In the End, in His Image

Amen.

What a blessing it is to be here this morning.

It's my privilege to get to be bringing the word and to get to worship alongside you in the process as we open to 1 John chapter 2.

1 John 2 · chapter mention

I'm excited to be finishing up and wrapping up our sermon series.

We've done four parts.

This is part four, as we think through this idea of God creating humans, not just generically human, but creating male humans and female humans, and to see how that plays out throughout redemptive history.

Today we're going to look at in the end in his image.

The very first sermon of the series was in the beginning in his image.

We're going to see how this is actually one of those themes that tracks through the entirety of Scripture that unifies Scripture, one of those many themes that unifies the Bibles we have in our laps.

No doubt most of us have probably seen caricature artists or those who draw sketches at festivals or fairs or community events.

It's always fun to watch these people because I can't draw worth anything, right?

I can't even draw water out of a well.

I mean, it is bad.

That was bad.

Ooh.

But half of you are awake enough to even realize it was an attempt at a joke.

It's fun to watch these caricature artists as they, you know, someone's sitting here and they have this blank canvas or this pad of paper and they begin to sketch and they draw some lines and then they shade some stuff with some ovals.

And at first it's not even recognizable what they're drawing.

And then it begins to start taking shape.

And then eventually they hold it up, and it's this remarkably either funny or even sometimes stunning portrait of the person sitting in the chair.

I want you to imagine this morning that God is the artist, and that it's Jesus sitting in the chair, and he is sketching the image of Jesus.

And you are not a bystander just watching this happen.

You are the canvas on which God is refashioning the image of Jesus in a unique and glorious way.

We've learned in the previous sermon series that we humans have fallen short of God's glorious designs.

In the beginning, when God created humans, male and female, he looked at his handiwork and he said, It is very good.

But we know that we all live in a world and we ourselves are broken individuals.

We as image bearers of God, who still, in God's grace, still faintly image God in numerous ways, we know that we have fallen so far short of that original glory with which God endowed us.

In our very faces, as we age and get wrinkles and scars from stupid mistakes we made in our youth, we all bear scars of the great rebellion.

That is, we all are living, walking testimonies of the fact that something in the beginning went terribly wrong.

We also bear scars of the disfiguring effects of the ways that other people have sinned against us.

Emotional wounds, traumas.

If we had older siblings, physical traumas.

I had an older brother.

So I was always the uh I was the one he would experiment on, you know.

You ever dissected a frog?

That was my arm.

No, not really.

My brother's a physician these days, and he owes me because he experimented on me.

We not only carry scars of the great rebellion or the disfiguring effects of the ways that people have sinned against us, we carry the graffiti of our own sins against God and others, and we carry it around with us.

But it's my joy this morning to proclaim to you, church, that our present condition as broken image bearers of God isn't our final conclusion.

Our present condition isn't our final conclusion, as we see in 1 John chapter 2.

1 John 2 · chapter mention

I invite you to look with me there.

1 John 2 28 says this.

If you know that he's righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him.

Chapter 3, verse 1.

See what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called children of God, and so we are.

Which is a great question.

But you realize that Christ is the embodiment of God, he is God in the flesh, and that we actually have greater revelation in the New Testament, that he didn't just make us in God's image, sort of generically, in the New Testament, he's refashioning us into the image of Christ's perfect humanity.

Christ was the set was the first perfect human to ever live before God and not sin.

And he was our sin bearer.

We're going to talk about some of this, but lest you think the same thing and think, why are we talking about the image of Jesus?

Romans chapter 8 and verse 29 says, He then predestinated those whom he foreknew to be conformed to the image of his son.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

So whereas in the beginning he made us in the image of God, he's making us in the image of God the Son through redemption.

Great quick question, Sister Brandy.

What we will be is not yet readily apparent.

I notice in this text that John is full well aware of the fact that we're living in a broken world and life is very difficult.

He says here that what we will be has not yet appeared.

