forward from glory to glory. 3. Your beholding of Christ and likeness to Christ are both imperfect on earth. In heaven there shall be a perfect beholding, and so a perfect likeness to Christ (Psa. 17:15). There as here being and beholding go together. We see this change growing towards perfectness in the martyr Stephen as he stood on the borderland between earth and heaven. Even his foes “saw his face as it had been the face of an angel.” 4. Christ’s people are to be changed so thoroughly into His image that they shall have a soul like His, and even a body like His. For “as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.” (J. Wells, M.A.)
The Christian’s transfiguration:—
I. WE ARE ALL TRANSFIGURED. If you look back a verse or two it is clearly seen that St. Paul means by these words to include all Christian men. “We all”—the words stand in vivid contrast to the literalising Jew of the apostle’s day; the Jew, who had the letter of Scripture, and worshipped it with a veil upon his heart; so that when Moses was read in his hearing, he could not see the meaning of the Old Testament, nor look one inch beyond the letter of the book. His religion was stereotyped, so his heart and life could not be transfigured. A religion of the letter cannot produce growth; it has no beautifying power, it cannot transfigure. In Christ, the case is far otherwise; where He is, there is liberty; where Christ is, there must be growth. Paul could not believe it possible that a Christian life could remain stagnant. Wherever there is growth, there must come, in the end, transfiguration. St. Paul felt that every believer must re-live in some measure the perfect life of Jesus. Here is the secret of transformation—Christ within, Christ about us as an atmosphere of moral growth. Fellowship with His perfect life gives human nature honour and dignity. The Thames is beautiful at Richmond, at Twickenham, at Kew, but not always so. At times the prospect, as you walk from Twickenham to Richmond, is spoiled by ugly flats of mud, and the air is not over pleasant, when the heat of summer draws the miasma from the sedgy bank. You may walk upon the bank and see but little beauty there. Wait a few hours, the tide will return and change the entire aspect of the river. It will become beautiful. The smallest river or tidal basin is beautified by connection with the sea. The pulse of ocean, if it raise the level but a few inches, adds dignity and beauty wherever it is felt. The river repeats, on a smaller scale, the larger life of the ocean, answering in its ebb and flow to what the sea has done before. So Paul felt that our nature is glorified because, through the Divine humanity of Jesus, it is connected with the ocean of eternal power and grace. The incarnation, the life, and the sacrifice of the Son of God have lifted human life to higher levels; they have created new interests and fresh currents in our thought and feeling. If our life flow onward towards Christ, and better still, if His fulness flow back upon us, we must, at flood tide, partake of His cleansing and transforming power. St. Paul does not here refer to the resurrection, his tenses are all present, and point to a change now taking place in our imperfect existence: “Changed from glory to glory.” There is a glory of Christian character which we may possess even now. “From glory to glory” implies steps and stages. There is a measure of beauty, of strength, of holy character, of transfiguration, possible to the feeblest Christian—transfiguration of heart and life, a glory now, a foretaste of the eternal glory, a firstfruits of the Spirit.
II. THE CAUSE OF THE CHANGE AND THE MEANS OF ITS ATTAINMENT. It is brought about by looking at Christ. “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory, are changed.” To be like Christ, we must look upon Him intently. Then, on the Divine side, there is the inward change. As we look, the Spirit works within. Both things are necessary. As we gaze, the Divine influence comes down upon us imperceptibly. We are all much affected by the things we look at from day to day. A man will find sights congenial to his heart and mind. If he be artistic, he will be on the look-out for pictures and sculpture, or beautiful scenes in nature. If he have a turn for science, he will find objects of study and delight in every field and wood. If we are affectionate, with strong social instincts, our principal attractions will be found in human society. Now all these objects, in turn, react upon us. The artistic mind grows and expands by the study of beauty. The scientific man becomes more scientific by the study of nature; while the social and affectionate disposition deepens in the search and attainment of its object. Apply this to the gospel. Again, we must not forget that the way we look is also important. Our manner of looking at Christ affects us. St. Paul says, we look with “unveiled face.” He here contrasts the Jewish with the Christian Church. Look at Christ, look daily, look appreciatively, lovingly, in tender sympathy, and the spirit of Christ will possess you. We may not be able to tell how the change comes about, nor why, neither need we anxiously inquire, provided we look at Christ and feel the Spirit’s power. God has many ways. Stand before the mirror, and you will see the light. We care not at what angle you gaze. Look at Christ through tears of penitence, look in hope, in joy, in love; let His light stream into the heart through any one of the many avenues of thought and feeling. (G. Walker, B.A.)
The change produced by faith in Jesus:—
I. THE BEHOLDING. 1. By beholding we are to understand faith in one of its liveliest and most important exercises. Faith is a living principle. It hath eyes, and it beholds Christ. This beholding does not consist of a single glance, of a passing survey. “Looking” is not a single act, but the habit of his soul. “Looking unto Jesus,” &c. 2. With open face. Under the Jewish dispensation Christ was exhibited, but it was as it were through a veil. There was a mystery attached to it. But now, when Christ came, the mystery which had been hid for ages is revealed. At the hour when Jesus said, “It is finished,” the veil that hid the holiest of all, and the innermost secrets of the covenant, was rent in twain from top to bottom. 3. As in a glass. We, whose eye is dimmed by sin, cannot see God as the spirits made perfect do in heaven. “No man hath seen God at any time.” Moses desired on one occasion to behold the glory of God. But the request could not be granted. “No man can see God and live.” Yet God gave him a signal manifestation of His presence (Exod. 34:5). Such is the view which God gives to the believer, of Himself in the face of His Son, as a just God who will by no means clear the guilty, and yet the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus—a gracious and encouraging view, not indeed of His essential glory, which the sinner cannot behold, but of His glory as exhibited in His grace, and on which the eye of the believer delights to rest.
II. WHAT IS BEHELD. “The glory of the Lord.” The Lord, as the whole context shows, is the Lord Christ—the proper object of faith. We look into the Word as into a mirror to fix our attention on the object reflected. In Him as thus disclosed we shall behold a glory. In His person He is “the brightness of the Father’s glory and the express image of His person.” In His work all the perfections of the Divine character meet as in a focus of surpassing brilliancy. There was a glory in His incarnation which the company of the heavenly host observed as they sang, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will to the children of men.” There was glory in His baptism, when the Holy Ghost descended upon Him, and the voice of the Father was heard declaring, “This is My well-beloved Son.” There was an imposing glory in His transfiguration. There was a glory, too, in His very humiliation in His sorrow, in the cursed death which He died. There was an evident glory in His resurrection, when, having gone down to the dark dominions of death, He came up a mighty conqueror, bearing the fruits of victory, and holding death in chains as His prisoner; and angels believed themselves honoured in announcing that “the Lord is risen.” There was a glory in His ascension. “Thou hast ascended on high, leading captivity captive” (Psa. 24). He is in glory now at the right hand of God, which glory Stephen was privileged to behold. He shall come in glory at the last day to judge the world. He shall dwell in His glory through all eternity, and the saints shall be partakers with Him of that glory. Now all this glory is exhibited in the volume of the Book, just as we have seen an expansive scene of sky and cloud, of hills and plains, of streams and woods, reflected and exhibited before us in a mirror, and we all with open face behold as in a glass the glory of the Lord.
III. THE EFFECT PRODUCED … This transforming power of faith arises from two sources not independent of each other, but still separable. 1. Faith is the receiving grace of the Christian character, and the soul is enriched by the treasures poured through it as a channel. Herein lies the great efficacy of faith; it receives that which is given it, and through it the virtue that is in Christ flows into the soul, enriches and satisfies it, and changes it into the same image. 2. Faith produces this effect, inasmuch as it makes us look to and copy Christ. The Spirit carries on the work of sanctification by making us look unto Jesus, and whatever we look to with admiration and love we are disposed willingly, sometimes almost involuntarily, to imitate. We grow in likeness to Him whom we love and admire.
IV. THE AGENT. “The Spirit of the Lord.” Note—1. The harmony between the work of the Spirit and the principles of man’s mind. He does not convert or sanctify sinners against their will, but by making them a willing people in the day of His power. What He does in us He does by us. It is when we are beholding the glory of the Lord Christ that the Spirit changes us into the same image from glory to glory. 2. The harmony between the work of Christ the Lord and the work of the Spirit of the Lord. The Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, who takes of the things that are Christ’s and shows them unto us. The Spirit directs our eyes to Christ, and it is when we look to the Lord Christ that we are changed into the same image. (J. McCosh, D.D.)
Transformation by beholding:—
I. THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IS A LIFE OF CONTEMPLATING AND REFLECTING CHRIST. It is a question whether the single word rendered in our version “beholding as in a glass,” means that, or “reflecting as a glass does.” But, whatever be the exact force of the word, the thing intended includes both acts. There is no reflection of the light without a previous reception of the light. In bodily sight, the eye is a mirror, and there is no sight without an image of the thing perceived formed in the perceiving eye. In spiritual sight, the soul which beholds is a mirror, and at once beholds and reflects. 1. The great truth of a direct, unimpeded vision sounds strange to many of us. Does not Paul himself teach that we see through a glass darkly? Do we not walk by faith and not by sight? “No man hath seen God at any time, nor can see Him”; and beside that absolute impossibility have we not veils of flesh and sense, to say nothing of the covering of sin. But these apparent difficulties drop away when we take into account two things—(1) The object of vision. “The Lord” is Jesus Christ, the manifested God, our brother. The glory which we behold and give back is not the incomprehensible, incommunicable lustre of the absolute Divine perfectness, but that glory which, as John says, we beheld in Him who tabernacled with us, full of grace and truth. (2) The real nature of the vision itself. It is the beholding of Him with the soul by faith. “Seeing is believing,” says sense; “believing is seeing,” says the spirit which clings to the Lord, “whom having not seen” it loves. A bridge of perishable flesh, which is not myself but my tool, connects me with the outward world. It never touches myself at all, and I know it only by trust in my senses. But nothing intervenes between my Lord and me, when I love and trust. He is the light, which proves its own existence by revealing itself, which strikes with quickening impulse on the eye of the spirit that beholds by faith. 2. Note the universality of this prerogative: “We all.” This vision does not belong to any select handful. Christ reveals Himself to all His servants in the measure of their desire after Him. Whatsoever special gifts may belong to a few in His Church, the greatest gift belongs to all. 3. This contemplation involves reflection. What we see we shall certainly show. If you look into a man’s eye, you will see in it little pictures of what he beholds; and if our hearts are beholding Christ, Christ will be mirrored there. Our characters will show what we are looking at, and ought, in the case of Christian people, to bear His image so plainly that men cannot but take knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus. And you may be quite sure that, if little light comes from a Christian character, little light comes into it; and if it be swathed in thick veils from men, there will be no less thick veils between it and God. Away then with all veils! No reserve, no fear of the consequences of plain speaking, no diplomatic prudence regulating our frank utterance, no secret doctrines for the initiated! Our power and our duty lies in the full exhibition of the truth.
