What exactly is it that we are becoming? John answers this question and also tells us something about what we are now…
Now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. 1 John 3:2-3
We are currently the children of God and are as pure as is our hope in Him. And as to what we are becoming we are not sure but we have an enormous clue; We shall be like Him! The fact is that (regardless of our perception) we are in a very good place and we are on our way to becoming something beyond good. The scriptures use the word “glory” to describe the status of transcendent goodness. God’s Word says that….
We …. are being transformed into the same image (that of Christ’s image) from glory to glory. (partial rendering of 2 Corinthians 3:18)
We tend to errently think of ourselves as mortals stuck between the rock of our current temporal trials and the hard place of our compounding future ones. This time-bound appraisal would have been utterly foreign to either Paul or John. These saints considered themselves as currently knowing the transcendent benefits of being God’s children who are becoming beings who will one day be like Jesus, whose future benefits can only be described as exceedingly above and beyond what can be conceived by our frail, immature and childlike imaginations.
We especially tend to think of each other as stuck between the proverbial rock and hard places. This view stunts the natural growth of the kingdom of God. In our own dim perception we look about and see each other in our plight. In all the trends and complexity we see little hope for good outcomes. We are either saddened, burying our bleak projections of the future in our consciences or we shrug our shoulders and say (with no small amount of religious fatalism) “Oh well. Thy will be done.”
When we live out of this perspective, our highest prayer is typically, “Come quickly Lord Jesus”, revealing our rock-and-hard place outlook (which is also known as faith). If we are to cooperate with God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven, we will have to learn to cooperate with the transformational ways and means of God as He is both the author and the perfecter of the glorious things we have become and of the glorious things that we are becoming.
We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit. (full rendering of 2 Corinthians 3:18)
If we were to see ourselves from His perspective (which is what faith demand of us) we will see each other created in His image; not stuck between rocks and hard places but being transformed by them. Whether it is God’s glorious objectives in our lives to deliver us from or through our circumstances, the theme of glory is being embedded by God into our stories. By faith, our circumstances can be transformed from sentences we must endure into opportunities from which a glorious harvest will ultimately come.
This glorious (other oriented) seed will one day germinate and blossom into something beautiful on an unimaginable scale. We will see the hope and faith (deposits of eternity) that God has placed in each other’s hearts and the surrounding circumstances as the soveriegn proving grounds for this faith. The veil of our limited vision will be removed and we will look upon each other and see Christ’s resemblance. As we look upon Christ in each other we will encourage, bless and support what we are seeing in each other’s becoming. This can only happen in the context of increasingly intertwined lives where the Groom intends for us to become the unified Church God has always envisioned as His Bride.
This is more or less how I perceive how God is going about the building of His kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. It will all happen through an increasingly pure community of faithful children. (Remember; We have prayed “Thy KIngdom come” more than just a few times.) What if the height and depths of God’s loving intentions involved answering this prayer?! What if we discover that eternity has already begun and that in our childlike, incomplete state we are even now caught up into it? What if Jesus was being literal and that truly, we will not taste death since we already possess Him as our Life?
I have good friends who love me and are concerned for me because I no longer attend traditional church. One main reason I don’t attend is that I have become so busy experiencing organic Church. Please permit me to offer my very condensed Reader’s Digest explanation of that last statement.
As one who gave himself faithfully for 20 years (most of that time as an elder) to the enterprises of traditional church, I was never able to overcome the unspoken (Please note: I did not say, “hidden” although stranger things have happened) agendas within the institution which inherently hamstrings the dynamics of community. My interactions with everyone were typically tainted with motives that hindered (not promoted) authentic community. The sad truth that fueled this superficial parody of Church was that I needed them to attend and to give in order for me to carryout and fulfill my institutionally-defined responsibilities. And, they needed me to reciprocate.
With time being in such short supply we all had to skip over the main point which I believe is God’s kingdom-building inner transformation of our hearts. While God was endeavoring to write and reveal His glorious story in our lives, we were mostly looking to each other as the means to each other’s ministerial ends. If we asked, “Is all well with your soul?”, we really couldn’t afford to pause and hear a complete and authentic answer. Time would not permit it. The show must go on. We must each don our institutional hats and perform. If not church as we know it would cease to be.
Today, without a title, other than friend, I am able to approach people without much agenda other than a sincere interest in their lives. Without the time constraints of preparing to lead worship or a sermon, I have the time to better connect with folks (not to mention God) and listen to their hearts. I want to hear what God is up to in that domain because I believe it is from that beachhead God will launch His greatest invasion yet into the darkness of His planet. Perhaps He will call it Operation Renovation. Here is one of Paul’s reports from the front lines of the operation…..
You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men; being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
As a co-heir with Christ in a now-kingdom, being in dwelt by the Holy Spirit, I don’t see Paul as an historical anomaly. I see him as a representative example and forerunner of who God intends us to be. That is why I believe by listening to Paul’s motives we can learn what God is trying to launch within us.
You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men; being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
You may be asking, “Aren’t you breaking Paul’s own command in thinking more highly of yourself (and us) than you ought? If you were to ask Paul this question, I believe he would respond….
Such confidence we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
I was recently told by a younger brother in Christ that the reason he had revealed his heart to me was that he knew there was nothing that he had to offer me. In other words, he knew that he was not a means to my end. We had created (through significant iron sharpening iron experience) a safe space for us to be ourselves in all our current and questionable glory. I think he knew that I actually cared for him and was loving him where he was. Hopefully he knows that I do not see him stuck between a rock and a hard place. Rather I see him in that hope impregnated place of a brother and coheir of the Kingdom who is being transformed from glory to glory. This is the kind of dialogue that I found impossible in my previous hamster-wheel institutional religious existence. I perceive that I am freer today than ever before to love people the way that God intended me too.
Father, I pray that you would soon pen the next glorious chapter of the Church where love trumps all. Transform us from the inside out. Reconnect us one to another as those children supremely confident in their status and exceedingly hopeful in your current process of making us ultimately into Your likeness. Show us where the plots of our stories overlap. Show us Your common ways and means in our hearts. Enable us to assume our roles as new covenant servants, agents of Your Holy Spirit, investing in each other’s lives. As we see our challenges as Your opportunities, convert our sorrow into song and our mourning into dancing. So be it.