He's recognizing, as I think we have to recognize today, that there's a reality here, there's a tension in which we live, that there are certain things that have been initiated, and there are promises that have been made that will come to pass, and we're living right between those two.

Theologians commonly refer to this present time or epoch in redemptive history as the already but not yet time.

The already but not yet.

Christ has come.

He has purchased our redemption on the cross, he has set up his kingdom on earth, he has given the gift of his Holy Spirit to bring to new life those who trust in him so that we can live new and redeemed lives.

But there's so much yet that he hasn't done.

And we live in this already but not yet tension in our lives.

It suggests that while God has initiated the renewal of creation already, the fulfillment of it has not yet been fully realized.

And we live in this tension.

Every time we get out of bed in the morning, this is our story.

We can summarize our story in this way.

With marred faces, we await a new creation.

With marred faces, that is, those who bear God's image, but in a distorted, partial, refracted way, we await a new creation.

We're often tempted to wonder why life is so hard.

I mean, if you've ever wondered why life is so hard, would you just raise your hand?

Absolutely.

And the rest of you are liars.

Okay.

At least we know that.

Let's just get that.

We beat our heads against the walls relationally at work.

The problem is you go to college and then college is harder than you thought.

You get the job and the dream job you you always wanted.

It turns out is full of thorns and thistles like God said it would be.

The family you always wanted, you have the family, and then there's full of difficulties, and it's always the other person's fault.

Relationships, our work, our relationship with God is beset with difficulties, twists, and turns.

And the fact is, this is not taken God by surprise.

This is exactly what God said would happen.

Sometimes it feels like we take two steps forward and one step back.

Sometimes it's one step forward, two steps back.

And we ask this question, God, why does it have to be so hard?

That's a great question.

And if you ask it sincerely, I don't blame you one bit.

But when we ask that and we don't know the answer, we are grossly underestimating the profundity, the profoundness of the corruption that entered creation and is still propagated in creation through sin.

Why is life so hard?

You know, before the fall, life was what they call paradise.

Remember Paradise Lost, that famous classic novel, right?

Well, paradise was lost, but before it was lost, it was paradise.

You had this picturesque setting of God walking through the garden.

There was a mist that watered the garden, so they didn't even have to have sprinkler systems.

They had all these trees and this wonderful um uh vegetation they could eat from.

There were animals, and there was not a contentious relationship between humans and animals.

From all indications, you didn't have animals eating other animals.

You had the first man and the first woman having relational harmony.

It was picturesque, it was wonderful.

That's what we want life to still be like.

But it's not like that anymore.

Sin brought into the world devastating consequences.

As we see in Romans chapter 8, verses 18 and 19, and then verses 22 and 23, we find the Apostle Paul saying this, For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

Romans 8:18

That's good news.

For the creation, that is talking about all of natural creation, it waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.

For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.

And not only the creation, but we ourselves, we who have the first fruits of the spirit, we groan inwardly as we await eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

Here's that already not yet.

We're living in a fallen, broken world.

God has initiated its redemption by sending his son, sending his spirit, and even we who have the first fruits of the spirit, that means the gift of the spirit.

And the first fruits also means it's like a down payment.

If you ever bought a ring, right?

You put 10% or 20% down, that's what the spirit is to us now.

It's proof, it's down payment that God is not done with the work of redemption.

He says, even we who've been saved, even we who now are having the image of Christ renewed, are longing for the redemption of our broken bodies.

We're longing for bodies that don't tend toward eating disorders and sexual disorders and emotional disorders.

We're longing for a wholeness that something within us knows exists out there.

Because we were created that way, and we're being recreated for that end.

The agonizing corruption of all creation, of which Paul writes here, is part of our stories.

And sometimes we're tempted to tell our stories even to ourselves and to leave out half of the plot.