II. THIS LIFE OF CONTEMPLATION IS THEREFORE A LIFE OF GRADUAL TRANSFORMATION. 1. The brightness on the face of Moses was only skin-deep. It faded away, and left no trace. Thus the superficial lustre, that had neither permanence nor transforming power, becomes an illustration of the powerlessness of law to change the moral character into the likeness of the fair ideal which it sets forth. And, in opposition to its weakness, the apostle proclaims the great principle of Christian progress, that the beholding of Christ leads to the assimilation to Him. 2. The metaphor of a mirror does not wholly serve us here. When the sunbeams fall upon it, it flashes in the light, just because they do not enter its cold surface. The contrary is the case with these sentient mirrors of our spirits. In them the light must first sink in before it can ray out. They are not so much like a reflecting surface as like a bar of iron, which needs to be heated right down to its obstinate black core, before its outer skin glow with the whiteness of a heat that is too hot to sparkle. The sunshine must fall on us, not as it does on some lonely hillside, lighting up the grey stones with a passing gleam that changes nothing, and fades away, leaving the solitude to its sadness; but as it does on some cloud cradled near its setting, which it drenches and saturates with fire till its cold heart burns, and all its wreaths of vapour are brightness palpable, glorified by the light which lives amidst its mists. 3. And this contemplation will be gradual transformation. “We all beholding … are changed.” It is not the mere beholding, but the gaze of love and trust that moulds us by silent sympathy into the likeness of His wondrous beauty, who is fairer than the children of men. It was a deep true thought which the old painters had when they drew John as likest to his Lord. Love makes us like. We learn that even in our earthly relationships. Let that pure face shine upon heart and spirit, and as the sun photographs itself on the sensitive plate exposed to its light, and you get a likeness of the sun by simply laying the thing in the sun, so He will “be formed in you.” Iron near a magnet becomes magnetic. Spirits that dwell with Christ become Christ-like. 4. Surely this message—“behold and be like”—ought to be very joyful and enlightening to many of us, who are wearied with painful struggles after isolated pieces of goodness that elude our grasp. You have been trying half your lifetime to cure faults, and make yourselves better. Try this other plan. Live in sight of your Lord, and catch His spirit. The man that travels with his face northwards has it grey and cold. Let him turn to the warm south, where the midday sun dwells, and his face will glow with the brightness that he sees. “Looking unto Jesus” is the sovereign cure for all our ills and sins. 5. Such transformation comes gradually. “We are changed”; that is a continuous operation. “From glory to glory”; that is a course which has well-marked transitions and degrees. Be not impatient if it be slow. Do not be complacent over the partial transformation which you have felt. See to it that you neither turn away your gaze nor relax your efforts till all that you have beheld in Him is repeated in you. 6. Likeness to Christ is the aim of all religion. To it conversion is introductory; doctrines, ceremonies, churches, and organisations are valuable as auxiliary. Prize and use them as helps towards it, and remember that they are helps only in proportion as they show us the Saviour, the image of whom is our perfectness, the beholding of whom is our transformation.
III. THE LIFE OF CONTEMPLATION FINALLY BECOMES A LIFE OF COMPLETE ASSIMILATION. “Changed into the same image, from glory to glory.” 1. The likeness becomes every way perfecter, comprehends more and more of the faculties of the man; soaks into him, if I may say so, until he is saturated with the glory: and in all the extent of his being, and in all the depth possible to each part of that whole extent, is like his Lord. That is the hope for heaven, towards which we may indefinitely approximate here, and at which we shall absolutely arrive there. There we expect changes which are impossible here, while compassed with this body of sinful flesh. We look to Him to “change the body of our lowliness, that it may be fashioned like unto the body of His glory”; but it is better to be like Him in our hearts. His true image is that we should feel, think, will as He does; that we should have the same sympathies, the same loves, the same attitude towards God, and the same attitude towards men. Wherever there is the beginning of that oneness and likeness of spirit, all the rest will come in due time. As the spirit, so the body. But the beginning here is the main thing, which draws all the rest after it as of course. “If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you,” &c. 2. “We are all changed into the same image.” Various as we are in disposition and character, differing in everything but the common relation to Jesus Christ, we are all growing like the same image, and we shall come to be perfectly like it, and yet each retain his own distinct individuality. Perhaps, too, we may connect with this idea that passage in the Ephesians in which Paul describes our all coming to “a perfect man.” The whole of us together make a perfect man; the whole make one image. No one man, even raised to the highest pitch of perfection, can be the full image of that infinite sum of all beauty; but the whole of us taken together, with all the diversities of natural character retained and consecrated, being collectively His body which He vitalises, may, on the whole, be not a wholly inadequate representation of our perfect Lord. Just as we set round a central light sparkling prisms, each of which catches the glow at its own angle, and flashes it back of its own colour, while the sovereign completeness of the perfect white radiance comes from the blending of all their separate rays, so they who stand round about the starry throne receive each the light in his own measure and manner, and give forth each a true and perfect, and altogether a complete image of Him that enlightens them all, and is above them all. (A. Maclaren, D.D.)
The transfiguring vision:—
I. THE MIRRORED GLORY. 1. Glory is the effulgence of light; the manifested perfection of moral character. 2. In the gospel we have an exhibition of the blended righteousness and compassion of God; so it is called “the gospel of the glory of the blessed God.” And since these attributes shine with softened splendour in Christ, it is called the “gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” 3. And we may all behold it. Like the famous fresco in the ceiling of the cathedral, which was brought within easy reach by reflecting mirrors on the floor. We could not all be contemporaries of the living Jesus. But now, in the fourfold biography, we may all at our leisure behold the glory of the Lord.
II. THE TRANSFIGURING VISION. In the very act of looking we are “metamorphosed.” The same Greek word used to describe the transfiguration of Christ. 1. Some gaze and are not changed. They have never so felt the evil of sin as to put the whole soul into a look. So multitudes of hearers have their minds filled with Christian truth, but they do not gaze so long, fixedly, lovingly, as to experience the interior and radical transformation. 2. Others gaze and are changed. Flinging away obscuring veils, and fixing the steadfast gaze on Jesus, they are transfigured. (1) This change is moral. By the law of our inner life we come to resemble what we love. Love to the Lord Jesus makes us like Him. (2) This change is gradual, progressive, “from glory to glory.” The initial change may be the work of a moment; the complete process is the work of a life-time. Comforting thought to those who grow weary and disheartened after painful struggles to reach an ideal goodness which ever seems to elude their grasp. Cease from working; sit still and look; let His image sweetly creep into the eye and prospect of your soul.
III. ITS GREAT AUTHOR. “The Lord the Spirit.” When the veil of unbelief is taken away, the Lord Himself obtains access to the heart and imparts Himself. Where He is, there, too, is the Holy Ghost. He effects the marvellous transformation. He supplies the needed illumination. He reveals the saving sight, removes obscuring veils, purges the spiritual perceptions, and dwells within as source of the transfiguring and assimilative power. (A. Wilson, B.A.)
True human greatness:—1. Every man has a strong natural instinct for greatness and applause. 2. A wrong direction of this instinct originates enormous mischief. 3. The mission of Christianity is to give a right direction to this instinct. Of all the systems on earth it alone teaches man what true greatness is, and the way to attain it. The text teaches three things concerning it.
I. THE IDEAL OF TRUE GREATNESS IS DIVINE. What is the glory of the Lord? (See Exod. 18:19). This passage teaches that the Eternal regarded His glory as consisting not in the immensity of His possessions, the almightiness of His power, or the infinitude of His wisdom, but in His goodness. The true greatness of man consists in moral goodness. 1. This greatness is soul-satisfying—and this alone. 2. This greatness commands the respect of all moral intelligence—and this alone. 3. This greatness is attainable by all persons—and this alone. 4. This greatness we carry into the other world—and this alone.
II. THE PATH OF TRUE GREATNESS IS MORAL TRANSFORMATION. How is man to come into possession of God’s glory? 1. By means of an instrument—glass. What is the glass? The mirror that reflects the glory of God. Nature is a glass. Judaism is a glass. Christ is a glass. He is the brightest glass of all—reflects more Divine rays upon the universe than any other. 2. By means of attention to that instrument. “By looking.” Men look at the glitterings of worldly glory, not on the glowing beams of the Divine, and hence they are not changed into the Divine. Observe—(1) A concentrated looking on Christ commands admiration. (2) Admiration commands imitation. Christ is the most inimitable being in the universe, because His character is the most admirable, the most transparent, the most unchangeable. (3) Imitation ensures assimilation. Here, then, is the path to true glory—a path clear as day, certain as eternity. All who tread this path must become glorious.
III. THE LAW OF TRUE GREATNESS IS PROGRESSIVE. “From glory to glory.” Glory in God is unprogressive, but in all intelligent creatures it is ever advancing. Two things show that the human soul is made for endless advancement. 1. Facts in connection with its nature. (1) Its appetites are intensified by its supplies. (2) Its capacities augment with its attainments; the more it has the more it is capable of receiving. (3) Its productiveness increases with its productions. Not so with the soil of the earth, or the trees of the forest, all wear themselves out. 2. Arrangements in connection with its history. There are three things which always serve to bring out the latent powers of the soul. (1) A new relationship. The wondrous powers and experiences slumbering in every human heart of maternity and fatherhood are brought out by relationship. (2) New sceneries. New sceneries in nature often start in the mind feelings and powers unknown before. (3) New engagements. Many a man who was thought a mere dolt in one occupation, transferred to another has become a brilliant genius. These three soul-developing forces we have here, we shall have for ever.
IV. THE AUTHOR OF TRUE GREATNESS IS THE SPIRIT OF GOD. How does He do it? As He does everything else in creation—by means; and the means are here stated, “Beholding as in a glass.” Conclusion: How transcendently valuable is Christianity, inasmuch as it directs the human soul to true glory and indicates the way of realising it! (D. Thomas, D.D.)
The unfolded glory:—Man has an instinct for glory. Religion therefore to adapt itself to this instinct. Hence the glorious character of the two dispensations whereof the last is the greater.
I. THE GOSPEL IS A REFLECTION OF GOD’S GLORY. 1. The person of Christ reflects the Divine nature. 2. The ministry of Christ reflects the Divine mind. 3. His death reveals the Divine heart.
II. THE BELIEVER REFLECTS THE GLORY OF GOD. 1. Spiritual mindedness (2 Pet. 1:4). 2. Immortal life.
III. BEHOLDING AND REFLECTING THE GLORY OF THE LORD IS PROGRESSIVE (2 Pet. 2:5–7). (T. Davis, Ph.D.)
Mortal assimilation:—Our moral nature is intensely assimilative. The mind gets like that which it feeds on. Alexander the Great was incited to his deeds of conquest by reading Homer’s “Iliad.” Julius Cæsar and Charles the Twelfth of Sweden derived much of their military enthusiasm from studying the life of Alexander. When a sensitive, delicate boy, Cowper met with and eagerly devoured a treatise in favour of suicide. Can we doubt that its plausible arguments were closely connected with his four attempts to destroy himself? If, however, we cherish thoughts of the good and the noble, we shall become both. “Beholding, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image.” Ecclesiastical tradition declares that St. Martin once had a remarkable vision. The Saviour stood before him. Radiant with Divine beauty, there the Master appeared. One relic of His humiliation remained. What was it? His hands retained the marks of the nails. The spectator gazed sympathetically and intently. So long did he look that, when the apparition ceased, he found that he had in his own hands marks precisely resembling those of Christ. None but the superstitious believe the story; nevertheless, it “points a moral.” It reminds us of the great fact that devout and affectionate contemplation of our Lord makes us Christ-like. (T. R. Stevenson.
3:18 we all. Not just Moses, or prophets, apostles, and preachers, but all believers. with unveiled face. Believers in the New Covenant have nothing obstructing their vision of Christ and His glory as revealed in the Scripture. beholding as in a mirror. Paul’s emphasis here is not so much on the reflective capabilities of the mirror as it is on the intimacy of it. A person can bring a mirror right up to his face and get an unobstructed view. Mirrors in Paul’s day were polished metal (see note on Jas 1:23), and thus offered a far from perfect reflection. Though the vision is unobstructed and intimate, believers do not see a perfect representation of God’s glory now, but will one day (cf. 1Co 13:12). being transformed. A continual, progressive transformation (see note on Ro 12:2). into the same image. As they gaze at the glory of the Lord, believers are continually being transformed into Christlikeness. The ultimate goal of the believer is to be like Christ (cf. Ro 8:29; Php 3:12–14; 1Jn 3:2), and by continually focusing on Him the Spirit transforms the believer more and more into His image. from glory to glory. From one level of glory to another level of glory—from one level of manifesting Christ to another. This verse describes progressive sanctification. The more believers grow in their knowledge of Christ, the more He is revealed in their lives (cf. Php 3:12–14).
