We will just look again—not more than a glance—at Matthew 17, the account of the Transfiguration.
And after six days Jesus taketh with Him Peter, and James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into a high mountain apart.
And He was transfigured before them; and His face did shine as the sun, and His garments became white as the light.
And behold, a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him.
In the second letter to the Corinthians, chapter 3, at verse 18:
But we all, with unveiled face 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.
Or, in the margin, “the Spirit which is the Lord.”
Of course, the link between these two passages is in one word—unfortunately, slightly obscure in translation.
In the King James Version, it is “changed into the same image.” In the Revised Version, it is “transformed into the same image.” The revisers certainly made a slight improvement on the other, and perhaps, with a fine sensibility as to fitness, they avoided putting the true translation. They made a slight change into “transformed.”
The fact remains that the same word is used here as is used of what happened on that mount: “He was transfigured before them.” It is exactly the same word as is here translated alternately “changed” and “transformed.”
The exact rendering here would be: “transfigured into the same image.”
So that the children of God have a transfiguration, as the Lord Jesus had. His was an event, an act, a thing, shall we say, of a moment. We do not know how long it lasted, but it was at a time-point.
Ours is a long process indeed, from the beginning to the climax of our Christian life. This is what is supposed to be going on with us: we are being transfigured into the same image, from glory to glory.
That at once is very challenging to us, to our Christian history, life, and progress.
There may be—and I am always conscious of being on very delicate ground in making a comparison between the Lord Jesus and ourselves—there may be something different about Him.
It has been said that His transfiguration was the outshining of His deity. I have no quarrel with that. If that was so, all right; nothing affects the issue at all.
But then again, we have reason to believe that it was something other than that also: that it was the perfecting of His humanity, and the outshining glory of an absolutely perfect Man.
We do believe, and we feel we have ground for believing, that something like that was God’s intention concerning man when He said, “Let Us make man in Our own image.” And when there is so much about the glory and the glorifying which is the consummation of our pilgrimage, surely there is something in the transfiguration of the Lord Jesus which is not altogether isolated from what the Lord intends for us.
I put my emphasis upon that this afternoon. That is the point.
Earlier in our meditation on this matter, we said that the glory which took hold of Him and emanated from Him—transfigured Him—was the glory of His personality, utterly satisfying to God. His personality was utterly satisfying to God.
God’s satisfaction is always the ground of glory, wherever you look in the Bible. Wherever you can find any place that state of things with which God can be well pleased, you will find glory there. The glory fills and breaks forth.
That is supremely the case in the Lord Jesus. By this point the voice from Heaven attested Him, marked Him out, and said, “In Whom I am well pleased”—completely satisfied.
I repeat, then, that it was the glory of His personality as the Son of Man. In association with that, He spoke about His coming again as being the coming of the Son of Man in the glory of God the Father.
So far as His perfecting was concerned, it was not something that took place on the mount. The mount was the mark of the consummation of His perfecting.
I do not mean the matter of sinlessness, but the perfecting of His character—the perfecting of that inner man which we call personality. Personality is a strange thing, an elusive thing, something you cannot get hold of, but which you cannot mistake. It is the person really—the man inside.
Now, He, in that inner life of His, had worked out this whole matter of God’s pleasure, God’s satisfaction, through His life.
There was divine approval at His baptism, in similar words, indicating probably that His thirty years were approved; certainly indicating that the step He was now taking right out into public, with the Cross accepted by baptism, was approved. That brought the word from Heaven: “My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased.”
But now this period between the baptism and the Cross is concluding—and what a period! What a period! One writer says that He was tempted in all points like as we are, crowded into a short three years and a few months.
Yes, hell tested Him. The world tested Him. In a sense, Heaven tested Him. He was tested. He was put through it in every detail, and went through.
He was made perfect through sufferings, learning obedience by the things which He suffered. In that time, He brought that inner life, that inner character, that inner personality, to perfection.
You will see why I am saying this at the outset. It is not new to you. It is not fresh, I do not suppose. It does not strike you as anything very interesting. But it is basic to everything else, you see. That is the point.
Now, when the apostle takes hold of that and says, “We all”—I am glad he uses the little word “all”; it is so comprehensive, meaning we all—he is not talking only about himself and his fellow workers. He is talking about the Corinthians and all believers: “We all.”
But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transfigured into the same image.
He takes hold of that same word and brings it over to all believers, making that which had been perfected and completed in the Lord Jesus a process—a continuous process in the life of believers.
Here is that saying: what had been completed and perfected in that One has now to be reproduced in us progressively. That perfection, that character, that personality—the personality of the Lord Jesus perfected—brought into us, developed in us, manifested through us.