The story we'd like to tell is that, yeah, you know, I had a decent childhood, and then I achieved this goal, and then I had a family, and then I did this, and I lived a long life, and I had a good time, and then by the end I had a nice retirement, and then I died easy in my sleep, and it was a great life.

That's the story we would like to tell.

But that's not the story you live.

The fact is all of our stories are full of twists and turns, ups and downs, tragedies and triumphs.

And to the degree we tell our story, again, if even to ourselves, and leave out the fact that we are fundamentally flawed by sin, and that God has yet to finish the process of redeeming us from our sins, our lives will never make sense.

We sometimes read the Genesis account of the fall of mankind in Genesis 3, and we we're tempted to think that the fall is ancient news.

I mean, it did happen in the ancient world, right?

Ancient news, yeah, it's important for us to kind of get that right theologically.

We know that God created the world, it fell into sin, and then somewhere along the line we were born.

But it's not ancient news.

It literally might as well be on the ticker of on the bottom of every screen as the news is going up.

This wildfire, this war breaking out, this oppression, this murder, this this whatever.

And on the bottom, the ticking across, Genesis chapter 3, the curse of the fall, the curse of the fall.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

Because undergirding our entire existence is this ancient news that has immediate bearing on our lives.

God plants a garden, he puts man in it.

And it's easy to think of this as almost like an arbitrary thing that happened, but God gave a command.

Out of all the trees of the garden, you can have all of them, but don't eat of this one tree.

Then a cunning serpent pops out of nowhere, so it seems at a casual reading, and he tempts Adam's wife Eve to eat of the tree.

He promises that, hey, you know what?

God said you can't eat this, but I'm telling you the truth is, if you just eat of this fruit, God knows that your eyes will be opened.

You'll see things as they really are.

Right now, you're just like a little naive lady, you're just like a sheltered woman.

God knows that if you eat this, you'll become like God.

That was exactly what the serpent told her.

Then after she eats the fruit and she gives it to Adam and he eats, their eyes were indeed opened, and they began to immediately feel the shame of their nakedness.

And they started feeling shame towards God.

The first thing they did was run and hide from God.

They had never hidden from God before.

The first time they ever tried to cover their nakedness, they had never felt the need for that before.

Shame entered the equation.

Fear entered the equation.

Alienation from God entered the equation.

And then whenever God comes and says, Adam, where are you?

He comes to them in the garden and he says, What have you done?

It's almost like a parent comes to the child, there's a bunch of Kool-Aid on the floor.

Only bad parents give the kids Kool-Aid, right?

Sorry.

I don't think we've ever given our kids Kool-Aid, right?

Too much sugar.

Sugar-free Kool-Aid.

It's on the floor, and the parent comes and says, says, Little Susie, how did that Kool-Aid get on the floor?

Right?

That's what God did when He came to them.

He knew exactly what had happened.

But he says, What have you done?

And not only was there relational alienation between God and Adam, you have Adam then turning and ratting out his wife and saying, Yeah, the woman you gave me, God, she gave me this fruit to eat.

And yeah, I ate it, but she gave it to me first.

And you have this relational discord for the very first time in creation, all because of disobedience to God.

We're tempted to read this story and merely see a tree or fruit or a simple, naive choice.

And we're wondering how in the world could the world as we know it possibly have resulted from that single choice.

But to read that narrative this way is to overlook the profound theological and symbolic meaning to all of these historical parts of the story.

The New Testament tells us that there really was a historical Adam.

He really did have a historical wife named Eve.

Not hysterical, that's different.

Historical wife, and that he really did make a historical decision to eat this fruit, and they really did historically fall.

But in that story is tons of symbology.

For example, Adam and Eve were not mere characters in a random story.

They were not mere humans.

They were the first humans.

In Adam, he was the first human created, and Eve was actually created out of Adam.

Adam was the head of all humanity.

The decisions he would make, especially that first decision, would have a direct impact on the rest of us far more than any decision you and I have ever made.

He was the representative of all of mankind.