3:18 we all. Not just Moses, or prophets, apostles, and preachers, but all believers. with unveiled face. Believers in the New Covenant have nothing obstructing their vision of Christ and His glory as revealed in the Scripture. beholding as in a mirror. Paul’s emphasis here is not so much on the reflective capabilities of the mirror as it is on the intimacy of it. A person can bring a mirror right up to his face and get an unobstructed view. Mirrors in Paul’s day were polished metal (see note on Jas 1:23), and thus offered a far from perfect reflection. Though the vision is unobstructed and intimate, believers do not see a perfect representation of God’s glory now, but will one day (cf. 1Co 13:12). being transformed. A continual, progressive transformation (see note on Ro 12:2). into the same image. As they gaze at the glory of the Lord, believers are continually being transformed into Christlikeness. The ultimate goal of the believer is to be like Christ (cf. Ro 8:29; Php 3:12–14; 1Jn 3:2), and by continually focusing on Him the Spirit transforms the believer more and more into His image. from glory to glory. From one level of glory to another level of glory—from one level of manifesting Christ to another. This verse describes progressive sanctification. The more believers grow in their knowledge of Christ, the more He is revealed in their lives (cf. Php 3:12–14).
3:16–18 The believer who turns to the Lord has freedom in the Spirit. We receive something Moses never knew as we become more and more like Christ (4:4; John 1:1–14; Col 1:15; Heb 1:1–4) and reflect the glory of the Lord. Divine glory in this present life leads to our being like Christ in the next life (Rom 8:29; Gal 4:19; Phil 3:21; 1 Jn 3:2).
Notes for 3:18
36 tn Or “we all with unveiled faces beholding the glory of the Lord as in a mirror.”
37 tn Grk “from glory to glory.”
38 tn Grk “just as from.”
39 tn Grk “from the Lord, the Spirit”; the genitive πνεύματος (pneumatos) has been translated as a genitive of apposition.
Notes for 2 Corinthians 4
2 Corinthians 3:18
We all (ἡμεις παντες [hēmeis pantes]). All of us Christians, not merely ministers. With unveiled face (ἀνακεκαλυμμενῳ προσωπῳ [anakekalummenōi prosōpōi]). Instrumental case of manner. Unlike and like Moses. Reflecting as in a mirror (κατοπτριζομενοι [katoptrizomenoi]). Present middle participle of κατοπτριζω [katoptrizō], late verb from κατοπτρον [katoptron], mirror (κατα, ὀπτρον [kata, optron], a thing to see with). In Philo (Legis Alleg. iii. 33) the word means beholding as in a mirror and that idea suits also the figure in 1 Cor. 13:12. There is an inscription of third century B.C. with ἐγκατοπτρισασθαι εἰς το ὑδωρ [egkatoptrisasthai eis to hudōr], to look at one’s reflection in the water. Plutarch uses the active for mirroring or reflecting and Chrysostom takes it so here. Either makes good sense. The point that Paul is making is that we shall not lose the glory as Moses did. But that is true if we keep on beholding or keep on reflecting (present tense). Only here in N. T. Are transformed (μεταμορφουμεθα [metamorphoumetha]). Present passive (are being transformed) of μεταμορφοω [metamorphoō], late verb and in papyri. See on Matt. 17:2; Mark 9:2 where it is translated “transfigured.” It is the word used for heathen mythological metamorphoses. Into the same image (την αὐτην εἰκονα [tēn autēn eikona]). Accusative retained with passive verb μεταμορφουμεθα [metamorphoumetha]. Into the likeness of God in Christ (1 Cor. 15:48–53; Rom. 8:17, 29; Col. 3:4; 1 John 3:2). As from the Lord the Spirit (καθαπερ ἀπο Κυριου πνευματος [kathaper apo Kuriou pneumatos]). More likely, “as from the Spirit of the Lord.”
2. Open-faced before God (3:12–18)
a. The veil removed
What is the hope (verse 12) of which Paul speaks? The previous few verses as well as those that follow leave no doubt that it is the hope of glory which is in mind (verses 13ff.).12 The ministry of the new covenant is glorious (verses 8–9): it imparts glory to those who receive it (verse 18). What is this glory? God is and always will be invisible to man; what he showed us at various critical points in the Bible story was his glory. When finally we come into his presence we will participate in his glory; we too will be glorified. The ‘glory of God’ vividly summarizes, in a phrase, all the end-time blessings God will bestow upon his people. This is the hope of God’s people.
This passage continues to contrast the old and the new covenants, though the emphasis is now on the peoples of those covenants. The contrast focuses on the veil imagery drawn from the story of Moses in Exodus 34:29–35. The veil on Moses’ face is metaphorically said to have been over the minds (verse 14) of the people of the old covenant. Paul is making two closely related points. On one hand he is referring to Moses’ own words that the people wilfully failed to comprehend the meaning and significance of God’s rescue of them from Egypt.13 On the other, Paul is implying that, because of this, God did not let them understand the promises made under the Mosaic covenant which would be fulfilled in Christ. They did not see the glory in the old covenant which pointed to Christ. The result is that, though they sit week by week in the synagogue and hear passages from Moses, a veil of ignorance prevents them from understanding the scriptures which are being read (verses 14–15). Because of the veil the mere reading of the old covenant will achieve nothing. As Hughes comments: ‘The same veil, the inward veil of which the outward veil was the symbol, is still keeping the hearts of the Israelites in darkness whenever they are confronted afresh, as it were, with Moses in the form of the Old Testament scriptures.’
The veil, which in Moses’ day prevented the Israelites seeing in to the glory behind it on Moses’ face, now lies over their minds preventing them seeing out to the glory in the Scriptures, which they regularly hear. It is only in Christ (verse 14), in whom the promises made under the old covenant are fulfilled and whom the apostles proclaimed (1:19–20), that the veil is removed. Only as Jews are persuaded from the Old Testament that the Messiah is Jesus, and turn to him, is the veil taken away and the glory seen (verses 16, 18).14
What, then, does Paul mean by writing that the Lord to whom one turns is the Spirit (verse 17)? Does he mean that the Lord Jesus and the Spirit are one and the same person? Is he implying that there are two (Father and Lord=Spirit), not three, persons in the Godhead? The famous tripartite ‘Grace’ with which the letter concludes conclusively supports a trinitarian rather than a binitarian doctrine.
Paul, it seems, is seeking to make an important point in the present argument with the Jewish ministers. Moses turned to the Lord under the old covenant. But the old covenant is now ended in Christ and the Holy Spirit. The Lord of the old covenant has now more completely revealed himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Lord to whom we now turn is the Lord Jesus Christ. Had Paul merely quoted Exodus 34:34, the readers might have concluded that they could have turned to the Lord of the old covenant in terms of the keeping of the old covenant. The new ministers have apparently focused on Jesus ‘in the flesh’, that is, in terms of Jesus’ Jewishness and as a law-keeper. But the old covenant is now ended, not by a merely Jewish Jesus, a Jesus of the flesh, but by Jesus who is glorified in heaven and who pours the Holy Spirit into the hearts of those who turn to him. The Lord is the Spirit is Paul’s shorthand way of referring to the Lord of the old covenant as he has now more completely manifested himself in the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit in a new and spiritual covenant.15
The imagery of the veil, therefore, is central in the contrast Paul is making between the people under the old and under the new covenants. Moses and the Jewish people are veiled, whereas Paul and other Christian people are unveiled (verse 18). W. C. van Unnik has shown that to cover the face means ‘shame and mourning’ whereas to uncover the face means ‘confidence and freedom’.16 In other words, because of condemnation under the old covenant the people were shamefaced and hesitant in the presence of God, whereas, because of the ‘righteousness’ through the ministry of the new covenant, the people are open and confident with their God. Those who turn to the Lord who is the Spirit possess the Spirit and enjoy freedom (verse 17), whereas the others are, by implication, still in a state of slavery.
b. Beholding the glory
Since the veil is a metaphor for blindness it is clear that those who are under the old covenant are blind to the glory of God, whereas those under the new ‘behold’ (RSV) the glory, which they see in the face, or person, of Jesus Christ (verse 18, cf. 4:6). Those whose minds are veiled from the glory in the old covenant do not change or progress. They are like creatures who live in a stagnant lifeless pond. On the other hand, those who are unveiled see the glory of the Lord Jesus and are transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory.
In the passage 3:18–4:6 Paul refers to ‘beholding the glory’ and ‘seeing the light’. Does he mean this in a literal or a figurative sense? Paul himself literally ‘saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun’.17 But does he mean that somehow, at the point of conversion, we too see some kind of light perhaps in an inward or mystical sense? What the believer ‘sees’ is ‘the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ’ (4:4), which is the ‘light of the knowledge of the glory of God’ (4:6). The ‘light’ comes by the ‘gospel’ or the ‘knowledge of God’. As the psalmist wrote, it is ‘the entrance of (God’s) words’ which ‘gives light’.18 Paul’s language, while literal for his own unique experience, is metaphorical for believers in general. It is the light of a now enlightened understanding. Gone is the darkness of blindness; in its place is the light of spiritual comprehension.
c. Transformed into his likeness
What does it mean to be transformed into his likeness? It is certain that we do not change so as to resemble the Lord in any physical way. A clue to Paul’s meaning may be that the Spirit who here transforms us all (verse 18) is said, elsewhere, to produce in believers the ‘fruit’ of ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control’.19 It may be that Paul’s metaphorical language has in mind these nine moral and spiritual attributes which are truly descriptive of the likeness of Jesus, and which the Spirit achieves in us.
How does this character transformation take place? It occurs when anyone turns to the Lord (verse 16), so that the veil is taken away and we begin to ‘behold’ the glory of the Lord (verse 18, RSV). Although the verb can mean reflect (NIV), ‘behold’ is to be preferred because a parallel passage (4:18) uses the synonym ‘look’. By this Paul means coming within the ministry of God’s word, the gospel, which affirms that Jesus Christ is the image of God and also Lord (4:2–6). Through this ministry the knowledge of God is imparted to us (4:1, 6). We must take steps to place ourselves under the ministry of the gospel through church membership and also by personal Bible reading and prayer. In another letter Paul expresses the same essential idea in these words: ‘Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.’20 Clearly the process of transformation, while ‘spiritual’, is not mystical but educational in character. The content of the education is the gospel of Christ.
Beholding the glory of the Lord is to be the unchanging activity of the Christian life from beginning to end. This results in our transformation from glory to glory (NASB). At the beginning, the believer ‘sees’ the glory with his mind as he understands the gospel and turns to the Lord. At the end, he sees that glory with his eyes as, face to face, he sees the heavenly Lord, enveloped in glory. In between the beginning and ending he ‘beholds’ the glory through the pastoral ministry of the gospel in the church.
This passage should be read alongside Romans 8:29–30 which refers to God’s great plan, stretching from eternity to eternity, by which we are ‘predestined’, … justified, … glorified’. God’s purposes for us who believe overarch not only the extremities of our own lives but also of world history. The plan of God which culminates in our glorification was formed in eternity before the believer was born or the world was made. It is vital that day by day we live within this conceptual framework so that in everything we do or think we promote the growth of Christlikeness (or glorification) within our lives.
The gospel of Christ not only illuminates our darkened lives; equally remarkably, it transforms them little by little so that they increasingly resemble the moral and spiritual character of the Lord Jesus. The old covenant, by contrast, brought only condemnation and death. Paul’s words with ever-increasing glory are triumphant. This is not, however, the missionary triumphalism of Paul’s opponents,21 or the triumphalism of the ‘church militant’ seen in soaring cathedrals, mass rallies or burgeoning ecclesiastical institutions. It is the triumph of the grace and power of God reproducing through the Spirit the beauty of Christ in lives which are outwardly decaying and disintegrating through their connection with the world which is ‘passing away’.22 Only the grace of God is kind enough and the power of God strong enough to achieve this transformation in our broken and darkened lives.
HOMILY VII
2 COR. 3:7, 8
But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, came with glory, so that the children of Israel could not look steadfastly upon the face of Moses, for the glory of his face; which glory was passing away: how shall not rather the ministration of the Spirit be with glory?
