Whenever, though,
[people] turn to face God as Moses did, God removes the veil and there they are — face to face! They suddenly recognize that God is a living, personal presence, not a piece of chiseled stone. And when God is personally present, a living Spirit, that old, constricting legislation is recognized as obsolete. We're free of it! All of us! Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him.
Eugene Peterson's "The Message" powerfully captures the sentiment of
2 Corinthians 3 and the way of the Spirit in the New Covenant. We are free! Free to become what we could never accomplish on our own by the power of rules, laws, or written code (
Romans 8:1-4). Free to be transformed to be like God; remade to
"participate in the divine nature" (
2 Peter 1:4) as one created in the image of God (
Genesis 1:26-27). When we come to Christ in conversion, we are given the Holy Spirit to live in us, to make God personally present in us, and to set God's creative power at work in us. The Spirit transforms us to be ever more like the glorious Father who made us and the Son who redeemed us.
O Father, words can't capture the wonder and awe that I feel when I try to gather in all that your Spirit does for me and in me. Father, I want not only to know Jesus but also to have the Holy Spirit help make Jesus' holy character and his gracious compassion more and more real to me and through me. I ask this, not for my glory, but for your glory, praying in the name of Jesus, my Lord. Amen.
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