2 Corinthians 3:18 Commentary and Bible Study

In this verse there are several contrasts. The apostle says ‘we all’, all Christian people in all ages and all places, in contrast to those who lived only in Moses day and looked on his veiled face and saw the fading glory of types and shadows which were passing away. Now, there is no Christian, no converted person, who does not have an open view of the things of God. Then again, we behold with open face, not through a veil. The veil that Moses wore stood for a veil on the minds of unconverted Jews, but in Christ that veil is removed so that we look at the things of God with open face. We are transformed gazing upon Christ by the Spirit of God; they were left unchanged by the sight of Moses and did not grasp the things of Christ because they only had the letter not the spirit.‘Beholding,’ we see, but ‘as in a glass.’ That is infinitely better than people in the Old Testament who did not have a sense of need, who never grasped the message of the Messiah, the promises in the types and shadows. We behold, of course, not face to face, but as in a glass, as in a mirror we see the Lord. In Paul’s day mirrors then were not made of glass but of polished metal and they did not give a very faithful reflection. That is the illustration Paul uses of the sight which we now have in contrast to the sight that we will have in heaven when we see the Lord face to face. Even so we may be confused by his illustration. ‘Paul,’ you say, ‘when I look in a mirror I see me not the Lord.’ Yes, but the mirror is chosen to stand for the revelation of the Lord. The idea is not that you are looking directly at the mirror but at an angle. When you look into a mirror at an angle you see other people standing near you in the room but it is an imperfect image. Well here we are looking into a glass at an angle and we are seeing the glory of the Lord. We are not seeing his glory face to face; that is not possible until we arrive in heaven. But what we see is halfway there and it is infinitely better than the Old Testament. Throughout this passage Paul is saying, ‘Do not listen to those Judaisers; you cannot go back there; they do not understand Christ has come.’ ‘The glory of the Lord.’ What do we see? Of course, the mirror for us is the Scripture. We read the word of God and in it we see the glory of the Lord. We see his lovingkindness. We read the life of Christ, we see his amazing condescension in the best sense of the word. How he came down out of the courts of heaven and laid aside his great glory, and lived as a poor man, and moved among the people, and stooped constantly to heal and to restore. We see his saving work, his healing of the blind and the withered, his casting out the demons from those who were possessed. We see the great glory of the Lord in his deeds, in his work. No kindness like the kindness of the Lord, forgiving sin, restoring us from our fallen condition. We look into the Scriptures and we see his atoning work on Calvary that God suffered and died in terrible agony to bear our punishment away, and we see his resurrection and his power, his life-giving power. As we gaze at or study these things, we are changed into the same image, but progressively, from glory to glory. Certainly we are changed massively when we are born again, but we are further changed progressively through the Christian life. How does this work? Is it by some almost magical process, so that as you read, you are automatically changed? Some people have occasionally made the mistake of thinking it is like that. Some teach that the way to deal with sin and temptation is to close your eyes, screw up your face and imagine Christ. And as you look at him, you will be delivered from the temptation. And this is one of the texts they get it from. They misunderstand it of course. We are changed because we love him as we reflect on him. We wonder at him, and we admire him, and what he has done, and his character and his reaction and his deeds meet our highest admiration. So we strive to reproduce them in us. We fight against all the base things that are in us by striving, by mortifying the deeds of the body, putting off the old person, putting on the new. We will pray for and work for the very characteristics that we read of Christ. It is not an automatic infusion. It is by admiration and deep love that we want to have those characteristics and see them formed in us by prayer. We are full of gratitude and a sense of indebtedness to him and that creates great obligation. We also want to represent him, and you cannot represent him in word only, it has to be in life as well.