HE said that the tables of Moses were of stone, as [also] they were written with letters; and that these were of flesh, I mean the hearts of the Apostles, and had been written on by the Spirit; and that the letter indeed killeth, but the Spirit giveth life. There was yet wanting to this comparison the addition of a further and not trifling particular, that of the glory of Moses; such as in the case of the New Covenant none saw with the eyes of the body. And even for this cause it appeared a great thing in that the glory was perceived by the senses; (for it was seen by the bodily eyes, even though it might not be approached;) but that of the New Covenant is perceived by the understanding. For to the weaker sort the apprehension of such a superiority is not clear; but the other did more take them, and turn them unto itself. Having then fallen upon this comparison and being set upon showing the superiority [in question], which yet was exceedingly difficult because of the dulness of the hearers; see what he does, and with what method1 he proceeds in it, first by arguments placing the difference before them, and constructing these out of what he had said before.
For if that ministration were of death, but this of life, doubtless, saith he, the latter glory is also greater than the former. For since he could not exhibit it to the bodily eyes, by this logical inference he established its superiority, saying,
Ver. 8. “But if2 the ministration of death came with glory, how shall not rather the ministration of the Spirit be with glory?”
Now by “ministration of death” he means the Law. And mark too how great the caution he uses in the comparison so as to give no handle to the heretics; for he said not, ‘which causeth death,’ but, “the ministration of death;” for it ministereth unto, but was not the parent of, death; for that which caused death was sin; but [the Law] brought in the punishment, and showed the sin, not caused it. For it more distinctly revealed the evil and punished it: it did not impel unto the evil: and it ministered not to the existence of sin or death, but to the suffering of retribution by the sinner. So that in this way it was even destructive of sin. For that which showeth it to be so fearful, it is obvious, maketh it also to be avoided. As then he that taketh the sword in his hands and cutteth off the condemned, ministers to the judge that passeth sentence, and it is not he that is his destruction, although he cutteth him off; nay, nor yet is it he who passeth sentence and condemneth, but the wickedness of him that is punished; so truly here also it is not that3 destroyeth, but sin. This did both destroy and condemn, but that by punishing undermined its strength, by the fear of the punishment holding it back. But he was not content with this consideration only in order to establish the superiority [in question]; but he addeth yet another, saying, “written, and engraven on stones.” See how he again cuts at the root of the Jewish arrogancy. For the Law was nothing else but letters: a certain succor was not found leaping forth from out the letters and inspiring them that combat, as is the case in Baptism; but pillars and writings bearing death to those who transgress the letters. Seest thou how in correcting the Jewish contentiousness, by his very expressions even he lessens its authority, speaking of stone and letters and a ministration of death, and adding that it was engraven? For hereby he declareth nothing else than this, that the Law was fixed in one place; not, as the Spirit, was present everywhere, breathing great might into all; or that the letters breathe much threatening, and threatening too which can not be effaced but remaineth for ever, as being engraved in stone. Then even whilst seeming to praise the old things, he again mixeth up accusation of the Jews. For having said, “written and engraven in stones, came with glory,” he added, “so that the children of Israel could not look steadfastly upon the face of Moses;” which was a mark of their great weakness and grovelling spirit. And again he doth not say, ‘for the glory of the tables,’ but, “for the glory of his countenance, which glory was passing away;” for he showeth that he who beareth them is made glorious, and not they. For he said not, ‘because they could not look steadfastly upon the tables,’ but, “the face of Moses;” and again, not, ‘for the glory of the tables,’ but, “for the glory of his face.” Then after he had extolled it, see how again he lowers it, saying, “which was passing away.” Not however that this is in accusation, but in diminution; for he did not say, ‘which was corrupt, which was evil,’ but, ‘which ceaseth and hath an end.’
“How shall not rather the ministration of the Spirit be with glory?” for henceforth with confidence he extolleth the things of the New [Covenant] as indisputable. And observe what he doth. He opposed ‘stone’ to ‘heart,’ and ‘letter’ to ‘spirit.’ Then having shown the results of each, he doth not set down the results of each; but having set down the work of the latter, namely, death and condemnation, he setteth not down that of the spirit, namely, life and righteousness; but the Spirit Itself; which added greatness to the argument. For the New Covenant not only gave life, but supplied also ‘The Spirit’ Which giveth the life, a far greater thing than the life. Wherefore he said, “the ministration of the Spirit.” Then he again reverts to the same thing, saying,
Ver. 9. “For if the ministration of condemnation is glory.”
Also, he interprets more clearly the meaning of the words, “The letter killeth,” declaring it to be that which we have said above, namely, that the Law showed sin, not caused it.
“Much rather doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory.”
For those Tables indeed showed the sinners and punished them, but this not only did not punish the sinners, but even made them righteous: for this did Baptism confer.
[2.] Ver. 10. “For verily that which hath been made glorious hath not been made glorious in this respect, by reason of the glory that surpasseth.”
Now in what has gone before, indeed, he showed that this also is with glory; and not simply is with glory, but even exceedeth in it: for he did not say, “How shall not the ministration of the Spirit be rather in glory?” but, “exceed in glory;” deriving the proof from the arguments before stated. Here he also shows the superiority, how great it is, saying, ‘if I compare this with that, the glory of the Old Covenant is not glory at all;’ not absolutely laying down that there was no glory, but in view of the comparison. Wherefore also he added, “in this respect,” that is, in respect of the comparison. Not that this doth disparage the Old Covenant, yea rather it highly commendeth it: for comparisons are wont to be made between things which are the same in kind. Next, he sets on foot yet another argument to prove the superiority also from a fresh ground. What then is this argument? That based upon duration, saying,
Ver. 11. “For if that which passeth away was with glory, much more that which remaineth is in glory.”
For the one ceased, but the other abideth continually.
Ver. 12. “Having therefore such a hope, we use great boldness of speech.”
For since when he had heard so many and so great things concerning the New [Covenant,] the hearer would be desirous of seeing this glory manifested to the eye, mark whither he hurleth him, [even] to the world to come. Wherefore also he brought forward the “hope,” saying, “Having therefore such a hope.” Such? Of what nature? That we have been counted worthy of greater things than Moses; not we the Apostles only, but also all the faithful. “We use great boldness of speech.” Towards whom? tell me. Towards God, or towards the disciples? Towards you who are receiving instruction, he saith; that is, we speak every where with freedom, hiding nothing, withholding nothing, mistrusting nothing, but speaking openly; and we have not feared lest we should wound your eyesight, as Moses did that of the Jews. For that he alluded to this, hear what follows; or rather, it is necessary first to relate the history, for he himself keeps dwelling upon it. What then is the history? When, having received the Tables a second time, Moses came down, a certain glory darting from his countenance shone so much that the Jews were not able to approach and talk with him until he put a veil over his face. And thus it is written in Exodus, (Ex. 34:29, 34) “When Moses came down from the Mount, the two Tables [were] in his hands. And Moses wist not that the skin of his countenance was made glorious to behold. And they were afraid to come nigh him. And Moses called them, and spake unto them. And when4 Moses had done speaking with them, he put a veil over his face. But when he went in before the Lord to speak [with Him], he took the veil off until he came out.”
Putting them in mind then of this history, he says,
Ver. 13. “And not as Moses, who put a veil upon his face, so that the children of Israel should not look steadfastly on the end of that which was passing away.”
Now what he says is of this nature. There is no need for us to cover ourselves as Moses did; for ye are able to look upon this glory which we are encircled with, although it is far greater and brighter than the other. Seest thou the advance? For he that in the former Epistle said, “I have fed you with milk, not with meat;” saith here, “We use great boldness of speech.” And he produces Moses before them, carrying forward the discourse by means of comparison, and thus leading his hearer upwards.
And for the present he sets them above the Jews, saying that ‘we have no need of a veil as he5 had with those he governed;’ but in what comes afterwards he advances them even to the dignity itself of the Lawgiver, or even to a much greater.
Mean time, however, let us hear what follows next.
Ver. 14. “But their minds were hardened, for until this day remaineth the same veil in the reading of the Old Covenant, [it] not being revealed to them6 that it is done away in Christ.”
See what he establisheth by this. For what happened then once in the case of Moses, the same happeneth continually in the case of the Law. What is said, therefore, is no accusation of the Law, as neither is it of Moses that he then veiled himself, but only the senseless Jews. For the law hath its proper glory, but they were unable to see it. ‘Why therefore are ye perplexed,’ he saith, ‘if they are unable to see this glory of the Grace, since they saw not that lesser one of Moses, nor were able to look steadfastly upon his countenance? And why are ye troubled that the Jews believe not Christ, seeing at least that they believe not even the Law? For they were therefore ignorant of the Grace also, because they knew not even the Old Covenant nor the glory which was in it. For the glory of the Law is to turn [men] unto Christ.’
[3.] Seest thou how from this consideration also he takes down the inflation of the Jews? By that in which they thought they had the advantage, namely, that Moses’ face shone, he proves their grossness and groveling nature. Let them not therefore pride themselves on that, for what was that to Jews who enjoyed it not? Wherefore also he keeps on dwelling upon it, saying one while, “The same veil in the reading of the old covenant remaineth,” it “not being revealed that it is done away in Christ:” another while, that “unto this day when Moses is read,” (v. 15) the same “veil lieth upon their heart; “showing that the veil lieth both on the reading and on their heart; and above, “So that the children of Israel could not look steadfastly upon the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which” (v. 7) glory “was passing away.” Than which what could mark less worth in them? Seeing that even of a glory that is to be done away, or rather is in comparison no glory at all, they are not able to be spectators, but it is covered from them, “so that they could not steadfastly look on the end of that which was passing away;” that is, of the law, because it hath an end; “but their minds were hardened.” ‘And what,’ saith one, ‘hath this to do with the veil then?’ Because it prefigured what would be. For not only did they not then perceive; but they do not even now see the Law. And the fault lies with themselves, for the hardness is that of an unimpressible and perverse judgment. So that it is we who know the law also; but to them not only Grace, but this as well is covered with a shadow; “For until this day the same veil upon the reading of the old covenant remaineth,” he saith, it “not being revealed that it is done away in Christ.” Now what he saith is this. This very thing they cannot see, that it is brought to an end, because they believe not Christ. For if it be brought to an end by Christ, as in truth it is brought to an end, and this the Law said by anticipation, how will they who receive not Christ that hath done away the Law, be able to see that the Law is done away? And being incapable of seeing this, it is very plain that even of the Law itself which asserted these things, they know not the power nor the full glory. ‘And where,’ saith one, ‘did it say this that it is done away in Christ?’ It did not say it merely, but also showed it by what was done. And first indeed by shutting up its sacrifices and its whole ritual7 in one place, the Temple, and afterwards destroying this. For had He not meant to bring these to an end and the whole of the Law concerning them, He would have done one or other of two things; either not destroyed the Temple, or having destroyed it, not forbidden to sacrifice elsewhere. But, as it is, the whole world and even Jerusalem itself He hath made forbidden ground for such religious rites; having allowed and appointed for them only the Temple. Then having destroyed this itself afterwards, He showed completely even by what was done that the things of the Law are brought to an end by Christ; for the Temple also Christ destroyed. But if thou wilt see in words as well how the Law is done, away in Christ, hear the Lawgiver himself speaking thus; “A Prophet shall the Lord raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; (Deut. 17:15, 19) Him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever He shall command you. And it shall come to pass, that every soul which will not hear that Prophet shall be utterly destroyed8.” (Acts 3:22, 23) Seest thou how the Law showed that it is done away in Christ? For this Prophet, that is, Christ according to the flesh, Whom Moses commanded them to hear, made to cease both sabbath and circumcison and all the other things. And David too, showing the very same thing, said concerning Christ, “Thou art a Priest after the order of Melchizedek,” (Ps. 110:4;) not after the order of Aaron. Wherefore also Paul, giving a clear interpretation of this, says, “The priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the Law.” (Heb. 7:12) And in another place also he says again, “Sacrifice and offering thou wouldst not. In whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin Thou hadst had no pleasure: then said I, Lo, I come.” (Heb. 10:5, 7) And other testimonies far more numerous than these may be adduced out of the Old Testament, showing how the Law is done away by Christ. So that when thou shalt have forsaken the Law, thou shalt then see the Law clearly; but so long as thou holdest by it and believest not Christ, thou knowest not even the Law itself. Wherefore also he added, to establish this very thing more clearly;
Ver. 15. “But even unto this day, whensoever Moses is read, a veil lieth upon their heart.”