Stephen Dempster is an Old Testament theologian.

He talks about the use of the phrase image of God in the ancient world.

It was actually not a really common imagery, but it was used in the ancient world to talk about the child or the son, the heir of a king.

And so when someone was made in the image, or born in the image of another, especially a king, it meant that they had the right to rulership and they were a son.

And so whenever Genesis uses this language, when God uses this language that Adam and Eve are made in God's image, they're not just mere mortals.

They were the king, in Stephen Dempster's terms, they were the king and the queen of creation.

And God gave them dominion explicitly in Genesis 1.28 over all the creatures of the earth, as vicars of God, as vice regents of God, as ambassadors, as kings with derivative authority from God, the ultimate king.

And thus it wasn't just a random action in the garden.

This was an act of a king and a queen.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it symbolized the freedom and the choice that God had endowed upon humans as moral agents.

This wasn't a random choice.

This was a barrier that God set up for them to choose whether they would follow Him as the true king and continue in this relationship, or whether they would commit mutiny.

Whether they would assert their autonomy and to try to separate themselves from God as kings and queens, separate from God's rule.

God's prohibition against eating the tree emphasized the magnitude of the requirement of trust in and obedience to God, their creator, and it underscores the horror of them choosing to step out from under God's good and benevolent authority and assert their own autonomy.

R.

C.

Sprohl called that first act of disobedient, cosmic treason.

I think we understand the idea of if someone threatens my life, that's a bad thing.

I think it's a bad thing.

And I'm probably going to report it to the authorities, and they may, there may be some consequences to suffer.

But it's a very different matter when an ambassador or a leader of one country threatens the life of a leader of another country.

That's an act of war.

And this is what was happening with the king and queen disobeying their creator.

We've also seen in Genesis, in Genesis chapter 1, that God created humans, male and female.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

That he assigned not just to them sexual anatomy so they could procreate, but he created Adam first, and he named the animals, and he didn't find among all the animals someone to complement him.

There was no other human.

He saw the giraffes had giraffes, and the uh the elephants had elephants, and the lizards had lizards, but he says there was not found him a fitting companion.

And then God caused him to fall asleep, took a woman out of his side, a bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, and fashioned a complementary partner, and he called her female.

God created male and female humans with distinct corresponding gender roles and expressions to carry out the creation mandate.

And yet today we're faced with the same choice that Adam and Eve were faced with.

When the serpent who was animated by Satan, we later learned in the New Testament, when he came to Eve and he said, he said two things.

The first thing he said was, Eve, has God Said that you can't eat of the tree.

Has God said the very first temptation he gave her was to question what God had said, right?

That's what's happening today.

There are two vectors of challenges to the fact that God created humans as male and female, and all the numerous ways that that affects us in our sexuality, in our sexual ethics, and even down to legislation and what they teach at schools and everything else.

In the very first temptation, he said, has God said?

And that's what you find a lot today.

People saying, Well, does the Bible really condemn this or that lifestyle?

You know, I'm okay with that question, as long as it's asked with a sincere desire to see what God said.

But the fact is, a lot of times it's asked merely to dismiss what Scripture may say or may not say without actually being willing to see what Genesis says, what Deuteronomy says, what Romans says, what Matthew says, what Jesus taught, what Paul taught, what John and Peter taught, and to look through exactly how we should build our sexual ethic as Christians today based on Scripture.

The second vector or the second direction that people try to oppose what God has said is not just a question, has God said, but Satan says to Eve, you shall not surely die.

Yes, God did say this, but it's not true.

And that's happening as well, right?

You may have experienced that.

Maybe you're yourself this morning or saying, you know, I used to ask the question, has God said?

And then I realized, yeah, he really did say that.

And now I'm faced with a temptation.

Am I going to bow the knee to what God has said, or am I going to do what even Adams did when they asserted their autonomy?

And they said, you know what, God, yes, you did say this.

Yes, there is this pattern of scripture.

