Heavenly Mindedness (66)

 

“I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God, the Almighty and the Lamb are the temple thereof. And that city has no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God lightens it, and the throne of God and the Lamb are therein: and his servants shall do Him service, and they shall see his face, and his name shall be on their foreheads.”  [G. Vos using excerpts from Revelation chapters 21 & 22]

 

“…and they shall see his face, and his name shall be on their foreheads.”  

 

Seeking the Face of God, and progressively seeing the Face of God, is to be our way of Life. It is not only to be how we live, in the sense of our pattern of life; it is also to be how we live, in the sense of our source of Life. While those around us in the professing church may eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we must insist on eating from the Tree of Life. How we need to guard against departing from our first love, for we may have sound teaching, we may be enduring for the name of Jesus Christ, we may have good works, but if we, like the Ephesians (Rev. 2:1 – 7), fall away from our first love and do not repent, our lampstands will be removed.

 

Note that the Tree of Life is linked to the condition of the Ephesian church (Rev. 2:7). We overcome to eat the fulness of the Tree of Life in Paradise Eternal by eating the Tree of Life now on our earthly pilgrimage. We eat from this Tree today, that we may eat more from this Tree tomorrow. Can you see the contrast between the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in 1 Cor. 1:17 – 2:16? Can you see it in Colossians 2:1 – 23?

 

As we eat from the Tree of Life we progressively see the Face of God and His Name is written in our hearts, minds, souls, and spirits.

 

And so we have Paul writing that we “see through a glass darkly, but then face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12) and that we will “know fully just as I also have been fully known.” Now this in itself is a mystery whose depths we cannot plumb, we may swim in the mystery but we cannot see or reach the bottom, it is fathomless. Paul also writes, “But 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” (2 Cor. 3:18).  

 

Our lives in Christ on this earth are to be continually transformed into His image. Consider that we are to behold His glory; is this not the desire of Jesus Christ for us? Do we see this when He prays, “The glory which You have given Me, I have given to them…Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me…” (John 17:22 – 26).  Can we see that it is our Father’s desire to “bring many sons [and daughters!] to glory” (Heb. 2:10)?

 

O dear friends, in beholding Christ we are transformed into His image, not in fixating on ourselves, not it a futile effort to make ourselves better, not in seeking esoteric knowledge; but rather in seeking Jesus Christ, knowing Jesus Christ, loving Jesus Christ, being wholly devoted to Jesus Christ and living in the Trinity, as the Trinity lives in us.

 

Are we praying that we will love God with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind and all our strength, and that we will love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:28 – 34)? What does this Great Commandment mean, but that we should be wholly devoted to, dedicated to, and belong to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit – the One Self-existent, holy, just, righteous, and loving God who is the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last?

 

Hence, we see in Romans 12:1 – 2, that in light of the great mercies of God, in light of our forensic and organic redemption and salvation (chapters 1 – 8) and the mysteries of election and predestination and the perseverance of the saints (chapters 9 – 11); that we are to present our bodies a living and holy sacrifice, not being conformed to the world (or present age), but rather transformed through the renewing of our minds in order that we might prove, or know, the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

 

We see what this is to look like in our relationships within the Church and with the world in chapters 12 – 16. We see the crux of the matter in Chapter 8, most especially in 8:9 – 39, the core of which is 8:29 in context; it is our Father’s eternal desire that His Son be the Firstborn among many brethren! This is at the core of the Gospel. This is why to think that the Gospel concludes at 5:11 is to fall short of the fulness and grandeur of the heart of God and the work of Jesus Christ.

 

Seeing the Face of God and having His Name written on our foreheads is not to be relegated to the future, for while its fulness is in the future, its inception and progression is for us now – this is the Way we are to live in Christ and with one another. No wonder the author of Hebrews implores us to be looking unto Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith (Heb. 12:2). Can we hear John saying, “See, how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God...Beloved, now we are children of God” (1 John 3:1 – 3)?

 

As we conclude this post, I’ll ask you to compare 2 Cor. 3:17 – 18; Colossians 3:1 – 4; and 1 John 3:1 – 3. What do you see?