Being Transformed

“And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 3:18)

It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog. Many have probably stopped reading. To be honest, my little development project is working me over. Please pray for me.

Anyway, I hope I communicated effectively last week. The point is fairly simple. To be transformed our desires have to redirected by an encounter with God’s goodness. Then our focus is redirected to Christ. Having tasted something of Christ’s beauty we want more and more and more. Beauty does that: it arrests our attention, redirects our desires toward itself. This fits with conversion because we believe there is nothing more beautiful that Christ. In this text Paul assumes that our attention has been arrested by Christ and that we are gazing at the glory of the Lord. We have a new focus, in other words.

Now that our desires have been redirected and now that we are focused on Christ, God transforms us. I stated last week, that we become whatever we worship. If we worship money, we will become greedy. If we worship sports, we will become a sports fanatic. If we worship Christ, we will become more Christlike. The Spirit will continue to transform us from one degree of glory to another, as we worship this beautiful One.

I believe this works. In my own life, I’ve learned not to necessarily fight my temptations but rather to use my temptation to remind me of my need of Christ. When tempted, I turn. I turn to Christ, place my faith and trust in him and watch the temptation receded into its own darkness. In other words, don’t try to be good, just follow Christ. Keep your eyes on him and the Spirit will do what you cannot do on your own—create you into a Christlike person.