For since he said that in the reading of the Old Testament the veil remaineth, lest any should think that this that is said is from the obscurity of the Law, he both by other things showed even before what his meaning was, (for by saying, “their minds were hardened,” he shows that the fault was their own,) and, in this place too, again. For he said not, ‘The veil remaineth on the writing,’ but “in the reading;” (now the reading is the act of those that read;) and again, “When Moses is read.” He showed this however with greater clearness in the expression which follows next, saying unreservedly, “The veil lieth upon their heart.” For even upon the face of Moses it lay, not because of Moses, but because of the grossness and carnal mind of these.
[4.] Having then suitably9 accused them, he points out also the manner of their correction. And what is this?
Ver. 16. “Nevertheless when [one] shall turn to the Lord,” which is, to forsake the Law, “the veil is taken away10.”
Seest thou that not over the face of Moses was there that veil, but over the eyesight of the Jews? For it was done, not that the glory of Moses might be hidden, but that the Jews might not see. For they were not capable. So that in them was the deficiency, for it11 caused not him to be ignorant of any thing, but them. And he did not say indeed, “when thou shalt let go the Law,” but he implied it, for “when thou shalt turn to the Lord, the veil is taken away.” To the very last he12 kept to the history. For when Moses talked with the Jews he kept his face covered; but when he turned to God it was uncovered. Now this was a type of that which was to come to pass, that when we have turned to the Lord, then we shall see the glory of the Law, and the face of the Lawgiver bare; yea rather, not this alone, but we shall then be even in the same rank with Moses. Seest thou how he inviteth the Jew unto the faith, by showing, that by coming unto Grace he is able not only to see Moses, but also to stand in the very same rank with the Lawgiver. ‘For not only,’ he saith, ‘shalt thou look on the glory which then thou sawest not, but thou shalt thyself also be included in the same glory; yea rather, in a greater glory, even so great that that other shall not seem glory at all when compared with this.’ How and in what manner? ‘Because that when thou hast turned to the Lord and art included in the grace, thou wilt enjoy that glory, unto which the glory of Moses, if compared, is so much less as to be no glory at all. But still, small though it be and exceedingly below that other, whilst thou art a Jew, even this will not be vouchsafed thee13; but having become a believer, it will then be vouchsafed thee to behold even that which is far greater than it.’ And when he was addressing himself to the believers, he said, that “that which was made glorious had no glory;” but here he speaks not so; but how? “When one shall turn to the Lord, the veil is taken away:” leading him up by little and little, and first setting him in Moses’ rank, and then making him partake of the greater things. For when thou hast seen Moses in glory, then afterwards thou shalt also turn unto God and enjoy this greater glory.
[5.] See then from the beginning, how many things he has laid down, as constituting the difference and showing the superiority, not the enmity or contradiction, of the New Covenant in respect to the old. That, saith he, is letter, and stone, and a ministration of death, and is done away: and yet the Jews were not even vouchsafed this glory. (Or, the glory of this.) This table is of the flesh, and spirit, and righteousness, and remaineth; and unto all of us is it vouchsafed, not to one only, as to Moses of the lesser then. (ver. 18) “For,” saith he, “we all with unveiled face reflecting14 as a mirror the glory of the Lord,” not that of Moses. But since some maintain that the expression, “when one shall turn to the Lord,” is spoken of the Son, in contradiction to what is quite acknowledged; let us examine the point more accurately, having first stated the ground on which they think to establish this. What then is this? Like, saith one, as it is said, “God is a Spirit;” (John 4:24) so also here, ‘The Lord is a Spirit.’ But he did not say, ‘The Lord is a Spirit,’ but, “The Spirit is the Lord.” And there is a great difference between this construction and that. For when he is desirous of speaking so as you say, he does not join the article to the predicate. And besides, let us review all his discourse from the first, of whom hath he spoken? for instance, when he said, “The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life:” (ver. 6) and again, “Written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God;” (ver. 3) was he speaking of God, or of the Spirit? It is very plain that it was of the Spirit; for unto It he was calling them from the letter. For lest any, hearing of the Spirit, and then reflecting that Moses turned unto the Lord, but himself unto the Spirit, should think himself to have the worse, to correct such a suspicion as this, he says,
Ver. 17. “Now the Spirit Is the Lord.”
This too is Lord, he says. And that you may know that he is speaking of the Paraclete, he added,
“And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”
For surely you will not assert, that he says, ‘And where the Lord of the Lord is.’ “Liberty,” he said, with reference to the former bondage. Then, that you may not think that he is speaking of a time to come, he says,
Ver. 18. “But we all, with unveiled face, reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord.”
Not that which is brought to an end, but that which remaineth.
“Are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit.”
Seest thou how again he places the Spirit in the rank of God, (vide infra) and raises them up to the rank of the Apostles. For he said before, “Ye are the Epistle of Christ; and here, “But we all with open face.” Yet they came, like Moses, bringing a law. But like as we, he says, needed no veil, so neither ye who received it. And yet this glory is far greater, for this is not of our countenance, but of the Spirit; but nevertheless ye are able as well as we to look steadfastly upon it. For they indeed could not even by a mediator, but ye even without a mediator can [look steadfastly on] a greater. They were not able to look upon that of Moses, ye even upon that of the Spirit. Now had the Spirit been at all inferior, He would not have set down these things as greater than those. But what is, “we reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image.” This indeed was shown more clearly when the gifts of miracles were in operation; howbeit it is not even now difficult to see it, for one who hath believing eyes. For as soon as we are baptized, the soul beameth even more than the sun, being cleansed by the Spirit; and not only do we behold the glory of God, but from it also receive a sort of splendor. Just as if pure silver be turned towards the sun’s rays, it will itself also shoot forth rays, not from its own natural property merely but also from the solar lustre; so also doth the soul being cleansed and made brighter than silver, receive a ray from the glory of the Spirit, and send it back. Wherefore also he saith, “Reflecting as a mirror we are transformed into the same image from glory,” that of the Spirit15, “to glory,” our own, that which is generated in us; and that, of such sort, as one might expect from the Lord the Spirit. See how here also he calleth the Spirit, Lord. And in other places too one may see that lordship of His. For, saith he, “As they ministered and fasted unto the Lord, the Spirit said, Separate me Paul and Barnabas.” (Acts 13:2) For therefore he said, “as they ministered unto the Lord, Separate me,” in order to show the [Spirit’s] equality in honor. And again Christ saith, “The servant knoweth not what his lord doeth;” but even as a man knoweth his own things, so doth the Spirit know the things of God; not by being taught [them,] for so the similitude holdeth not good. Also the working as He willeth showeth His authority and lordship. This transformeth us. This suffereth not to be conformed to this world; for such is the creation of which This is the Author. For as he saith, “Created in Christ Jesus,” (Ephes. 2:10) so saith he, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit in my inward parts”. (Ps. 51:10, LXX.)
[6.] Wilt thou that I show thee this also from the Apostles more obviously to the sense. Consider Paul, whose garments wrought: Peter, whose very shadows were mighty. (Acts 19:12; 5:15. LXX.) For had they not borne a King’s image and their radiancy been unapproachable, their garments and shadows had not wrought so mightily. For the garments of a king are terrible even to robbers. Wouldest thou see this beaming even through the body? “Looking steadfastly,” said he, “upon the face of Stephen, they saw it as it had been the face of an angel.” (Acts 6:15) But this was nothing to the glory flashing within. For what Moses had upon his countenance, that did these carry about with them on their souls, yea ‘rather’ even far more. For that of Moses indeed was more obvious to the senses, but this was incorporeal. And like as fire-bright bodies streaming down from the shining bodies upon those which lie near them, impart to them also somewhat of their own splendor, so truly doth it also happen with the faithful. Therefore surely they with whom it is thus are set free from earth, and have their dreams of the things in the heavens. Woe is me! for well is it that we should here even groan bitterly, for that we who enjoy a birth so noble do not so much as know what is said, because we quickly lose the reality, and are dazzled about the objects of sense. For this glory, the unspeakable and awful, remaineth in us for a day or two, and then we quench it, bringing over it the winter of worldly concerns, and with the thickness of those clouds repelling its rays. For worldly things are a winter, and than winter more lowering. For not frost is engendered thence nor rain, neither doth it produce mire and deep swamps; but, things than all these more grievous, it formeth hell and the miseries of hell. And as in severe frost all the limbs are stiffened and are dead, so truly the soul shuddering in the winter of sins also, performeth none of its proper functions, stiffened, as it were, by a frost, as to conscience. For what cold is to the body, that an evil conscience is to the soul, whence also cometh cowardice. For nothing is more cowardly than the man that is rivetted to worldly things; for such an one lives the life of Cain, trembling every day. And why do I mention deaths, and losses, and offences, and flatteries, and services? for even without these he is in fear of ten thousand vicissitudes. And his coffers indeed are full of gold, but his soul is not freed from the fear of poverty. And very reasonably. For he is moored as it were on rotten and swiftly shifting things, and even though in his own case he experienced not the reverse, yet is he undone by seeing it happen in others; and great is his cowardice, great his unmanliness. For not only is such an one spiritless as to danger, but also as to all other things. And if desire of wealth assail him, he doth not like a free man beat off the assault; but like a bought slave, doth all [it bids], serving the love of money as it were a severe mistress. If again he have beheld some comely damsel, down he croucheth at once made captive, and followeth like a raging dog, though it behoveth to do the opposite. For when thou hast beheld a beautiful woman, consider not how thou mayest enjoy thy lust, but but how be delivered from thy lust. ‘And how is this possible,’ saith one? ‘for loving is not my own doing.’ Whose then? tell me. It is from the Devil’s malice. Thou art quite convinced that that which plotteth against thee is a devil; wrestle then and fight with a distemper. But I cannot, he saith. Come then, let us first teach thee this, that what happeneth is from thine own listlessness, and that thou at the first gavest entrance to the Devil, and now if thou hast a mind, with much ease mayest drive him off. They that commit adultery, is it from lust they commit it, or simply from desire of dangers? Plainly from lust. Do they then therefore obtain forgiveness? Certainly not. Why not? Because the sin is their own. ‘But,’ saith one, ‘why, pray, string syllogisms? For my conscience bears me witness that I wish to repel the passion; and cannot, but it keepeth close, presses me sore, and afflicts me grievously.’ O man, thou dost wish to repel it, but thou dost not the things repellers should do; but it is with thee just as with a man in a fever, who drinking of cold streams to the fill, should say, ‘How many things I devise with the wish to quench this fever, and I cannot; but they stir up my flame the more.’ Let us see then whether at all thou too dost the things that inflame, yet thinkest thou art devising such as quench. ‘I do not,’ he saith. Tell me then, what hast thou ever essayed to do in order to quench the passion? and what is it, in fine, that will increase the passion? For even supposing we be not all of us obnoxious to these particular charges; (for more may be found who are captivated by the love of money than of beauty;) still the remedy to be proposed will be common to all, both to these and to those. For both that is an unreasonable passion, and this, is keener and fiercer than that. When then we have proved victorious over the greater, it is very plain that we shall easily subdue the less also. ‘And how is it,’ saith one, ‘that if this be keener, all persons are not made captive by the vice, but a greater number are mad after money?’ Because in the first place this last desire appears to be unattended with danger: next, although that of beauty be even fiercer, yet it is more speedily extinguished; for were it to continue like that of money, it would wholly destroy its captive.
