Following the Follower IV: Glorious Confidence in the New Covenant

Welcome to the Hope Council Podcast, I'm John Snyder and with me is Chuck Baggett and we're looking again at this autobiographical section in 2

Corinthians, the largest autobiographical section we have of the Apostle Paul. Chapter 2, verse 12, and we're going to go through chapter 6, verse 10, and because of our limited time, we're just going to hit the high points.

But we're now in chapter 3, and Paul has already said, in the midst of a very disappointing time in his ministry where he is concerned about the health of the

Corinthian church, Titus who was supposed to be bringing him news of the church doesn't meet him in Troas as expected, so he leaves

Troas even though God has opened a door for the preaching of the gospel. And that's why

Paul is there in part, and Paul, with a heavy heart, turns and heads toward Macedonia in hopes of meeting

Titus there. So he, in the midst of this very dark time and heavy heartedness, he then turns and in verse 14 he just begins to speak of all the hope that he has, even in the hardest times of ministry.

And it's just such a wonderful passage that describes a hope that for every pastor, for every teacher, for every

Christian parent that is trying to point the child to Christ or trying to guide a converted son or daughter in the way of Christ, or a witness or an older believer at work or school, when we labor to do good in the kingdom of God, especially as we speak on behalf of God, what confidence do we have?

And last time we looked at that confidence that Paul found in God. In God through Christ, Paul was confident that he had all the sufficiency he needed.

Now, we stopped at verse 5, but that was kind of an unnatural spot because really verse 5 and verse 6 go together.

So I'm going to read verse 5 and 6, and then Chuck, if you will walk us through these great contrasts that Paul draws between Old Covenant and New Covenant, and then we'll look at how

Paul applies that. So in verse 5, Paul writes, not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God.

And then he says, God, who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the

Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. And then what follows from 7 down toward the end of the chapter is a series of contrasts.

We find one in verse 6, but we find these contrasts where Paul says, this great Old Covenant, a very, you know, it was a gracious gift that God would make a covenant with the people, but it does not compare.

It pales. You need to think of Hebrews. It has lost all of its glory when it passes away to be replaced by the everlasting

New Covenant whose glory is so much greater. And being a servant in a much greater covenant suddenly changes everything for Paul.

Yeah, and the argument, as you just said, is kind of a better than argument.

It's not that the Old Covenant did not have glory. It does have glory. If you say that it had no glory at all, then it's not, you know, it's not much of a comparison to say that the

New Covenant had a greater glory. Greater than what? Well, not much, but it had a great glory. It was marvelous.

It's the grace of God to give it. It's just that what came after was so much better. Yeah, so he does make a number of comparisons to demonstrate how much better it is.

It is a greater glory because it is a glory, he just explains, that produces life rather than death.

He calls the Old Covenant the letter that kills.

In verse 7, it is the ministry of death, whereas the

New Covenant is one in which the Spirit gives life. And you can think about how even the giving of the

Old Covenant in a sense came with death because as God came to Moses on Sinai and gives him the law, while all that's happening, the people are down below worshiping in a golden calf and God sees them.

He tells Moses about it and he threatens to kill them all. And Moses intercedes for them and God relents and does not kill them, but the people are so obstinate, they're so stiff -necked that they can't look at the representation of God's glory that shines on Moses' face, so he has to veil his face before the people.

The problem was not with the law or with the Old Covenant or the glory of that covenant, it was the obstinate hearts of the people.

They can't stand to look at it. Which also says something about another problem, that is, you have people who are members of this covenant who are dead, they can't look at glory.

But the New Covenant is a covenant in which the Spirit gives life to every person who's a member of that covenant and they can stand to look at the glory, that glory is not veiled before them.

He mentions that later, we all with unveiled face behold. A second contrast that he gives, it's not just a greater glory but he calls it an abounding glory in verse 9, if the ministry of condemnation has glory, much more does the ministry of righteousness abound in glory.

The Old Covenant was to a great degree a ministry of condemnation and that's what it was intended to do.

It was intended to be a tutor, to point us to the need for Christ.

It was full of laws and rules that we could not keep and it only promised the answer in Christ, it foreshadowed the answer.

