But all of us at some point had a veil covering our mirrors, preventing us from both seeing and being able to reflect that glory. “So, all of us who have had that veil removed can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord - who is the Spirit - makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image” (2 Corinthians 3:18, NLT). But what is God's glory?
Well, Moses also wanted to know that when he asked God to show him his glory (I guess what he was really asking was, "Who are you, God? What are you like?"). As a reply God said, “Okay, Moses, I will cause all my goodness to pass before you” (Exodus 33:17-19). It seems that the essence of God is his goodness. To understand him at his core, you have to understand his goodness.
We can conclude, therefore, that to reflect God's glory to the world means to reflect his goodness.
How sad to think that there are people who can't see or experience it because of the veil! They don't know that they are God's image-bearers. They reduce their worth to that of well-developed animals. But that doesn't change the fact of their real value and identity. In fact, we see in the Bible that when Jesus ate with sinners, when he stopped and spoke to the beggars and lepers that everybody avoided, healing them and restoring them back to society, when he saved an immoral woman's life simply by posing a question to those ready to stone her, even when he rebuked the Pharisees in an attempt to help them truly see the heart of God, he was seeing God's image in each and every one of those people. His goal was to restore them back to their true identity as the very image-bearers of himself.
Perhaps you imagine that becoming more like Jesus means becoming less ourselves. But ironically, the more we become like him, the more we become our true and unique selves. Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright (2012) put it this way:
“The good news of the resurrection hope is that if you are in Christ and indwelled by the Spirit, you are just a shadow of your future self. There is a real you, which is more you than you can even imagine - uniquely you! God made you to reflect in some unique way a particular facet of his glory and love out into the world. Evil, despite what the media tell you, makes you boring, shuts you in, makes you a clone of all sorts of other people who are doing much the same tedious sort of stuff. When you are seized by Christ and indwelled by the Spirit, he will make you more truly yourself.”
So how exactly does this happen? When you invite the Holy Spirit to come into your life, he begins the good work of turning you more and more like Jesus, developing your character, growing in you the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control), and healing you to the point where nothing holds you back from living and living to the fullest (John 10:10).
He is not making you less and less human - he is actually making you MORE human, a TRUE human.
Your delight in food, your love for sports, your humor, your seriousness, your love for music - I don't think any of the things that make you who you are will go away. After all, God gave you those attributes; he wrote them in your DNA the instant he created you. And I don't think he intends to make you a clone of everybody else, put a white robe on you, wipe the laughter off your face, and hand you a harp. I think all those interests and characteristics you have are simply going to be perfected - and I don't just mean in the quality of their performance. I mean, you will no longer do them with the wrong motives. You will never sing out of a deficiency, a need for approval and attention - you will be so secure in your worth and identity as the beloved child of God that you will sing because the love for him and others is overflowing from within you. That's how I imagine it. We are all different, because we each reflect a part of God that no one else does. That's why we complete each other and together form the body of Christ.
God never intends to come and rescue you from your humanity. He intends to restore it. He doesn't think that being human is a bad thing. He doesn't regret creating you a human. It's us humans that often don't understand what being a real human is, but he's going to show us - no, wait, he already did. Can you forget for a second that you already knew this and hear this sentence as if for the first time? Jesus became human. Somehow he was able to be fully human while being fully God. He didn't come to intimidate us and make all our shortcomings apparent. He came to show us the original plan for being a human - and our destiny. To them who turn to him and love him, God has predestined to be "[conformed] to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters” (Romans 8:28-29, NIV). You are Jesus' brother, you are his sister. Can you possibly imagine that?
Through all the sufferings, temptations, and experiences of this life, our character gets moulded and reformed. I don't believe that this earthly life is a test to determine who will persevere on the narrow road to heaven and who will end up in hell. I think it is a training process, a preparation, because the character and the values that we attain on this earth - if able to persevere all the challenges of this life - will persevere for all of eternity. But what does our character have to do with the coming new heavens and the new earth?
To explain, I want to disclose yet another "shocker": God isn't planning on rescuing us from this earth. He plans on restoring it. The earth will once again give birth to the tree of life (Revelations 22). The whole earth will become an Eden. From the beginning of time, God gave the earth to humanity (Genesis 1:28). We are its rulers and we failed miserably at the task the first time around. But when the earth is once again restored and Heaven comes to earth, we will have already been moulded and prepared to rule once again alongside Jesus, our older brother, to do it right this time, and to shine in our true identity as the image-bearers of God and the godly rulers of this earth.
References
Wright, N. T. (2012, May 19). N. T. Wright – After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=aram+mp3+kuzes
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