[7.] Come then, let us discourse to you on this, the love of beauty, and let us see whereby the mischief is increased; for so we shall know whether the fault be ours, or not ours. And if ours, let us do everything to get the better of it; whereas if not ours, why do we afflict ourselves for nought? And why do we not pardon, but find fault, with those who are made captive by it? Whence then is this love engendered? ‘From comeliness of feature,’ saith one, ‘when she that woundeth one is beautiful and of fair countenance.’ It is said idly and in vain. For if it were beauty that attracted lovers, then would the maiden who is such have all men for her lovers; but if she hath not all, this thing cometh not of nature nor from beauty, but from unchaste eyes. For it was when by eyeing too curiously16, thou didst admire and become enamored, that thou receivedst the shaft. ‘And who,’ saith one, ‘when he sees a beautiful woman, can refrain from commending her he sees? If then admiring such things cometh not of deliberate choice, it follows that love depends not on ourselves.’ Stop, O man! Why dost thou crowd all things together, running round and round on every side, and not choosing to see the root of the evil? For I see numbers admiring and commending, who yet are not enamored. ‘And how is it possible to admire and not be enamored?’ Clamor not, (for this I am coming to speak of,) but wait, and thou shalt hear Moses admiring the son of Jacob, and saying, “And Joseph was a goodly person, and well favored exceedingly.” (Gen. 39:6, LXX.) Was he then enamored who speaketh this? By no means. ‘For,’ saith he, ‘he did not even see him whom he commended.’ We are affected, however, somewhat similarly towards beauties also which are described to us, not only which are beheld. But that thou cavil not with us on this point:—David, was he not comely exceedingly, and ruddy with beauty of eyes? (So 1 Sam. 16:12 & 17:42. LXX.) and indeed this beauty of the eyes, is even especially, a component of beauteousness of more despotic power than any. Was then any one enamored of him? By no means. Then to be also enamored cometh not [necessarily] with admiring. For many too have had mothers blooming exceedingly in beauty of person. What then? Were their children enamored of them? Away with the thought! but they admire what they see, yet fall not into a shameful love. ‘No, for again this good provision is Nature’s.’ How Nature’s? Tell me. ‘Because they are mothers,’ he saith. Then hearest thou not that Persians, and that without any compulsion, have intercourse with their own mothers, and that not one or two individuals, but a whole nation? But independent of these, it is hence also evident that this distemper cometh not from bloom of person nor from beauty merely, but from a listless and wandering soul. Many at least it is certain, oftentimes, having passed over thousands of well-favored women, have given themselves to such as were plainer. Whence it is evident that love depends not on beauty: for otherwise, surely, those would have caught such as fell into it, before these. What then is its cause? ‘For,’ saith he, ‘if it be not beauty that causeth love, whence hath it its beginning and its root? From a wicked Demon?’ It hath it indeed, thence also, but this is not what we are inquiring about, but whether we ourselves too be not the cause. For the plot is not theirs only, but along with them our own too in the first place. For from no other source is this wicked distemper so engendered as from habit, and flattering words, and leisure, and idleness, and having nothing to do. For great, great is the tyranny of habit, even so great as to be moulded into17 a necessity of nature. Now if it be habit’s to gender it, it is very evident that it is also [habit’s] to extinguish it. Certain it is at least that many have in this way ceased to be enamored, from not seeing those they were enamored of. Now this for a little while indeed appears to be a bitter thing and exceedingly unpleasant; but in time it becometh pleasant, and even were they to wish it, they could not afterwards resume the passion.
[8.] How then, when without habit one is taken captive at first sight? Here also it is indolence of body, or self-indulgence, and not attending to one’s duties, nor being occupied in necessary business. For such an one, wandering about like some vagabond, is transfixed by any wickedness; and like a child let loose, any one that liketh maketh such a soul his slave. For since it is its wont to be at work, when thou stoppest its workings in what is good, seeing it cannot be unemployed, it is compelled to engender what is otherwise. For just as the earth, when it is not sown nor planted, sends up simply weeds; so also the soul, when it hath nought of necessary things to do, being desirous by all means to be doing, giveth herself unto wicked deeds. And as the eye never ceaseth from seeing, and therefore will see wicked things, when good things are not set before it; so also doth the thought, when it secludes itself from necessary things, busy itself thereafter about such as are unprofitable. For that even the first assault occupation and thought are able to beat off, is evident from many things. When then thou hast looked on a beautiful woman, and weft moved towards her, look no more, and thou art delivered. ‘And how shall I be able to look no more,’ saith he, ‘when drawn by that desire?’ Give thyself to other things which may distract the soul, to books, to necessary cares, to protecting others, to assisting the injured, to prayers, to the wisdom which considers the things to come: with such things as these bind down thy soul. By these means, not only shalt thou cure a recent wound, but shalt wear away a confirmed and inveterate one easily. For if an insult according to the proverb prevails with the lover to give over his love, how shall not these spiritual charms18 much rather be victorious over the evil, if only we have a mind to stand aloof. But if we are always conversing and associating with those who shoot such arrows at us, and talking with them and hearing what they say, we cherish the distemper. How then dost thou expect the fire to be quenched, when day by day thou stirrest up the flame?
And let this that we have said about habit be our speech unto the young; since to those who are men and taught in heavenly wisdom, stronger than all is the fear of God, the remembrance of hell, the desire of the kingdom of heaven; for these are able to quench the fire. And along with these take that thought also, that what thou seest is nothing else than rheum, and blood, and juices of decomposed food. ‘Yet a gladsome thing is the bloom of the features,’ saith one. But nothing is more gladsome than the blossoms of the earth, and these too rot and wither. Do not then in this either give heed to the bloom, but pass on further inward in thy thought, and stripping off that beauteous skin in thy thought, scan curiously what lies beneath it. For even the bodies of the dropsical shine brightly, and the surface hath nothing offensive; but still, shocked with the thought of the humor stored within we cannot love such persons. ‘But languishing is the eye and glancing, and beautifully arched the brow, and dark the lashes, and soft the eyeball, and serene the look.’ But see how even this itself again is nothing else than nerves, and veins, and membranes, and arteries. Think too, I pray, of this beautiful eye, when diseased and old, wasting with despair, swelling with anger, how hateful to the sight it is, how quickly it perisheth, how sooner even than pictured ones, it is effaced. From these things make thy mind pass to the true beauty. ‘But,’ saith he, ‘I do not see beauty of soul.’ But if thou wilt choose, thou shalt see it: and as the absent beautiful may be with the mind admired, though with one’s eyes unseen, so it is possible to see without eyes beauty of soul. Hast thou not often sketched a beauteous form, and felt moved unto the drawing? Image also now beauty of soul, and revel in that loveliness. ‘But,’ saith he, ‘I do not see things incorporeal.’ And yet we see these, rather than the corporeal, with the mind. Therefore it is, for instance, that although we see them not, we admire angels also and archangels, and habits of character, and virtue of soul. And if thou seest a man considerate and moderate, thou wilt more admire him than that beautiful countenance. And if thou seest one insulted, yet bearing it; wronged, yet giving way, admire and love such, even though they be striken in age. For such a thing is the beauty of the soul; even in old age it hath many enamored of it, and it never fadeth, but bloometh for ever. In order then that we also may gain this beauty, let us go in quest of those that have it, and be enamored of them. For so shall we too be able, when we have attained this beauty, to obtain the good things eternal, whereof may all we partake, through the grace and love towards men of our Lord Jesus Christ, with Whom to the Father, with the Holy Spirit, be glory and might, for ever and ever. Amen.
Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty [2 Cor. 3:17].
Only the Spirit of God can lift the veil and help us to see that Christ is the Savior. He alone can do that. He is the One and the only One.
You notice that Paul here is saying the very same thing which Simon Peter had said: “To him give all the prophets witness, that through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins” (Acts 10:43). My friend, if you do not see the Lord Jesus Christ in the Old Testament, the Spirit of God takes the things of Christ and shows them unto us. The Spirit of God brings you into the place of liberty. He doesn’t put you under law. He delivers you from law and brings you to Christ. When He does—
But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord [2 Cor. 3:18].
This is a very wonderful passage of Scripture. Paul has been talking about the veil being on the heart; then when we turn to Christ, that veil is taken away. Now as believers we are looking upon the Lord Jesus Christ—but even as believers our eyes are veiled when there is sin in our lives. But when that sin is confessed, and we are in fellowship with Him, we look to Him. Then we, with “open face” or unveiled face, beholding (not reflecting as another version translates it) as in a mirror the glory of the Lord—the idea is not of reflecting in order to transform, but rather that of beholding until transformed. Then we can reflect His image. I feel that a more accurate translation is: we “beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord, the Spirit.”
Frances E. Siewert, who lived here in Southern California in Sierra Madre, worked on The Amplified Bible. When she was still alive, she and I used to carry on a friendly battle. She would hear me on the radio and sometimes when I referred to her amplified version, I would question some things. She was a brilliant woman, and I want to be very frank and say that I lost most of the battles. However, I won a friendly battle over this verse. Let me quote this verse to you from her earliest amplified version. “And all of us, as with unveiled face, [because we] continue to behold [in the Word of God] as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are constantly being transfigured into His very own image in ever increasing splendor and from one degree of glory to another; [for this comes] from the Lord [Who is] the Spirit.” This is an excellent translation except for the word transfigured. Only the Lord Jesus was transfigured—I’ve never seen a saint yet that I thought had been transfigured. It is true that the Word of God is the mirror that we are to look at, and we are beholding Him—just looking at Christ. That is the reason we need to stay in the Word of God and behold the Lord Jesus. As you behold Him, you are transformed. In other words, the Word of God does more than regenerate you (we are regenerated by the Spirit of God using the Word of God). “Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever” (1 Pet. 1:23). Also the Word of God transforms us. Oh, this is so important! I wish I had spent more time looking in the mirror, beholding Him more. My friend, in the Word of God we see Him. He is not a super star; He is not just a man. In the Word of God we see the unveiled Christ. Oh, how wonderful He is!
Dr. H. A. Ironside told the story about an old Scot who lay suffering and, actually, dying. The physician told him he didn’t have very long to live. A friend came to spend a little time with him and said to him, “They tell me you’ll not be with us long.” That’s a nice thing to say to a man who is dying. Then he continued, “I hope you get a wee glimpse of the Savior’s blessed face as you are going through the valley of the shadow.” The dying man looked up when he gathered a little strength and answered, “Away with the glimpse, mon; it’s a full view of His blessed face I’ve had these forty years, and I’ll not be satisfied with any of your wee glimpses now.” How wonderful to behold Him today.
Perhaps some of you remember Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story about the great stone face. A little lad lived in a village where there was a mountain with a rock formation which they called the great stone face. The people had a legend that someday someone would come to the village who would look like the great stone face. He would do wonderful things for the village and be a means of great blessing. That story really took hold of the lad. During his lifetime he would gaze at the great stone face at every opportunity that he had, and he would dream of the time someone looking like the great stone face would come to the village. Years passed and as time went by, he became a young man, then an old man. He was tottering down the street one day when someone looked up and saw him coming and shouted, “He has come. The one who looks like the great stone face is here.” This man had looked at the great stone face for so long that now he bore its image.
Listen to me. Do you want to be Christlike? Then spend time looking at Jesus. I recall that Dr. Lewis Sperry Chafer at the Dallas Theological Seminary used to stop us when we would sing the song, “Take time to be holy, speak oft with thy Lord” by William D. Longstaff. He would say, “Change that first line. Let us sing “Take time to behold Him.’ ” Do you want to be holy? Then behold Him.
Turn your eyes upon Jesus;
Look full in His wonderful face;
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of His glory and grace.
I need this. I hope you, too, sense a need of seeing Jesus Christ on the pages of the Word of God so that you might grow more like Him.
3:18. The glory evident in Moses’ face was a diminishing radiance (vv. 7, 13). By contrast, in the faces of Christians is God’s ever-increasing glory (cf. 4:6). (“Ever-increasing glory” is the NIV’s rendering of the Gr. phrase, “from glory into glory,” i.e., from one stage of glory to another.) Christians’ glory, like that of Moses, is a reflection of the Lord’s glory. But unlike Moses’ transitory glory a believer’s glory is eternal. This is because of God’s abiding presence through the Holy Spirit (4:17). This glory is the experience of salvation available in the New Covenant and mediated by the Spirit who leads Christians from justification through sanctification to glorification. As believers manifest the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22–23), they are progressively being transformed (the same word Paul used in Rom. 12:2) into His likeness. Christlikeness is the goal of the Christian walk (Eph. 4:23–24; Col. 3:10). No wonder Paul said the New is far superior to the Old!
Concealment-Openness (2 Cor. 3:12–18)
The Bible is basically a “picture book,” because it uses symbols, similes, metaphors, and other literary devices to get its message across. In this paragraph, Paul used the experience of Moses and his veil to illustrate the glorious freedom and openness of the Christian life under grace. Paul saw in Moses’ experience a deeper spiritual meaning than you and I would have seen as we read Exodus 34:29–35.