So it was a ministry of condemnation but then a greater covenant comes that doesn't condemn but is life and it provides life.

Christ keeps the law for us and he appeases the wrath of God. He atones and he gives life, righteousness by faith.

So it's a much greater glory in that sense. A third, he calls it in verse 10, a surpassing glory and here he says what had glory in this case has no glory because of the glory that surpasses it.

Again, it's like what you said earlier about it paling in comparison.

It had glory but what's new is so much more glorious, it's like that was no glory at all.

I was thinking about kids, you get a driver's permit and that's pretty neat, you're proud of that.

I have three grown kids, they get their permit, you take their picture with their permit, that's a big day in the life of a kid but then you get your driver's license and that's a much better day.

That driver's permit was great but it had restrictions with it, it was a temporary stop gap kind of measure but the driver's license, those restrictions are removed.

I mean, there's still parental restrictions but as far as the law is concerned, those restrictions are removed and it's a more permanent thing.

It's much, much better, so much so that you may even just trash the permit, that card that said you had the permit.

It's not a big deal anymore because you have your license. Here is a glory that comes in this new covenant that's so much better than the old.

It's like the old was nothing, although it wasn't nothing, it was great.

And then a fourth contrast he gives, he calls it an enduring glory in verse 11, for if that which fades away was with glory, much more, that which remains is in glory.

So here's a temporary versus eternal, again the old covenant was always a temporary, momentary fix, if you will, pointing toward what was to come that would be eternal and enduring.

What was temporary was great but what is enduring is so much better. And so in those ways he contrasts these covenants and concludes that what is now is so much better than what was then, even though what was then was good.

Yeah, and Paul talks about the old covenant and the law in particular as the heart of the old covenant.

He talks about them in ways that if you read this very quickly, maybe with the surface level understanding, if you're not careful, you come away thinking that Paul almost is saying that the law is bad and the law is out to kill you and the old covenant was kind of of no value, which as you mentioned, goes directly against what

Paul is actually saying because Paul is saying it was great. It's just not as great as the new because it was pointing us to the new, preparing us for the new, the new is eternal, it brings life.

One way you could say with Paul's descriptions of law and covenant here, the old covenant, it's almost as if he's dealing with Jews, of course, who are rejecting the

Messiah. If the old covenant and the old covenant law, whether it's the moral law or the ceremonial law, if these do not ultimately find their fulfillment or fruition or destination in the coming of the

Messiah, then they are hopeless. Just they're nothing but hopeless. The old covenant is a dreadfully terrifying and only a dreadfully terrifying covenant if it is not pointing you to Christ.

And the law is nothing but a burden to grind you, to powder, no matter how hard you try, if it is not leading you to the one who not only justifies you by keeping that law, but also enables you then to walk in obedience.

And that law becomes the friend, the path of friendship. How can I walk in harmony?

How can I live today showing love and gratitude to my King? Well, the law, it hasn't changed, the moral law.

He still hates these things. He still loves these things. He still walks these paths. And those that walk these paths find a sweet intimacy with him.

But he's the one, Romans 8, that is enabling us to do that. So it's not that the old covenant is just so dreary and the law is just murderous, cruel thing, but that's what it would be had it not led in God's great plan to a

Messiah. So if you're a Jew and you're rejecting the Messiah, then what you're still clinging to is death, only death.

The Christian, we read the old covenant, we look at the law, the moral law, and we appreciate it because we have the fulfillment.

And in Christ, we are free to walk through all those pages of that old covenant.

And we are, you know, we are satisfied in Christ, complete in Christ. And we understand how this, it's like these are old black and white photos, you know, of the

Lord that we know in the New Testament, in this HD, you know, clarity, but we recognize him back there.

And we love that covenant because it led to our Lord. It led us to the

Lord, the law leads us to the Lord, like you mentioned in showing us our moral failure, we are led to look about for, is there any hope for people like us?

Well, yes, the law exposed the existence of sin, Paul talks about in his own life. It killed his good impressions of himself.

So the law shows that sin exists and the cross shows how ugly sin is.

