To Encourage You

2 Corinthians 3:18 “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

In the fairy tale Snow White, there is an evil queen that was always looking into a magic mirror.  As she gazed into it, she would say something to the effect of “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest one of all?”  At this, the mirror would reply, “My queen, you are the fairest in the land.” For some reason, that’s what came to my mind as I read the passage above this morning form 1 Corinthians 3.  In the New King James Version of the Bible, this verse is translated as follows: “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.”  In various places in the Bible God uses the metaphor of a mirror to speak of His Word.  He wants us to know that as we read the things that He’s said to us, it’s as if we are looking into a mirror to see a reflection. 

As I have observed and read about what so many churches are teaching today and many popular pastors are writing, it would appear that the Bible is saying the same thing as the evil queen, i.e., “YOU are the fairest one of all. You are a wonderful person. You are successful, you are beautiful, you are good – all you have to do is name those things and claim them and they will all be yours.”  But isn’t that the very same thing that so many totally secular self-help counselors are saying to us? Isn’t that the typical teaching of secular psychologists – that YOU are wonderful, and if you think otherwise, you’re mistaken, for if anything isn’t right in your world, either your thought patterns are wrong or it’s all the fault of someone or something else.

But is that the kind of mirror the Bible is to us?  If it is, why do we need it if the ungodly would tell us what is, in essence, the very same thing?  So, let’s peer a little closer into this book and see what it actually says. 

The believer, we are told, has an “unveiled face.”  What this means is that before someone comes to Christ, there is a kind of “veil” that covers their eyes. They can look at the Bible and read the same words that a Christian does, but they won’t understand what it actually says.  The believer is different. When he or she looks at the Word it has an effect on them. As the verse above says, they are “being transformed.”  That means they aren’t as they should be as they come to it. They aren’t the fairest in the land.  There are some changes needed, and there will continue to be changes needed as long as they live on this earth.  In heaven this will all change.  1 John 3:2 tells us this in the following words: “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” 

Which takes us back to that mirror.  What we see as we gaze into the mirror of God’s Word are two things.  We see ourselves – but we see ourselves in contrast to the Son of God.  In the Snow White fairy tale, you’ll remember that the evil queen was told by the magic mirror that she was the fairest in all the land, until one day the mirror said this: “Snow White, O Queen, is the fairest of them all.”  And so, out of jealousy, the evil queen hatches her plot to exterminate her.  What a picture this is of the mirror of God’s Word which will always tell us that it is Jesus that is the fairest of them all. It’s as the well-known hymn “Fairest Lord Jesus” says, i.e., that Jesus is fairer and purer than anyone and anything.   It is as we see Him, and as our heart longs to be transformed to be more and more like Him that we are “are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another,” and that transformation comes only one way: “from the Lord who is the Spirit.” 

You see, when Jesus came into this world, the religious rulers of that time had the same reaction to Him as the evil queen did to Snow White. They resented Him. They were angered as He revealed their ugly heart of sin, and they killed Him because of it.  But for those who believed in Him, they were transformed to become the very sons of God.  Yet, while we are on earth and as we look into God’s mirror, we will continue to see ways we need to change to become more and more like the Son of God that God’s Word reveals.  As James tells us in his letter, “be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing” (James 1:22-25).

So, as you peer into God’s Word, and as you seek to hear God’s Word taught and preached, what are you looking for? Are you hoping to hear that you are the fairest in the land, or are you looking unto Jesus, Who alone is truly the fairest one of all? I hope it is the latter, for that’s the message of God’s Word. As John 1:1-4 tells us, it is Jesus Who alone is “the Word of God” Who was “in the beginning.” It is Jesus Who was “with God,” and Who “was God.” And it is Jesus alone, Who is the “Word (which) became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:1-14).

May God help us to continually look into His mirror and by that mirror be slowly but surely transformed into the image of this One Who IS the Word, Jesus Christ, the holy and perfect only begotten Son of God.  It is He alone Who is fairer than all.  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdNASJDwvAU)