…being transfigured into His very own image…- 2 Corinthians 3:18, Amplified Bible (AMP)

When I was boy, I learned in school that you should never look directly at the sun for prolonged periods of time. If you do, the sun’s rays will cook the inside of your eyes, rendering you blind.  But, I was also told that if you want to see the sun in a safe manner, look at the sun’s reflection in a mirror. With the use of a mirror, you can behold the sun’s glory and beauty without fearing any destruction to your eyes.

The Bible is clear that no man can see the face of God and live. Therefore, God in His mercy does not show us His face directly; He veils it, as He did for His servant Moses, in order to preserve our lives. But, thankfully, He does not leave us without a means of seeing His glory and His beauty, for He has left us a mirror with which to see Him, and that mirror is the Bible.

As God, through Paul, teaches us in 2 Corinthians 3:18 (AMP), we can look at God :

…as with unveiled face, [because we] continued to behold [in the Word of God] as in a mirror the glory of The Lord…

Wonderfully, we can see the Creator of the Universe Himself by looking into His Word, but even more wonderfully we can become more like Christ by simply looking into His Word and applying it to our lives. As verse 18 goes on to say:

And all of us, as with unveiled face, [because we] continued to behold [in the Word of God] as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are constantly being transfigured into His very own image in ever increasing splendor and from one degree of glory to another; [for this comes] from the Lord [Who is] the Spirit.

Day by day and degree by degree, we slowly assume Christ’s character as we endeavor to: 1) learn more about who Christ is by reading His Word, and 2) apply Christ’s example of living to ourselves through the enabling power of The Lord Himself. 

If we fail to look into God’s Word, however, or if we look into God’s Word and then fail to apply it to our lives, then we will be confused, misguided, and without purpose. Just like the man that God (through James) describes in James 1:24, we’ll look with wonder into God’s Word, and then we’ll forget His wonder so that we can live life the way we want to live it.  In so doing, we’ll become completely baffled about who we are and what we are supposed to do, making life stressful, empty, and unfulfilling.

Sadly, so many of us choose to look at the mirror and forget rather than look at the mirror and apply. If we’ve been reading the Word of God for years and have seen no change in our character, it is because, once we put the mirror down, we forget what we saw. In order to see true transformation in our lives, we have to look into the mirror, remember what we saw, and apply it to our lives with God’s supernatural enabling. Granted, the latter task is much more work than the former, but if we commit to the hard work, the rewards are greater than any of us can imagine.

Shop hundreds of Christian-themed products at our new store! A portion of each purchase goes to support the work of Today’s Quote From God. To visit the Today’s Quote From God Store, please click here.