It's against that kind of a God. And it drives us when the

Holy Spirit uses it, it drives us to the cross. It drives us to the Savior. Paul gives those contrasts, and then he has an application.

And oftentimes in Paul's letters, the applications come in following the word, therefore, therefore, or for, and, you know, but therefore is just, it's one of his favorites.

And if we had time, we would look at every single place it appears at the end of chapter two, through chapter middle, chapter six,

I've underlined them in my Bible, I'm looking at a couple of pages, and I see about seven or eight on this page.

But in chapter three, in the New American Standard, it only shows up one time, and that's verse 12, therefore, having such a hope, we use great boldness in our speech and are not like Moses who used to put a veil over his face so that the sons of Israel would not look intently at the end of what was fading away.

So Paul uses a well -known picture from the Old Testament. Moses meets with God, his face glows.

He covers his face. The people cannot bear, as you mentioned, they cannot bear to look on the face of a man who has just met with God and it physically, there's some manifestation, some, you know, supernatural physical manifestation of a man having met a holy

God and this people who are out of sorts with God cannot bear it.

And that may seem so kind of strange to us, but you think when you are not walking with the

Lord, even as a believer, if you have drifted and become cold, and you are unhappy because you would be, and God is convicting and there, you know, you have lost all that was so precious of that day -to -day communion with him as you have embraced old sins.

When you go to church and the most godly, maybe the most kind, but certainly the most

Christ -like person talks with you about, how are you doing? You're bothered.

You think, I don't want to talk to Mrs. So -and -so. It's like, she'll look at me. I mean, I used to feel that way about Mr.

Roberts. I thought, if there's any sin in my life that I don't know about or any sin that I'm guarding, you know, against God and I'm giving it sanctuary in my heart, when

I sit down and have lunch with Mr. Roberts, he's going to just look straight through my soul and say, John, and I'm going to go, yes, it's so true.

It's true. It's true. It's true. You know, give me 20 minutes. I'll be back. So, there are times,

I mean, Chuck, I'm sure you've experienced this, where people in the church that we care about, you go to speak with them.

You try to set up, you know, a chance to meet them and talk with them, to visit them at their house, to invite them over to your house, but they are doing really poorly spiritually and they avoid you.

And you think, why do they hate me? And it's not necessarily you at all. It is that you represent a holy

God. And in the same way today, as it was then, Moses's glowing face representing the holy

God and the people, they can't look at it. But this verse mentions that it was fading.

Like the old covenant, as glorious as it was, it was a fading glory. And Moses's face would fade.

And so, he puts this over as it's glowing. And I think of, you know, one present application is, you know, is there anything about what the

Bible says in its boasting about Christ and what the Spirit of God can do with the

Word of God in the life of a person? You know, the power of God demonstrated in the person and work of Jesus Christ, even today.

Have I become embarrassed by the largeness of biblical descriptions?

And have I acted like I belong to a fading covenant where I need to kind of cover everything up?

I don't want people to see it fade. So I just kind of keep it hidden from people.

Paul's application is twofold. And the first is that verse 12, that he uses great boldness and confidence in his speech.

And we're not talking about a person being brash and a big mouth. We're talking about a person being unwilling, no matter how difficult life is, no matter how many lies the enemy throws at you about your

God. That the true believer, in the grip of the glories of the new covenant and the unrestrictedness of it, the fullness of it, that like Paul, when you are in the grip of those facts, you are able to turn to the person next to you and say things about Christ without reducing them, without saying, well,

I used to think this, but I'm not so sure now. And we talked about it earlier, how it's a temptation.

Let me give the example of Paul, and then we'll kind of ask ourselves some hard questions. In the life of the apostle, one of the sweet demonstrations of this is the way that he introduces first Timothy chapter one, verse one, the salutation, and then the opening of second

Timothy, because there's a lot that happens between those. One of the things that happens is that in second

Timothy, he is now imprisoned in Rome. And we don't believe that this is the imprisonment that he would be set free from.

And perhaps many scholars believe he was able to make that missionary trip to Spain. So second

Timothy doesn't look like Paul at the end of Acts, where people have free access to him.

He's able, he's kind of under house arrest, but he's given a lot of freedom and he's able to minister there.

This is not that. This is Paul chained. This is Paul saying, everyone has run from me.

Every preacher has hidden themselves from me. And they act like they don't know me because they don't want to be in chains here.

There are only a couple of faithful believers who still reach out to me.

He's cold. He says to Timothy, if you can come visit me, please come soon. Bring my cloak.

You know, it's cold in the dungeon there. And you know, bring the manuscripts, bring the parchments, bring my books.

It is Paul at the end, when instead of ending in this kind of, you know, blaze of respect and appreciation from the

Christian church, which we think of when we think of Paul, he's ending abandoned.

And even Christians are at this time, perhaps embarrassed to admit that they know him.

So, will Paul describe his hope in Christ and in the ministry of the gospel differently in 2nd

Timothy than he does back in 1st Timothy before things got so dark? So let me read the introduction to both letters and I want us to see that there is no difference.

So 1st Timothy, Paul writes this, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, according to the commandment of God, our

Savior, and of Christ Jesus, who is our hope. Well great.

Paul says that when ministry is going well, you're free, you're preaching, you're traveling. 2nd Timothy, you're imprisoned and abandoned, even by Christians at times.

Paul writes this, 2nd Timothy 1 .1, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God.

In 1st Timothy, he says, according to the commandment of God. Same thing.

Next, he says, according to the promise of life in Christ. So I am by the will of God and according to this great promise of life in Christ.

That's who I am. That's why I'm serving. 1st Timothy, he says the same basic thing, just a few different words.

I am an apostle by the commandment instead of by the will and of God, our

Savior, and of Christ Jesus, our hope. But in 2nd Timothy, he says Christ, who is the promise of life here.

So we see Paul in his darkest moments in 2nd Timothy, not reducing his boast in Christ.

So Chuck, would you say, since Christ Church has been here for 23 years, and you came very soon after the church was started, you know, we went to college together, we roomed together, we rode together, carpooled to seminary, and now we pastor together for almost 20 years.

So we probably know, we probably can remember vaguely conversations we would have had when we were in college thinking about ministry, man, what

God's going to do. And then in seminary, what God could do. And then when you first start pastoring, what

God can do. Would you say you have reduced your expectations, adjusted them since you started pastoring?

Yes, most definitely. Okay, so in what ways? Not specifics, but generally,

I guess. I think you, you know, I don't know if it's college and seminary, if it's just age and immaturity, but you have maybe grand ideas of what

God might do with you or in a church where you are. And you probably looked at the world through rose -colored glasses, you know.

And then reality starts to set in, you know, what you think might happen in a short period of time doesn't happen over years.

And you see people walk away, you know, people who don't walk away, but don't seem to be greatly changed over years.

And so you either quit or adjust your expectations and hopefully bring them more in line with the

Bible. Yeah, so there is, I think, an appropriate adjustment, and I would agree that I have adjusted.

There is an appropriate adjustment of expectations as we age and study our Bibles because we are getting a more biblical, more biblically informed expectation.

So, a biblically informed expectation would include that there will be apostates.

You know, John says it, and we don't think that the gospel writer, the apostle

John, was a poor pastor and that's why it happened. Maybe John didn't say the right thing in the right way.

Maybe he didn't live the right way and so he had this happen. No, we wouldn't blame John or even

Paul. And even when Paul talks about ministers who fell away. So, we see that, you know, there are going to be difficult seasons.

There are going to be heartbreaking seasons. There are going to be times where people we love walk away.

So we get, like you said, a seasoned, more honest understanding of the depth of sin's grip on humanity.

And, you know, when we preach through the Book of Romans, it's not going to save everybody that we preach to and it's not going to fully sanctify them by the end of the series.

Like at the end of the year, we'll probably be, you know, sinless people. So there are adjustments that need to happen.

Oftentimes, when we start the ministry as young men, we need a biblical estimation, a biblical expectation.

But then there's the sinful adjustment where because of our experiences and heartbreaks, we become preoccupied with the sad events of life as a pastor, as a parent, and we forget to focus on the realities that Paul is focusing on, the person and work of Christ as seen in the

New Covenant. And we despair. And then I think, you know, we drop down our expectations.