The historical event (vv. 12–13). When you are a part of a ministry of increasing glory, you can be bold in what you say; and Paul did not hide his boldness. Unlike Moses, Paul had nothing to conceal.
When Moses came down from communing with God, his face shone, reflecting the glory of God. When he spoke to the people, they could see the glory on his face, and they were impressed by it. But Moses knew that the glory would fade away; so, when he finished teaching the people, he put on a veil. This prevented them from seeing the glory disappear; for, after all, who wants to follow a leader who is losing his glory?
The word translated end in 2 Corinthians 3:13 has two meanings: “purpose” and “finish.” The veil prevented the people from seeing the “finish” of the glory as it faded away. But the veil also prevented them from understanding the “purpose” behind the fading glory. The Law had just been instituted, and the people were not ready to be told that this glorious system was only temporary. The truth that the covenant of Law was a preparation for something greater was not yet made known to them.
The national application (vv. 14–17). Paul had a special love for Israel and a burden to see his people saved (Rom. 9:1–3). Why were the Jewish people rejecting their Christ? As the missionary to the Gentiles, Paul was seeing many Gentiles trust the Lord, but the Jews—his own people—were rejecting the truth and persecuting Paul and the church.
The reason? There was a “spiritual veil” over their minds and hearts. Their “spiritual eyes” were blinded, so that when they read the Old Testament Scriptures, they did not see the truth about their own Messiah. Even though the Scriptures were read systematically in the synagogues, the Jewish people did not grasp the spiritual message God had given to them. They were blinded by their own religion.
Is there any hope for the lost Children of Israel? Yes, there is! “Nevertheless, when it [the heart] shall turn to the Lord [by trusting Jesus Christ], the veil shall be taken away” (2 Cor. 3:16).
In each of the three churches I have pastored, it has been my joy to baptize Jewish people who have trusted Jesus Christ. It is amazing how their minds open to the Scriptures after they have been born again. One man told me, “It’s like scales falling from your eyes. You wonder why everybody doesn’t see what you see!” The veil is removed by the Spirit of God and they receive spiritual vision.
But no sinner—Jew or Gentile—can turn to Christ apart from the ministry of the Holy Spirit of God. “Now the Lord is that Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:17). This statement is a bold declaration of the deity of the Holy Spirit: He is God. The Judaizers who had invaded the church at Corinth were depending on the Law to change men’s lives, but only the Spirit of God can bring about spiritual transformation. The Law can bring only bondage, but the Spirit introduces us into a life of liberty. “For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, ‘Abba, Father’ ” (Rom. 8:15).
As a nation, Israel today is spiritually blind; but this does not mean that individual Jews cannot be saved. The church today needs to recover its lost burden for Israel. We are their debtors, because all the spiritual blessings we have came through Israel. “Salvation is of the Jews” (John 4:22). The only way we can “pay off” this debt is by sharing the Gospel with them and praying that they might be saved (Rom. 10:1).
The personal application (v. 18). “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” This verse is the climax of the chapter, and it presents a truth so exciting that I marvel so many believers have missed it—or ignored it. You and I can share the image of Jesus Christ and go “from glory to glory” through the ministry of the Spirit of God!
Under the Old Covenant, only Moses ascended the mountain and had fellowship with God; but under the New Covenant, all believers have the privilege of communion with Him. Through Jesus Christ, we may enter into the very holy of holies (Heb. 10:19–20)—and we don’t have to climb a mountain!
The “mirror” is a symbol of the Word of God (James 1:22–25). As we look into God’s Word and see God’s Son, the Spirit transforms us into the very image of God. It is important, however, that we hide nothing from God. We must be open and honest with Him and not “wear a veil.”
The word translated changed is the same word translated transfigured in the accounts of our Lord’s transfiguration (Matt. 17; Mark 9). It describes a change on the outside that comes from the inside. Our English word metamorphosis is a transliteration of this Greek word. Metamorphosis describes the process that changes an insect from a larva into a pupa and then into a mature insect. The changes come from within.
Moses reflected the glory of God, but you and I may radiate the glory of God. When we meditate on God’s Word and in it see God’s Son, then the Spirit transforms us! We become more like the Lord Jesus Christ as we grow “from glory to glory.” This wonderful process cannot be achieved by keeping the Law. The glory of the Law faded away, but the glory of God’s grace continues to increase in our lives.
Keep in mind that Paul was contrasting, not only the Old Covenant with the New, but also the Old Covenant ministry with the ministry of grace. The goal of Old Covenant ministry is obedience to an external standard, but this obedience cannot change human character. The goal of New Covenant ministry is likeness to Jesus Christ. Law can bring us to Christ (Gal. 3:24), but only grace can make us like Christ. Legalistic preachers and teachers may get their listeners to conform to some standard, but they can never transform them to be like the Son of God.
The means for Old Covenant ministry is the Law, but the means for New Covenant ministry is the Spirit of God using the Word of God. (By “the Law” I do not mean the Old Testament, but rather the whole legal system given by Moses. Certainly, the Spirit can use both the Old and New Testaments to reveal Jesus Christ to us.) Since the Holy Spirit wrote the Word, He can teach it to us. Even more, because the Spirit lives in us, He can enable us to obey the Word from our hearts. This is not legal obedience, born of fear, but filial obedience born of love.
Finally, the result of Old Covenant ministry is bondage; but the result of New Covenant ministry is freedom in the Spirit. Legalism keeps a person immature and immature people must live by rules and regulations (see Gal. 4:1–7). God wants His children to obey, not because of an external code (the Law), but because of internal character. Christians do not live under the Law, but this does not mean that we are lawless! The Spirit of God writes the Word of God on our hearts, and we obey our Father because of the new life He has given us within.
The lure of legalism is still with us. False cults prey on professed Christians and church members, as did the Judaizers in Paul’s day. We must learn to recognize false cults and reject their teachings. But there are also Gospel-preaching churches that have legalistic tendencies and keep their members immature, guilty, and afraid. They spend a great deal of time dealing with the externals, and they neglect the cultivation of the inner life. They exalt standards and they denounce sin, but they fail to magnify the Lord Jesus Christ. Sad to say, in some New Testament churches we have an Old Testament ministry.
Paul has now explained two aspects of his own ministry: it is triumphant (2 Cor. 1–2) and it is glorious (2 Cor. 3). The two go together: “Therefore seeing we have this [kind of] ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not” (2 Cor. 4:1).
When your ministry involves the glory of God—you cannot quit!
IV. Unveiled, Not Veiled (3:14–16)
Paul makes a spiritual application of Moses’ veil. He states that there is still a veil over the hearts of the Jews when they read the OT, and this veil keeps them from seeing Christ. The OT will always be a locked book to the heart that knows not Christ. Jesus removed that veil when He rent the veil of the temple and fulfilled the OT types and prophecies. Yet Israel does not recognize that the ministry of the Law is temporary; it is holding on to a ministry that was never meant to last, a ministry with fading glory. There is a two-fold blindness upon Israel: a blindness that affects persons, in that they cannot recognize Christ as revealed in the OT, and a judicial blindness whereby God has blinded Israel as a nation (Rom 11:25). Satan blinds the minds of all sinners, hiding from them the glorious Gospel of Christ (2 Cor. 4:4).
But when the heart turns to Christ, that veil is taken away. Moses removed his veil when he went up to the mount to see God, and any Jew who turns honestly to the Lord will have his spiritual veil removed and will see Christ and receive Him as Savior. The NT ministry is one that points to Christ in the Word of God, in both the OT and the NT. We have nothing to hide, nothing to veil; the glory will last forever and will grow continually brighter.
V. Liberty, Not Bondage (3:17–18)
Verse 17 is grossly misused and quoted to excuse all kinds of unspiritual practices. “The Lord is that Spirit”; when sinners turn to Christ, it is through the ministry of the Spirit. And the Spirit gives liberty from spiritual bondage. The Old Covenant was a covenant of works and bondage (Acts 15:10). But the New Covenant is a ministry of glorious liberty in Christ (Gal. 5:1ff). This liberty is not license; it is freedom from fear, sin, the world, and legalistic religious practices. Every Christian is like Moses: with an unveiled face, we can come into the presence of God and enjoy His glory—yes, receive that glory and become more like Christ!
In v. 18, Paul illustrates the meaning of sanctification and growing in grace. He compares the Word of God to a mirror (“glass”—James 1:23–25). When the people of God look into the Word of God and see the glory of God, the Spirit of God transforms them to be like the Son of God (Rom. 8:29). “Changed” in this verse is the same as the Gk. word for “transformed” in Rom. 12:2 and “transfigured” in Matt. 17:2, and explains how we have our minds renewed in Christ. The Christian is not in bondage and fear; we can go into the very presence of God and enjoy His glory and grace. We do not have to wait for Christ to return to become like Him; we can daily grow “from glory to glory” (v. 18).
Truly our position in Christ is a glorious one! The ministry of grace is far superior to Judaism or any other religion, even though the NT Christian has none of the ceremonies or visible trappings that belonged to the Law. Ours is a glorious ministry, and its glory will never fade.
3:17 Paul has been emphasizing that Christ is the key to the OT. Here he re-emphasizes that truth by saying, Now the Lord is the Spirit. Most versions, including NKJV, capitalize Spirit, interpreting it as the Holy Spirit. But the context suggests that the Lord is the spirit of the OT just as “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy” (Rev. 19:10). All the types and shadows of the OT find their fulfillment in Christ. Where the Spirit16 of the Lord is, there is liberty means that wherever Jesus Christ is recognized as Lord or Jehovah, there is liberty, that is, freedom from the bondage of the law, freedom from obscurity in reading the Scriptures, and freedom to gaze upon His face without a veil between.
3:18 In the Old Covenant, Moses alone was allowed to see the glory of the Lord. Under the New Covenant, we all have the privilege of beholding … the glory of the Lord. Moses’ face had to be veiled after he had finished speaking with the people, but we can have an unveiled face. We can keep our face unveiled by confessing and forsaking sin, by being completely honest with God and ourselves. As a veteran missionary to India once said, we must “drop the veils of sin, of make-believe, all play-acting, all putting up of unreal fronts, all attempts at compromises, all halfway measures, all Yes and No.”
The next step is beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord. The mirror is the word of God. As we go to the Bible, we see the Lord Jesus revealed in all His splendor. We do not yet see Him face to face, but only as mirrored in the word.
And note that it is the glory of the Lord that we behold. Here Paul is not thinking so much of the moral beauty of Jesus as a Man here on earth, but rather of His present glory, exalted at the right hand of God. The glory of Christ, as Denney points out, is that:
He shares the Father’s throne, that He is the Head of the Church, possessor and bestower of all the fulness of divine grace, the coming Judge of the world, conqueror of every hostile power, intercessor for His own, and, in short, bearer of all the majesty which belongs to His kingly office.17
As we are occupied with the glory of the risen, ascended, exalted Lord Jesus Christ, we are being transformed into the same image. Here, in a word, is the secret of Christian holiness—occupation with Christ. Not by occupation with self; that brings only defeat. Not by occupation with others; that brings disappointment. But by occupation with the glory of the Lord, we become more and more like Him.
This marvelous, transforming process takes place from glory to glory, that is, from one degree of glory to another. It is not a matter of instant change. There is no experience in the Christian life that will reproduce His image in a moment. It is a process, not a crisis. It is not like the fading glory of the law, but an ever-increasing glory.
The power for this wonderful process is the Holy Spirit of God—just as by the Spirit of the Lord. As we behold the Lord of glory, study Him, contemplate Him, gaze on Him adoringly, the Spirit of the Lord works in our life the marvelous miracle of increasing conformity to Christ.