If you do not like the word “personality,” if it sounds too technical, then use the word “character.”
Now, the first thing to say about this, which is of course so helpful and encouraging, is where the apostle finishes this statement: “as by the Spirit who is the Lord.”
Dear friends, all that we know about the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Person and work of the Holy Spirit, all the effects of the Spirit’s advent and entering—let us recognize this as supreme: the inclusive work of the Holy Spirit.
That is, whatever He does, all that He does, His manifold activities—the inclusive work of the Holy Spirit—is one thing: to reproduce the Lord Jesus in a people.
And again, when you pray about the Holy Spirit and speak about the Holy Spirit, remember that. Remember that. The Holy Spirit’s supreme and comprehensive object is to reproduce the Lord Jesus in His character, His personality, His perfected manhood, His humanity, in a people.
This is very testing to you and to me, if we really contemplate it. It has challenged my own heart to the point of making me very hesitant to speak freely.
The test of the Holy Spirit having His way in your life and mine, the proof that He is there and is doing His work, is our transfiguration. Is our transfiguration taking place?
In other words, is Christ, in His perfect humanity, becoming more true in our nature, in our hearts, in us? The real test of a Spirit-governed life lies here: the progression, the progress, the increase of the character of Christ.
We are going to meet one another, and if we are really Spirit-governed men and women, what we must meet in one another is the Lord Jesus. And that must be not just today, and then it stops; not at one time in our life, and there it ended; but going on, going on all the time.
That is the test and the proof and the challenge of the Holy Spirit’s presence, and of the Holy Spirit’s liberty to work.
The apostle says here, just in the sentence preceding, “Where the Spirit is Lord, there is liberty.” There is liberty.
He is, of course, making a comparison, or a contrast, with the old dispensation of the law. Moses came down with the law. There it was all compulsion. There it was all, “You must,” and “You must not”—bondage, limitations, suppression, repression, and anxious, fretful striving.
Now all that is gone. The Spirit comes and has His way. Whereas, in the case of Moses, representing that order of things and that dispensation, he had to put a veil over his face—not to hide the glory, but to hide the departure of the glory, and pretend.
As you know, it was a dispensation of pretending on the outside. That is what the Lord Jesus was up against in His day with the scribes and Pharisees. He called them hypocrites—that is, pretending to be something that was not true. It was all put on the outside.
The glory which had gone was not seen because of this veil of pretence. But all that, says the apostle, is gone with Christ. The Spirit has come, and come within. Now we are set free from all that sort of thing.
It is spontaneous. The Spirit is Lord; it is liberty; it is spontaneous; it is free. It just happens. You do not have to make-believe, try, fret, worry, and suppress. It happens if the Holy Spirit is there.
And what happens? The glory of the Lord—that is, the perfection of His manhood—begins and goes on to express itself in us spontaneously. That is the life of the Spirit. It is the life of the Spirit. It is normal Christian life.
Something is subnormal if it is not up to that; something is abnormal if you are putting it on. But the normal is the Holy Spirit having His way and doing this one thing: making Christ more and more manifest in our mortal bodies.
So that is the heart of this. It is the work of the Holy Spirit. That is the point at the moment: the work of the Holy Spirit.
That helps us very much. The Holy Spirit has taken into His own hands responsibility for this.
Friends, you and I have not to strive to be Christ-like. With all due respect for Thomas à Kempis, it is not an imitation of Christ. It is not an imitation of Christ—something that we try to do.
It is this: that it is as natural to a true child of God, who is not putting something definitely in the way of the Holy Spirit, to become more Christ-like as it is to breathe.
Now, you do not stop to discuss the question of whether you are going to breathe, how many more breaths you are going to take, whether you will breathe now or save it up till later on, and make a theory of it. You just do it without thinking.
It is as natural as that, because the Holy Spirit is our breath, is our life. Say that over against the many difficulties people find in being Christ-like.
Now, Paul says it here in these two things. First of all, there is the pattern: perfect, complete, Christ glorified. The Holy Spirit comes to pattern out progressively in the children of God, in believers. He comes for that purpose—to take it over and to do it.
Now, we are not allowed to say how He shall do it. He chooses His own way.
That leads me to this next thing. Here again is the unfortunate break in the narrative by chapter numbers. The apostle goes on:
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves.
Now listen. How is it going to be done? How are these vessels going to contain, increasingly contain, and manifest this glory of the character of Christ? Not in the way that we would think, perhaps, or choose.
We are pressed on every side, yet not straitened; perplexed, yet not unto despair; pursued, yet not forsaken; smitten down, yet not destroyed; always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus.
