The burden of becoming can be summed up in two verses of the scriptures; II Corinthians 3:18 and Colossians 3:9-10.
But before every verse there are preceding verses which gives us context into what we are reading, sometimes the context for a verse may otherwise exist in a very different book estranged from the verse at hand then you are left hanging except by the help of the Holy Spirit. One of such verses is II Corinthians 3:18. This verse states a word almost appearing in every of the preceding verses, the word Glory and it says we
behold the “GLORY” of the Lord.
What then is the GLORY?
Glory is the sum total of the outworking of God through the life of a man.
Jesus, while He walked on earth was always and constantly mentioning a personality that is behind all of His operations: “I must work the work of Him who has sent me”, “My father works so I work too“;
Then we see in John 1:14, He talks of a kind of glory that is full of an essence divine and is not just the word glory overused in the modern sense of the word.
The process of becoming demands that we behold and the word ‘BEHOLD’ when used in the scripture is suggestive of a more thorough look than what we are accustomed to, NIV uses the word contemplate, examine, consider, critically examine, look at it on all sides. The word, used in the Greek form means reflecting oneself in a mirror. When you go to a mirror, you examine your flaws, assess your dressing, comb your hair, and for ladies you stare in front of a mirror for minutes on end critically examining every detail of your face, testing and trying every fashion choice. When we come to behold, this is a simple illustration of what we have come to do, though it can’t fully capture the whole scope of it.
You’d ask, what are we beholding? It is the GLORY of the Lord Jesus. The glory of Jesus are His acts, how Jesus dealt with matters when He walked on the earth, His seamless communion with the Holy Spirit, His obedience to every command of the father even when it was leading to death of the cross and His setting free of those in bondage.
We may be tempted though to look at this through our skewed perspective eyes, but John gave us a perspective, more thorough in John 1:14 that this glory was full of grace and truth: He was always ready to pardon, He was always ready to overlook, He was always ready to correct, even when Judas came from the deal of His death, He still called Him friend, even when the woman that was caught with adultery was brought to Him, He was always ready to lend out grace. He would not deny grace to those who thirst for it, He would not withhold it from those who needed it most, He was always ready to give grace to those that are suffering, always ready to comfort the mourners with whispers of joy, He was always ready to be merciful but it was not without truth, it was not without the biting, piercing truth that comes along side it, He would heal a man yet warn him so that worse things might not befall him, He would free the adulterer yet warn her to go and sin no more.
Scattered across the scriptures are pictures of His grace, picture of His form, Isaiah 53 said it was our sin He bore, yet we esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, He bore all these things for the sake of the work God wants to wrought in us through Him. He would know no length, know no boundary, know no stopping till He had borne that cross, while at this same time leaving a sample unto us. He was marred beyond recognition, it was for us, He was despised, shamed, rejected, spurned, He scurried about like a fugitive, homeless, all just to achieve the work of salvation that God has given to Him. His Glory is not just in His mighty works, it resides in the sufferings He suffered too.
Brethren seeing then that we have this so great a cloud of example from the man Jesus, let us go ahead and behold Him. Critically examining every aspect of His work, of His life, how He loved to obey the father, how He was zealous for the work of God, how lack of provision could not stop Him from doing the work of the Lord, how exemplary He was for living a Christian life. Let us behold His glory His works, His life, His interactions and as we behold, we are given grace to become what we see, and we are changed more and more into His image.
Keep on BEHOLDING UNTIL HIS RETURN.
SHALOM!
TACSFON UI