Yes, you did forbid this kind of activity.

But I think we're we've matured beyond that, God.

We've evolved beyond that, and now we're going to do things as we please.

Thank you.

We are faced with this very same challenge today, whether we will obey God or whether we will question and challenge what He has ordained.

That's why we're preaching this sermon series, right?

This isn't just a random sermon series.

We realize that, I mean, this is a special month in American culture, right?

This is very relevant stuff.

And the question is, whose voice will be loudest in our ears?

Will culture dictate, 21st century culture dictate what we believe?

Just like those in the 16th century, and culture dictated what they believe, and in the 8th century, in the first century, when Rome was known, and the Greeks and the Romans, the Aristocrats were known for their lavish, sexually promiscuous and um uh perverted lifestyles.

This was nothing new in our day.

The Christians in the first century had to ask the same question.

Are we gonna go with what God said or are we gonna go with what culture says?

Culture changes, every generation changes.

Twenty years from now, completely different landscape than we are today.

Twenty years ago, completely different landscape.

Are we gonna be the kinds of people that rise and fall with the tide of cultural opinion that's ever changing and ever trying to outrace itself in being progressive?

Or are we gonna ask the fundamental questions, what has God said, and am I gonna bow the knee to it?

Our gospel conviction this morning is that God is not silent in all of this, he's actively at work in us.

Namely, this Christ bore our image, so we will bear his.

This is our hope, church.

Not that we can we can do such good works, we can be active enough that we can recreate, we can almost like stencil Christ's image upon our faces.

No.

God is doing this work, it is a work of the Spirit, and Christ came to bear our image as human so that we will bear his image as the perfect human.

We see this in 1 John chapter 3, verse 1 in our text.

1 John 3:1

Listen to this magnificent phrase.

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God.

And so we are.

The reason why the world does not know us is that the world did not know him.

John states it was the love of God that furnished a remedy to our fallen plight.

In love, God purposed to not only justly punish Jesus in our place as sinners, but to mercifully clear us of all wrong.

In love, God set a mark on those he would redeem out of a fallen humanity.

In love, God brings repentant rebels into his house and he calls them sons and daughters.

That's love.

God didn't have to do this, God didn't have to show mercy upon us.

He certainly didn't have to punish his own son in our place, but that's the gospel story.

It was into that Edenic experience as Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden, and because Adam had not exercised his authority to wield his authority for the good of mankind, God had to expel them east of Eden.

And they've been, and that's where we live ever since.

But one of these days, we're told that He's gonna invite us into paradise.

It's called a city four square.

It's the New Jerusalem.

It's all this beautiful imagery that's we're we're we're told about.

It's a place where God invites repentant rebels and calls them sons and daughters.

Now, a few minutes ago, I alluded to the fact that the story of Genesis chapter 3 can seem kind of arbitrary, can seem like just a simple story, maybe you'd tell your child.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

But you know, if you look at the cross, you can tell the story of the cross in the same way.

Cross isn't significant.

I mean, think about it.

Jesus, this guy who was a from the city of Nazareth, just a small, I'm talking Podunk Nazareth.

No one had hardly heard of Nazareth.

When people heard that Messiah allegedly had come from Nazareth, they said, what good thing from come from Nazareth?

Jesus died on a cross.

That's a tragic event any way you look at it, but what's so special about Roman crucifixion?

Some 40 years after Jesus uh lived and died and rose again in 70 AD, the Romans under General Titus went against Jerusalem because Jerusalem was in revolt, the rebels, the uh the zealots were in revolution against Rome, and they cornered them in the city of Jerusalem, eventually at the end of the battle of Masada.

But they leveled the city of Jerusalem.

Not one stone was left upon another, and they crucified thousands of Jewish males.

So when you tell me that some guy named Jesus, which name means Joshua in the Old Testament, some Jewish name, guy with a common Jewish name, died on a cross, and that's supposed to change my life.