Yeah, you can be tempted to just hunker down and occupy a position and not really expect anything.

Yeah, we talked about before that when we were young men, I think we felt we had met some older pastors.

Whether this is true or not, I don't know that our assessment would have been fair back then. But, you know, men in their late 50s or early 60s who seemed to have decided that the pinnacle of serving

God as a minister of the gospel was to just keep the church kind of even keel, just don't rock the boat.

And then you can go ahead and retire. And then you're, you know, so why put your neck on the chopping block at age 60?

I mean, if you're 25, fine, but 60 is not worth it. And, you know, you can be seduced into taking a comfortable, self -serving, self -preserving road.

But at the heart of that, I think we are susceptible to those temptations when we are not gripped with what gripped

Paul. And so we think, well, look, I don't expect much anyway. So what

I do expect is so small, it's not worth the cost that you're telling me I should keep paying. So why not just coast?

You know, and you think about with your kids, we both homeschooled. And so homeschoolers are just sitting ducks for unbiblical expectations that if I homeschool and I don't let my kids hang around bad kids out there, the bad kids, you know, then my kids will be practically sinless kids.

I mean, it's like just we just give them a little bump and they'll go from unregenerate to regenerate, you know, they'll go from non -Christian to Christian, or maybe

I think they're probably already Christians because they don't argue, you know, as my seven -year -old doesn't yell at me when

I talk about Jesus and we do the family worship and they sit quietly and Susie's perfect and she's probably a

Christian. She never remembers a day she wasn't a Christian. And I think that it just it can become so easy to be willing to sign up for homeschooling, which is a costly effort.

And I think it's worth it. But it's easy to buy into the lie that if you do it right, if you do church and homeschool right, or even home church and homeschool, you can guarantee godly, happy kids that it'll never break your heart.

And that's a lie. You know, it's just like the lie that if we did church right, we would never have our heart broken by someone we cared about walking away from Christ.

You know, we would never have a Judas. We would never have, you know, the men that Paul mentioned. We would never have

John's situation where he says they went out from us because they never were really of us. So I think that there's a good biblical adjustment needed to make sure that we have not rose -colored glasses, but biblical glasses on.

But at the end of the day, that's not the real problem. The real problem is, you know,

I find that in my 20s, I was tempted toward different things. In my 50s,

I am pretty consistently tempted to wake up and to look at what we're facing in the church, what's next, the next hard talk.

And I look in the mirror and I see that at age 54, I'm not where I thought I would be.

I thought I would be, you know, much further along. I'm a spiritual pygmy compared to where I should be.

And so the enemy whispers and says, do you still say those great things about Christ and about the, you know, the power of the

Spirit and the Word of God? And you start to quietly, not deny

Christ, certainly, but you just back, you just, you know, you roll back those expectations and you think, well,

I guess this is about as far as I'm going to go in sanctification. This is as good as the church will be.

And those are very dangerous lies. Yeah, it's a danger, not just of adjusting your expectation in a biblical way, but a danger of adjusting the gospel and thinking that it's all

God can do. Yeah, to measure God by your past experiences. You know, I've never seen that happen in a church, so it can't happen.

I think, again, another adjustment, like close on the heels of what you just said is you can adjust the gospel because you think, well, if I lower the expectations, you know, the gospel and I make, you know, repentance and faith,

I water those way down, then more people will grab hold of it. But then you also have to adjust the biblical definitions of a number of other things.

So what is conversion? What is the Christian life? What is a believer? What is a child of God?

What is love to Christ? What is obedience? What is discipleship? What are any of those things? And suddenly, if you're not careful, you end up joining the evangelical culture in the

West. And it's not that, you know, we're not part of that, but there is a trend in the last 50 years that we've seen.

And, you know, I have been a part of that, and I don't want to be a part of it again. I pray that we're not a part of it now.

But a kind of a willing, knowing reduction of Christian definitions, biblical definitions to the point that it would be hard not to be defined as a

Christian, you know, like, well, who isn't a Christian? You have to really be bad not to be what this church calls a

Christian or a church member. And then you realize, I feel like I'm still such a successful pastor or I'm a successful parent.