We who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake. Death worketh in us.
That is rather a disconcerting, discouraging view of things. But that is how the Spirit does it.
The fact remains, whether we like it or not, that it is just being pressed on every side that presses us into something more of the Lord Jesus, and presses something more of the Lord Jesus into us.
To gather it all up, all these things just mean this: you and I would never come to this transfiguration except through these trials and adversities. These are the Holy Spirit’s means of our perfecting, of our growth in Christ.
It is a pity that it has to be like that. I agree. It is a pity that we cannot be Christ-like without being put into difficulty and trouble and suffering, but that is just it, you see. It is like that. It is like that.
Give people absolute exemption from all kinds of difficulties and troubles, and see what kind of people they are—healthy, self-assertive. You know, people who were never ill have very great difficulty in being sympathetic with the sick and understanding. They have to make a great effort to be patient with them.
That is why I like doctors to be ill sometimes. Perhaps that is the wrong way to say it. We ought not to like anybody to be ill. But, you know, sympathy, understanding, and patience come to us along this line of experience, and painful experience. It is a matter of character, is it not?
So the apostle puts alongside our transfiguration all these difficulties and adversities, and in effect says, “This is the Holy Spirit’s material. These are the Holy Spirit’s instruments for working Christ into us.”
It works out that way if we are not rebellious, if we do not allow bitterness to creep into our spirit. It works out that way. So suffering and trial, difficulty and adversity, under the government of the Holy Spirit, will effect this.
But then the apostle takes us here. He says, “We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror.” The revisers have some difficulty here, and the translators of the Authorized Version had not settled the question.
They did not really know exactly what Paul meant, so they put it in different ways: what we have in the text and what we have in the margin. Did he mean that we are a mirror, that the image is thrown upon us as a mirror and then rebounds? Or did he mean that Christ is the mirror, and we are looking into Him, and He is reflecting the glory of God?
I think that is what he meant. He spoke about the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. I think the word “face” there is just another word for mirror. I agree with your Greek scholars: it is not the same word, just another word with the same meaning.
It is in the face of Jesus Christ that we behold it. In the face of Jesus Christ—that is what the apostle is talking about here.
And the word “beholding” is a strong word. It is not just taking a look; it is fixing our gaze—fixing our gaze. That is what the New Testament means by “behold.”
We all, fixing our gaze upon Christ—upon Christ as He mirrors in His own Person the glory of God, the satisfaction of God, the mind of God in perfection.
The point is that you and I must contemplate the Lord Jesus in spirit. We must be occupied with Him. We must have our holy of holies where we retire with Him. We must have a secret place where we spend time with Him.
And not only that in given and special seasons, but we must see, as we move about, ever to keep Him before us—looking at the Lord Jesus, contemplating Him.
We shall be changed into the same image. The Holy Spirit will operate upon our occupation.
You become like that which obsesses you, which occupies you. Is it not true? Usually, what people are occupied with—you see the obsessions of people, and you can see their character changing by their obsessions. They are becoming like that thing which is occupying them. They are changing. They are becoming different.
Something has got a grip on them, and they can never think about anything else or talk about anything else. It is changing their character.
Now Paul said, “For me to live is Christ.” For me to live was Christ, being occupied with Him.
So I am going to use the word nevertheless: it would be a good thing if He became our obsession, our continuous occupation—at any rate, the whole day, steadfastly fixing our gaze upon Him. The Spirit changes us into the same image.
Now one further word, and we close for the present. You notice the context of these words in 2 Corinthians. The apostle here is mainly concerned with the effect of the life of believers in this world, on this earth. He calls it “this ministry.”
Perhaps that word needs transfiguring for us. The apostle says, “We all beholding.” He covers all believers by that word “ministry.” It is all believers that he is speaking to about ministry.
Here is a tremendous difference. Our technical, professional conceptions of ministry are mostly external. That is, you are given a title, you more or less put on a uniform, and you are “the minister.” It is all put on the outside; therefore it can be artificial.
Do not take offence at that, anybody. But what is he saying? What the apostle is saying here is that ministry is not something that you put on; it is something that comes out. It just comes out.
We all—you, my brothers and sisters—are called to the ministry. You are called to the ministry.
Any special application of that word would only be permissible in the New Testament in measure, not in kind. That is, some have a special ministry. They are God’s ministers in that particular way, with that particular measure.
It is not that they are a class called ministers and other people are laity—not a bit of it. Such ideas are foreign to the New Testament.
Here it is that we all, beholding, have the ministry resultant from the beholding. We are all called to the ministry. It is the effect of our being here.