It's the same way when we read the Genesis story, as if it's just a random little story without significance in its parts.

The significance of Jesus' death is that he wasn't a mere Jewish carpenter.

He was in the lineage of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and David.

He was the one who would fulfill all righteousness.

He was the one, get this.

That in Genesis chapter 3, verse 15, one verse after God pronounces a curse upon all creation for man's sake, he turns to the woman and he promises a coming deliverer who would come and would stomp the foot of the serpent, crush his head, and renew creation.

Genesis 3:15

That was Jesus, a Jewish carpenter because Abraham, the promise made to Abraham, was a Jew of the tribe of David, because he would sit upon the throne of David and fulfill the promises of an eternal kingdom.

He would come as a human because it was humans who had fallen.

He would come, as the Apostle Paul says, as the last man Adam, to stand as the head and representative of all mankind, those whom God had given him out of mankind.

What significance?

Could an ancient garden called Eden have for our lives?

Well, the same significance that a little garden outside of Jerusalem called Gethsemane has for us.

Where the second man Adam, rather than being tempted with paradise and then tempted to have this one thing he didn't want, the second Adam was a sign, not paradise, but a cup of God's wrath full of our sins.

And he pled with God, he cried, he he was sweating, as it were, great drops of blood, pleading with his father.

If it's possible, Father, take this cup of wrath from my lips.

But do you remember what he said at the end of the prayer?

Matthew chapter 26.

Matthew 26 · chapter mention

Nevertheless, Father, your will be done.

Where Adam and Eve failed, the second Adam succeeded.

Where they said, God, our will be done, Jesus said, Father, your will be done.

What significance could the tree of the cross have for us today?

The same level of significance that the tree of knowledge of good and evil had for all of mankind.

As Jesus is suspended between God and man to bear the sins that we've committed against God and man.

Jesus bore our sins before God.

And finally, what significance could the resurrection of Jesus have for you and me today?

Well, not much.

Only that one day after you've died, you'll be raised again.

And you won't be raised again with a blank face.

You're going to be raised again in the image of the God man, the one who perfectly imaged God like Adam and Eve failed to do.

And the one who came incarnate to image you and me.

The God man, and will be refashioned into his glorious image.

Now there's a lot of theology here, and of course, Jesus as the second person of the Trinity is distinct from us, and we're not going to be like made the second persons of the Trinity or something like that.

But in his perfect humanity, in the new creation, in the resurrection, we will bear the same glory.

So that one day when God the Father looks down and he sees the glory of the sun shining like the sun, and he sees Katie Ramez next to Jesus.

Right?

And he sees Ted Oliver next to Jesus, and he says, You know, I don't see much of a difference here.

Same glory.

Thus we find in Jesus the embodiment of our only hope of being renewed in the image of God as we are renewed in the image of Christ.

18th century or 19th century Reformed theologian Herman Bavink said this, I think he says it so well.

Once sin had entered the human race, it would have totally corrupted and even destroyed and exterminated humanity if left to work undisturbed.

But God did not allow this to happen.

He wanted to prepare for himself a people taken from the corrupt mass of humanity, a people to proclaim his praise, a body for the Son, a temple for the Holy Spirit.

I love that phrase.

A body for the Son, a temple for the Holy Spirit.

We church are a body for Christ, for God's Son.

We are walking image bearers of Jesus.

We are temples of the Holy Spirit.

And on our tear-streaked faces, God is refashioning the image of Christ Himself.

This plays out in our lives in practical ways.

When we suffer patiently, we're suffering an ever-increasing part like Jesus suffered.

When we rejoice in good, we're rejoicing like Jesus rejoiced in good.

When we say yes to God and to his word and bow our knees to him, we are saying with Jesus, and I quote, a prophecy Jesus fulfilled, I delight to do your will, O God, your word is in my mouth.

When you and I surrender our lives to God's word, not to culture's ever-changing word, we align ourselves with Christ, who said, I delight to do your will, O God, your word is in my mouth.