No, you just adjusted what you call a Christian life to fit your children.

You adjusted it to fit your church members. So you look on the outside like everything is going well, but you have sold out

Christianity to get there. And it's why the source of Paul's confidence here is so important, because if you're looking for confidence or identity or whatever somewhere else, then you will be much more tempted to make those adjustments.

Yeah, I think that it's, and it's definitely not agreeing with the things we just said that guard you.

It's not being clear on doctrine. It's not having the new covenant doctrines clear in your mind.

It's not having catechism and confession clear in your mind. That is helpful, but that is not enough.

It is having continual, long contact with the unseen realities of Christ.

It is going back frequently with heart, yearning, believing, loving heart, and looking at the greatness of your savior and the greatness of his work.

So that that's the thing that keeps molding you rather than the ups and downs of your family or your church.

And then you don't depart, you know, you don't give up those biblical standards.

Well, that applies finally to what he says in verse 18, where he talks about gazing at Christ and his greatness in the new covenant.

It produces quite a wonderful result. You want to walk us through that?

Verse 18 says, 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 from the

Lord the Spirit. It's really a wonderful verse and one that we memorized years ago. The new covenant believer has the privilege of gazing continually upon Christ, and that really is a privilege.

If you think about the picture that we've just seen in these previous verses, you know, the Old Testament, the person under the old covenant, especially with the obstinate heart, has a veil over their own heart.

Moses has a veil over his face. They kind of intermittently get to view this glory that shines on his face.

And it's a veiled, but the New Testament believer with unveiled face, continually beholding

Christ and the wonderful reality that the verse expresses, not only that you get to look at Christ, but that you're transformed into the image of Christ from glory to glory.

You're being transformed into this image that you're beholding. I think it's worth mentioning, too, that the beholding is not a casual glance.

But it is to look lovingly and to search into. The beholding is in a mirror.

I think it's probably somewhat parallel to Paul's phrase in 1

Corinthians about looking through a glass darkly or dimly. You know, you don't see as clearly now as you will one day.

But because you don't see as clearly now as you do one day, you do have to give some effort to the looking.

And so it is to gaze intently. Yeah, I think some commentators

I've read on the passage, you know, pointed out that the ancient world did have mirrors, but they weren't the glass mirror with the silver backing that we have.

They were polished, you know, brass or a metal that would be polished to the point that you can see a reflection.

But you can imagine trying to get a very accurate view of yourself by looking in a piece of polished metal.

So you would have to, you know, I think of me now, age 54. I'd be squinting a lot. I'd go, where's my glasses?

Like, OK, wait, hold it there. Now hold the light there. You know, wait, no. OK, OK, now

I see. So it is a very intentional, determined, unshakable, gazing at Christ, laboring, if we have to, to get the details of Christ into our minds and hearts so that they influence us.

You know, they fashion us. But like you said, it's the gaze of love. It's not just hard work.

It's that when we really admire or adore, you know, when we stand in awe of Him and we look with faith and love to Him, there is a transforming impact that is not there.

For example, if you took a class at college on world religions and, you know, one month of the course is

Christianity, and the professor just gives you basic facts of this is what Christians believe, this is what they say about Jesus, and this is how

Christianity has progressed. And you can, the professor could actually give you good biblical statements saying these are what the

Christian documents say about Christ. But that would do nothing at all for you. It would not change you at all.

It's not that. There has to be a different kind of look. And Paul talks about the work of the

Spirit here. Tozer mentions in some of his books that humans are formative beings.

That is, whatever you gaze upon with this yearning and admiration, you tend to get formed into that thing's image.

We become like the things we focus on all the time. We see that in a limited way in all of humanity.

In Isaiah 41, when Isaiah points out, God, through Isaiah, points out how empty the idols are.

The idols are emptiness, he says. They are delusions. They can do nothing. And then a few verses later in Isaiah 41, he talks about idol makers, and he uses almost exactly the same

Hebrew words. They too are empty. They make empty things. They are useless, and they are deceitful.

You know, they're just wind and emptiness. Not just the idol, but the idol maker.