Darby points out how Stephen was changed by beholding:
We see it in Stephen when he is stoned, and he looks up and sees the glory of God and Jesus. Christ had said, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do”; and the view of Jesus in the glory of God draws from Stephen the prayer, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.” And again on the cross, Christ says, “Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit”; and Stephen says, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” He is changed into Christ’s image.18
Consider then the transcendent glory of the New Covenant. Whereas only one man had the glory on his face in the Old Covenant, today it is the blood-bought privilege of every child of God. Also, instead of merely reflecting the glory of God in our faces, we all in the New Covenant are actually being transformed (lit., metamorphosed) into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord. Whereas Moses’ face reflected glory, our faces radiate glory from inside.
Thus Paul brings to a close his rather mystical and deeply spiritual exposition of the New Covenant and of how it compares with the Old.
3:7–18 The story of two glories. Paul contrasted the temporary glory of the law of Moses, which brought the knowledge of sin and death (3:7; see Rom. 3:20; 7:10), with the eternal glory of God’s New Covenant of grace (see Heb. 8:7–13), which brings the power of inward transformation (3:18). When Moses brought the law down from Sinai he wore a veil over his face, so that the people would not be frightened (see Exod. 34:29–35), but also, said Paul, so that they could not see how the law’s glory was fading (3:7, 13). The New Covenant of grace is superior to the law, for its glory, given by Christ, will never fade (3:8–11, 16–18). Sadly, today, as in Paul’s day, a veil still blinds the eyes of most Israelites concerning their Messiah (3:14–15).
God’s goal is to make us “more and more like him,” traditionally translated “from glory to glory” (3:18). This process will last throughout all eternity, but he wants to begin it now!
Chap. 3, ver. 17.—“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”
Spiritual Liberty.
These words form the climax of the argument contained in the whole of the chapter. Through the chapter Paul puts law and gospel side by side. He shows us that there was a glory attached to the legal dispensation, but that the glory of the gospel far exceeds it in many respects. He notes first that it transcends the law in glory, in that the literal knowledge of the law, as engraven on stone, had no power whatever to affect the heart of the man who read it. The tables of stone had no quickening power in them, but when the law gives place to the gospel, no one can receive it without having wrought, at once, an inward transformation. (2) The Apostle goes further in the seventh verse, for he shows the superiority of the gospel over the law in that, whilst the law was simply a ministry of condemnation, the gospel is a ministry of life. (3) He proceeds a step further, and shows that the gospel has an exceeding glory over the law, in that, while the latter was only temporary, the gospel is for ever. (4) And yet once more the gospel exceeds the law in the matter of its perspicuity. The law was obscure, and the revelation made to man through Moses was dim and indistinct. “Now,” says the Apostle, “there is an efficiency in the gospel which the law does not possess. The law found man in bondage, and left him so, only sealing the cords of his captivity; but when the gospel comes it snaps all fetters and leads the man at once into perfect liberty, for where the Spirit of the Lord is—that is, where the gospel of Christ is—where the law of the Spirit of life is—there is liberty. Freedom follows the footsteps of the gospel.
I. This is true among the nations of the earth. Although the liberty mentioned here does not primarily refer to political, or religious, or national liberty, yet, at the same time, national liberty is the inseparable companion of the gospel. Wherever the gospel of the grace of God has free way—is preached and accepted—there you always find political liberty following in its wake. Liberty is the attendant angel of the gospel. Let God’s truth lay hold of any land, and despotism dies. The gospel creates an atmosphere that suffocates a despot; and where it is free it exercises an influence under which slavery of every description is certain to wither.
II. Our text is true in regard to ecclesiasticism. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” Once have the gospel in the heart, and there is a grand rebellion against all the despotism of ecclesiasticism.
III. Our text is specially true in the experience of the individual believer. There is liberty (1) from the bondage of sin, (2) from the entanglements of ceremonialism, (3) liberty of character, (4) liberty in service, (5) liberty in all that the Bible contains.
A. G. BROWN, Penny Pulpit, No. 974.
I. I do not find, anywhere in the Bible, that we are warned against too much liberty. In fact, it is almost always those who have felt themselves too shut up and confined, who break out into carelessness of conduct; just as the stopped river, bursting its barrier, runs into the more violent stream. And yet some people seem to me to be afraid of a free gospel. The freeman of the Lord walks in the day. His former sins do not trouble him. They were cancelled the first time he brought them to Christ, and God never rewrites one cancelled line. He has to do with nothing but the sins of the day.
II. The Christian has the commandment of God in his mind, and it is his delight to study and to keep it. But far more than the command, he has the whole will of God. He has studied the commands till he has reached to the spirit of the commands. He has gathered the mind of God. He knows, by a kind of blessed, spiritual intuition, what the will of God would be on any given subject, and he follows it. It is a very grand feeling to be doing God’s will. This is what Christ was doing all the time He was on earth. It is the Spirit of the Lord, and “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”
III. Is not the Christian free of the New Jerusalem? And how should things on the surface of this little world bind him? He is on the wing for eternity. These things cannot hold him. He can go down into deep, secret places. His mind is dealing with the mind of eternity. He is free to all the promises of the Lord, for he has the mind of Christ.
J. VAUGHAN, Fifty Sermons, 4th series, p. 61.
REFERENCES: 3:17.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. i., No. 9; Good Words, vol. iii., pp. 633, 634; Homilist, 2nd series, vol. iii., p. 467; Church of England Pulpit, vol. xx., p. 149; J. E. C. Welldon, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxv., p. 392; A. Murray, The Fruits of the Spirit, p. 124.
17. Now the Lord—Christ, is that Spirit of the law whereof I speak, to which the letter was intended to lead: and where the Spirit of the Lord—Christ, is, there is liberty—Not the veil, the emblem of slavery. There is liberty from servile fear, liberty from the guilt and from the power of sin, liberty to behold with open face the glory of the Lord.
18. And accordingly all we that believe in him, beholding as in a glass—In the mirror of the Gospel, the glory of the Lord—His glorious love, are transformed into the same image—Into the same love, from one degree of this glory to another, in a manner worthy of his Almighty Spirit.
What a beautiful contrast is here! Moses saw the glory of the Lord, and it rendered his face so bright, that he covered it with a veil, Israel not being able to bear the reflected light. We behold his glory in the glass of his word, and our faces shine too. Yet we veil them not, but diffuse the lustre which is continually increasing, as we fix the eye of our mind more and more steadfastly on his glory displayed in the Gospel.
Glory and Glory (2 Cor. 3:7–18)
The passage.—A bright car light fades to nothing when the sun rises. So also, the glory of the law fades to nothing in the presence of the gospel. Paul did not deny the glory of Moses’ ministry (v. 7). He insisted that the glory of the gospel surpassed it (vv. 8–11).
The ministry of the law led to blindness; the ministry of the gospel leads to transformed lives (vv. 12–18). The object of the paragraph is to show the superiority of the Christian ministry. If Paul boasted, it was not in himself but in the gospel.
Special points.—Verse 7b is based on a Jewish enlargement of Exodus 34:30. The Old Testament said that Moses’ face, when he returned from the Mount, shown so that the people were afraid to approach him. Jewish legend had made it say that the people “could not look at Moses’ face.” This splendor did not last; it was fading even as the people looked. In contrast, the gospel has a permanent splendor.
In the Christian experience, the “Lord” and the “Spirit” are indistinguishable (v. 17). Paul did not mean to identify the two theologically. He meant that when one comes to the “Lord” (i.e., Jesus), he experiences the power of the Holy Spirit. They are one in their action in the human heart.
“Beholding” (v. 18) should be translated “reflecting” (RSV margin). The usual translation seems to say that our lives are transformed by contemplation of the Lord. Our translation says that our lives are transformed by reflecting the glory of the Lord. This is in harmony with the thought of Jesus; he called his disciples “the light of the world” (Matt. 5:14).
Truth for today.—Christians are often confused by those who claim to have discovered new spiritual truth. Such claims are nonsense. Jesus is the truth. The gospel is the climax of God’s revelation. We may increase our knowledge of Jesus; we can never hope to go beyond him.
3:17 Now the Lord is the Spirit. A strong statement that Christ and the Holy Spirit are one in essence, though Paul also recognized the distinctions between them (13:14).
3:18 with unveiled face, beholding. Paul builds on the experience of Moses in Ex. 34:29–35. We Christians, he says, behold constantly Christ’s divine glory, and this beholding changes or transforms us from glory to glory; i.e., from one degree of glory to another.
12–18. The hopes which the character of the new dispensation inspire lead to great boldness of speech. There is no need for the Gospel-preachers to follow Moses’ example. He put a veil on his face to prevent the Israelites seeing the glory fade from his face, its end. Of the text of Ex 34:33 Plummer says the true translation is not, as AV, ‘till Moses had done speaking with them,’ but ‘when Moses had done speaking with them.’ Windisch may be right in seeing in the end of 13 the idea of the blindness of the Jews to the transitoriness of the old dispensation. This makes the connexion with but their minds were hardened (Plummer ‘dulled’) easier. They did not understand the significance of Moses’ action. Now comes the application: the state of blindness remains; the Jews no more understand the character of the old covenant when they hear it read than they did when it was first given; the same veil (the metaphor is easily intelligible) remaineth unlifted. Bousset’s reference to the Torah-rolls as covered in linen clothes is probably not to the point; the words at the end of 14, which veil is done away in Christ, are better rendered because it is done away in Christ; this is the explanation of the uplifting of the veil; that is possible only when Christ is confessed. Now, when Moses is dead, even as when he was seen, there is the veil, spoken of, with a further development of the thought, as upon their hearts. With a further echoing of words in Ex 34 St. Paul adds that when Israel turns to the Lord the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit. That by these words St. Paul intends to identify, in the strict sense of that word, Christ and the Holy Spirit is a view tenable only if we suppose that St. Paul was so careless a thinker as to be unaware of the fact that again and again he speaks in a way which rules out such identification. St. Paul is thinking here of the sphere of divine and creative revelation; he is not expressing a metaphysic of Deity. In Windisch’s words there is ‘a dynamic identification of two known magnitudes,’ since where the Lord is and works, there is also the Spirit. We may note also Goudge’s view that in 17 ‘the Lord’ would in modern printing be in inverted commas, as referring simply to the language of the Exodus passage. Then the meaning will be that the Lord to whom Israel must turn is that Spirit, whose presence in the Church is the mark of the new dispensation. In that case Hort’s minute emendation of Kuriou into Kurion at the end of 17 has much in its favour, and we should translate ‘where the Spirit is Lord.’ Where the Spirit of the Lord is (the turn of language is itself significant), there is liberty, a gift and blessing, it is implied, impossible under the old covenant. And, in contrast with the Jews, all we Christians reflect in our unveiled faces the glory of the Lord, and are being transformed into the very image of Christ, so that in us there is an advance from stage to stage of glory, as naturally results since the cause of the whole progress is the Lord who in his nature is Spirit. The AV ‘beholding as in a glass’ is possible, and Windisch prefers this rendering, but the RV suits what seems to be the Apostle’s thought better. Of the many possible renderings of the last words of 18 the one adopted has the advantage of keeping the order. So does ‘from the Lord of the Spirit,’ but such a statement of relationship hardly accords with St. Paul’s mind.
3:7-18
Comparing the Covenants
Paul continues to contrast the old covenant with the new covenant. The old covenant—as spelled out in the Law of Moses—produced condemnation. It set a standard of righteousness that no one could meet (3:6-7). And while the glory of God was occasionally evident under the old covenant, it was a fading glory. Even the glory that lit Moses’ face after his time with God did not last. And Paul notes that the old covenant itself was fading away, to be replaced by something much brighter and better (3:11).
The new covenant makes available righteousness and life rather than condemnation and death. The old covenant was like a dim flashlight in a completely dark room—helpful, but only to a certain extent. The surpassing glory of the new covenant is like someone coming in and hitting the switch, flooding the room with light. The old covenant had no glory when contrasted with the new covenant.
Paul uses the veil that Moses had worn over his face (Exodus 34:29-35) to symbolize the spiritual “veil” over the hearts of many of the Jewish people (3:15). In their devotion to the old covenant, they were unable to see the glory that was available to them. The Spirit of God is the One who lifts the veil and enables believers to behold the glory of God in the face of Christ. And it is the hope of glory (3:12) that emboldens believers to proclaim the gospel. With the veil removed, all believers should reflect the glory of the Lord (3:18).