This Christ's conformity in our daily lives is the grand vision the gospel casts for us.

And so I conclude with this the gospel vision this morning in light of this text is that as restored mirrors, we reflect the glory of Christ.

I'm changing the analogy a little bit.

I started with a canvas, I'm ending with a mirror, but no single analogy can capture the glory of this idea.

As restored mirrors, we reflect the glory of Christ.

I want to bring my remarks to a close by focusing on just one curious word in a phrase in 1 John chapter 3, verse 2.

1 John 3:2

The verse goes like this: Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, and here's the word, because we shall see him as he is.

Notice the simple but clear logic of the verse.

It is in the act of beholding the glory of Christ that we ourselves reflect that same glory.

The logic is this when we see him as he is, the profound impact of his forceful, glorious presence will be such on us that we will reflect that same glory.

It is in beholding Christ and his glory that we reflect that glory.

It's when we see him as he is that we'll be like him.

And conversely, it's when we turn our faces away from Christ that our sight is dimmed, our minds are dimmed, our witness is dimmed.

Think about the moon.

The moon has no light, no heat, no glory of its own.

Every bit of light, every bit of heat, every bit of beauty the moon has to offer us on earth, it owes to its reflection of the brilliance of the sun.

So it is with you and me.

Without the character of God's Son reflected in and through us, we are but darkness.

Our existence, our nine to five, our marriages, our parenting, our friendships, our relationships are but cold matter-bearing the craters of sin and corruption.

But when we abide in the presence of Christ, as 1 John 2.28 says, my beloved abide in him.

When we abide in Christ's presence, when we gaze upon Christ, read about Christ, pray and interact with the Christ in Scripture, the brilliance of his stunning beauty begins to be reflected in our lives.

This is not something just John said.

We find it in Paul's writings in 2 Corinthians 3.

Read this verse with me.

In 2 Corinthians 3, verses 17 and 18, he says, Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

2 Corinthians 3:17

Man, if our culture wants anything, it's freedom.

But there's a lot, there's right ways and wrong ways to seek freedom.

Freedom from God is not freedom.

That's enslavement.

He says, true freedom comes from being transformed by the Spirit of God.

Verse 18, here it is.

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.

As we behold the glory of Christ in the gospel and throughout the whole redemptive arc of Scripture and every different type and shadow and image and representation of Christ throughout Scripture and all its hundreds and hundreds of stories and theological points, as we behold the glory of Christ, we are being transformed into the same image.

And you know what's also true?

When what we're beholding is just tons of news as we flip through our feeds.

What we're beholding is just the voices of culture that are screaming at us to do this or that.

When what we're beholding is just our hobbies, when what we're beholding is just our own selfish thoughts, we get lost in our heads a lot, right?

We're conformed into that image.

This is why we at Sacred Mission are constantly seeking to be a community of believers who gaze upon the perfections of Christ because what we gaze at, we become like.

The glory of Christ, our creator, our protector, our provider, our substitute for sins, our advocate with God, our treasure.

This is what Sunday mornings in large part are for.

We're not here to just prop up my opinions or Pastor Justin's opinions or anyone else's.

We're not here to just like hold our fingers up to the wind and say, what should we believe today?

We're here to uphold the glory of Christ because it is in gazing at him week after week, day after day, we're being changed into that image.

It's why we do mission groups and where we discuss scripture and the sermons and we invite God's word to critique us.

It's why we encourage and seek to equip each of us to treasure Jesus in daily Bible reading and family worship and mission groups and one-on-one Bible readings between men and men and women and women.

It's why we seek to unpack the implications for God's word in our lives.

Because we are a community of souls, progressively aligning ourselves, not with whatever forces around us, but with the God who created us and who is recreating us to reflect his glory as we behold his glory.

Because his word has said, when he appears, we shall be like him.

Because we shall see him as he is.