Those that focus on idols become like their idols. If we apply that to ourselves today, the church that focuses on a

Christ that is not the biblical Christ begins to resemble the

Jesus they imagine. He won't be the Christ of the Bible. He'll be something else. And we're not saying you should resemble more and more the

God you focus on. No, you actually already are. You don't have to try. Whatever comes to your mind when you truly think about your idea of God.

My God is like this, we say. Well, if it is not the God of Scripture, to the degree that you do not have a biblically informed view of God, to that degree, you know, you will not look like the

Christ of Scripture. You will not be made in His image. You will be continually made into the image of your

God. When you visit a church, you can see in a limited way, not perfect, but you can see in a limited way what their

God looks like, because they are starting to look like Him. But I think, as I mentioned, the

Holy Spirit's mentioned here in this verse, it is more than that fundamental reality that in human nature, we tend to kind of take on the attitudes and the responses and the look of the thing we admire.

There is something more going on here. There is the Spirit of God in the new covenant fullness, fashioning you into the image of your

Savior as you gaze wholeheartedly, happily on His person and work.

Yeah, the passage speaks of a transformation taking place. I think the word behind it is the word we get metamorphosis from.

There's a metamorphosis happening. Yeah, from glory to glory. I think this is sanctification. You are going from one level of holiness or one level of Christlikeness and to the next, to the next, to the next.

There is this outworking of the life that He has put within you. The Spirit is, little by little, transforming you from one level to the next, more and more into the image of Christ.

We know that that will not be perfectly completed until we stand on that great judgment day with every other believer from old and new covenant throughout the generations from every place on the planet.

This innumerable company, we see Him receive the glory from His Father in front of all creation.

He calls us to judgment. In that moment, when the Lord is glorified, His church is glorified with Him, and the transformation will be complete.

I think that this is the kind of verse that we only value to the degree that we know that He is beautiful.

Because if you don't stop and remind yourself how infinitely beautiful He is, then you are not amazed when you wake up in the morning that you get to, as a

Christian, you get to look at Him a little more today, and you get to be made a little more like Him today by the work of the

Spirit. You're not amazed. You think, well, that's noble. But you don't wake up and think, why would

God not only forgive me, but give me the unspeakable gift of being made lovely with the loveliness of His Son?

Yeah, you won't look with the intensity or the adoration. Yeah, a quick glance is plenty. I read my daily reading.

I went to my church Sunday. That's enough. And so, I think that is, at times in my life,

I've had that, and I realize, John, you have forgotten the measures of Christ.

And so, you have become accustomed to 2 Corinthians 3 .18 as if it is a little gift.

The other thing would be the pace with which we pursue conformity to Christ, obedience, repentance, renewed faith.

That is greatly aided by the confidence that it's not a hopeless effort.

He will transform me as I look at Him and then apply that great reality of Christ to whatever area of life, you know, whatever act of obedience is in front of me, whatever

God says I'm to do next. I'm doing that looking unto Jesus as I run this race, and I'm constantly being motivated, fueled, strengthened, and transformed looking at Him, walking the path of obedience that the

Bible gives. It's not a hopeless effort. Yeah, and I know it's next week, or next time, but chapter 4, verse 1, therefore, since we have this ministry, as we receive mercy, we do not lose heart.

It is not hopeless. Yeah, and that, and you know, in chapter 4 where he says, you know, we don't have to use crafty little methods.

Well, I always think of that with regard to the church, but that applies to home, but that applies to my sanctification.

I don't need a gimmick to become more holy, a better prayer, a better lover of my family, a more consistent obeyer of the

Lord. What I need is renewed, continual, long soaks in that scene, that reality of Christ, and that makes all the difference.

Well, this week you have a chance to look at chapter 3 for yourself, to see the confidence that Paul has from the new covenant.

And our final encouragement would be to ransack the scriptures.

Don't be satisfied with kind of vague notions of who he is and what he does.

Use every poem, every hymn, every great old writer, whatever helps you to illuminate these wonderful texts where God describes his son and study the fine print of the new covenant until it grips you and you wake up tomorrow morning and you think, whatever happens today,

I am allowed to see him with unveiled face and to be made more like him.