We are living in a world of brokenness. Broken homes, broken relationships, broken lives, broken institutions, broken governments, amidst a lawless and disrespectful world.
The Glory of God that made the garden a paradise has been removed from most of our societies, God has been banned from all public places and His believers persecuted for claiming He is alive and well.
Christians look and act like the world more and more each year. I am amazed at the number of celebrities that claim to be Christians, yet their language and lives say otherwise. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it is a duck.
Somewhere along the way, we have been deceived into believing that we can talk the talk without walking the walk. The pull of the world is very strong upon these sinful bodies of flesh. It is very easy to yield to lawlessness and then justify it as forgivable. I have been guilty and maybe you have been too.
Pharisees and Scribes
Jesus rebuked the Pharisees and Scribes as hypocrites because they appeared beautiful on the outside, but were full of dead men’s bones on the inside. They were known as righteous on the outside but known to God as hypocrites and full of lawlessness on the inside. (Matthew 23:27-28)
We are not the person we see in the mirror every morning. The real you, the real me, is deep inside. It is what God created us to be for this life, and for eternity.
God told Samuel not to judge by outward appearances, but to look at the heart. Jesus told us that which comes forth from the mouth issues from the heart. We are to listen to the tones of the words, as well as the spirit behind the words, to discern what is coming from the outer man and what is coming from the inner man. Proverbs 4:24 admonishes us to guard our hearts as the source of the fruit of our lives.
Adam was without sin in the garden and without guilt and shame. He was naked but didn’t know anything about nakedness, because he was innocent as a little child. When Adam sinned, he lost the place that God had prepared for him. After sin he became aware of his naked self through guilt and then shame. He was only aware of everything being pure in God’s Holy Presence before his sin. God had to bring a second Adam so that the first Adam could fulfill what God had intended for him.
When we receive Christ as our redeemer, our savior, our Lord, He dwells in our innermost being, or our spirit-man. As we transform and renew our minds with the Spirit and Life that is in the Word of God, Christ as the second Adam begins to shine forth through our first Adam, causing us to see a different person in the mirror.
Adam reflected the Glory of God’s Presence in the Garden of Eden. The Presence of God was the clothing of the first Adam and Eve. The Glory of God withdrew from their spirit-man because of sin and disobedience. (God cannot look or dwell where there is sin due to His extreme Holiness and man’s extreme sinfulness) The only way for man to approach a Holy God was through the sacrifice of an innocent animal. All of the animal sacrifices pointed to Christ as the Lamb of God as the perfect sacrifice that could take away the sins of the whole world.
God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. When Christ surrendered His Spirit to His Father on the cross, the veil to the temple was rent in twain from top to bottom signifying that the way into God’s heavenly Throne Room was made perfect.
When the spirit-man which lives on the inside of you surrenders complete control over your life to God, the real you, the inner-man, will be unveiled and reflect and manifest the Glory of God’s Presence in your words, in your behavior, in your associations with others, in your attitudes, in how you see others and their sufferings, and even in how you look at the material things of this life.
Paul tells us that these bodies are buried or sown in the grave as corrupt and as a natural body, but they are resurrected like Christ with a spiritual body. (I Corinthians 15:44)
He also says, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the Glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree to another, for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” (II Corinthians 3:18)
Ephesians 3:16 says, “that He would grant you, according to the riches of His Glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man.”
Hebrews 1:3, “Jesus is the express image, the radiance of His Glory and the exact representation of His nature and upholds all things by the word of His power.”
When God made Adam, He made him to be His image. We often say of sons born to earthly fathers; “he is the spitting image of his dad.” Jesus was the spitting image of His Father. If you have seen me, you have seen my Father for my Father and I are one. My Father dwells in me and I dwell in my Father. What I see my Father do, that is what I do also. (John chapters 14-17)
God wants you and I to be images of Himself. He as God is a Spirit, that is Holy, and that desires to dwell in our inner man or spirit-man as His temple, so that He can radiate His Glory to a lost world through us.
Our imaginations, our thoughts, our words, our behavior, our associations with others, need to reflect His Glory. Where His Presence is, there is peace and comfort. So that people will say, “I feel such peace in your house, and when I am around you.”
God did His part by forgiving us and covering our sins under His atoning blood, then filling us with His Holy Spirit to empower us to resist the temptations of sin and yield ourselves to conform to His Word.
We now have to do our part by separating ourselves from that which displeases the one who bought us, and by transforming our imaginations, our thoughts, our desires into that which pleases Him as our Lord and Creator.
The more we spend time reading His Word, praying and communing with Him, practicing those things He has asked us to do, the more we surrender our will and desires to His, the more we will see our inner-man radiate His Glory, in our conversation, in our actions, causing even our faces to shine.
The more we separate and sanctify our earthly bodies as His Temples, the more His Spirit will shine and radiate through us, the more others will see Christ in us instead of seeing our carnal self displayed.
We used to see the radiance of the Holy Spirit upon faces of people as they worshipped in church. I could even pick them out in the market place. There are still times when I see someone with a radiant face, and thank God that they are a believer in Christ’s Atonement. For the most part it is difficult to pick out a Christian from the crowd these days. We become like those we associate with for birds of a feather flock together, and blind people leading blind people usually fall into the ditch together.
“When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant..” (Exodus 34:30)
We need to keep looking in the mirror, not just the bathroom mirror, but the mirror of His Word until we see ourselves as He sees us, and then ask Him to empower us to be changed into His image anew each day.
Soon He will appear for those who are looking for Him. in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.
“For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must be clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come to pass: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”