Now, what is the apostle saying about this? He is saying so clearly that personality and ministry must be one.
How searching that is, but how very meaningful. Ministry must not be something—preaching, teaching, and all those things which are called ministry—done while the man is different, the person is apart.
Paul is saying so emphatically: when you meet a truly Spirit-governed man or woman, what they say comes out of their life; it is a part of their life. Their teaching can be seen to have been wrought into their history and experience.
It is known when that man or woman seeks to teach, to minister, to say something to someone else of a Christian character, that it has come out of some secret history with God—something that the Holy Spirit has done in them.
Their ministry and their character are identical. That is very important. It is very important indeed. It is indispensable.
That is why the Holy Spirit is so meticulous about character, so careful about the personality, the inner life.
If we are really under the government of the Holy Spirit, and if we, in word, exceed what is true in our own lives, the Holy Spirit will soon take us up on that. He will see to it that we are brought abreast of our teaching. The thing is kept in correspondence and balance.
Have you ever said something and the Holy Spirit checked you up and said, “Is that true of you? Is that true? Or is that something you said?” It is very important.
We would not really have it otherwise, would we, if we were honest? We want it to be like that.
This is something that involves the glory. That is the point. It involves the glory. There is such a thing as the power of the Holy Spirit in the glory.
We were speaking of it yesterday as impact—the impact of the Transfiguration upon those men, and the impact of a seeing of the Lord by anyone afterwards: what it registered of power.
Now, you and I perhaps covet and pray—not just anything—that there shall be impact in our lives, that there shall be power, that we shall register, that we shall not just leave things as they were.
We do crave, do we not, that as we go on, and when we have passed on, something will have been left—an impress—either by our ministry or by our presence, and it shall remain.
Impact is a very good word. You see, that is bound up with the glory. That is the glory: it registers something that remains. It remains.
Things may come, and for a time the glory may be veiled, but there is something there that will come up again.
I can confess to you—and yet there is some understanding, because we are all made alike—that I have had difficulty in understanding how three men, one of them in particular, could be on the Mount of Transfiguration, and that one, amongst them, by a direct revelation of the Father, could declare, “Jesus, the Son of the living God, the Christ.”
How could that man deny Him with oaths and curses? How could they all forsake Him and flee for their very lives? Well, if we did not know our own natures and hearts, we would not have any understanding of that. But it is a bit difficult, is it not?
And yet, it was only a veiling for the time being. It came up afterwards. It came up with Peter, as we know. Many years after, at the end of his life, he referred to it: “We were with Him in the holy mount.”
It remained. It was something that they did not quite lose. There was a temporary eclipse. God forbid that it should ever be true of us. Perhaps we will never have to go quite the same way as they went, but the thing is there.
What I am saying is that there is a permanence about this matter—an abiding effect: really having Christ revealed in the heart by that inward revelation of Him, a manifestation of His character, something that remains.
Now, we can have all that is called ministry—a sermon, an address, something given to persons—and so it goes on like that, week after week after week. But that, of course, is why we are saying this: we do not want it like that.
We really do not want it like that. We should come and go and be just passing things, leaving no abiding mark.
There is an impact bound up with this. So it is not a matter of what we call ministry, something external. Ministry with Paul is nothing less, nothing other than what is true of Christ coming out of the life of His servant, of His people—being there and coming out.
It is possible, of course, as our brother said this morning in his word to the children, for us to be looking critically at the servants of the Lord, taking account of natural features and occupied with that.
All right, we are disposed to do that sort of thing. We may miss something. We really may miss something. But if at all we are without prejudices or preoccupations and all that kind of thing—criticisms, looking for what is not glorious—if we are disposed to see what there is of Christ, it ought to be possible to see that.
The profession is supported by a possession. The words are backed up by experience. The teaching is not teaching only; it is something that has been wrought.
Now, dear friends, it has got to come back to that. I am tremendously exercised about this in these days, wondering whether I have not done too much teaching—not that it has not been real, but that it has not become real and living as it should be in those who have received it.
That is a proper kind of concern and exercise. We may think always that the teaching should be as practical as possible, brought down very closely to human life. But, of course, we cannot make people into what we say.
It should be the exercise of every one of us that truth should not just remain some teaching, something that we hear, something that goes on in certain places, something that we know in its phraseology and verbiage.
If that is God’s truth, it should be real. It should be our life. It should be our character. But only so shall we have this ministry.
Therefore seeing we have this ministry, even as we have obtained mercy, we faint not: but we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by the manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.
It is character through words, and no words without character. And the character is the character of the Lord Jesus. May it be more true with us.