2 Corinthians 3:17-18 … The unveiling of true Faces (11/25/16)
“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, Seeing the Glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image – from one degree of Glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.” ~ Paul (2 Corinthians 3:17-18)
In my humble opinion, this is one of the most enlightened verses in the entire New Testament, and the probable fact that Paul was completely unaware of the reasons why does not alter that assessment one bit …
Indeed, those who have read & studied the biblical epistles of Paul (especially in their chronological order of completion – first 1 Thessalonians, then Philippians, then Philemon, then Galatians, then 1 Corinthians, then 2 Corinthians, then Romans & finally Colossians) are quite aware of the fact that A) he was an extremely dysfunctional human being, B) he taught and proffered a unique, self-made theology very different from those offered by most of the New Testament’s other authors, and C) he understood very little of The Way, the Truth, or the Life of Jesus Christ.
That having been said, Paul did regularly stumble upon the latter – he did every now and then pen verses that inadvertently reflected the far deeper Truths offered by Jesus in the Gospels. And this passage reflects one of those times, and it does so for the following seven reasons:
01) It equates the Spirit of God with “freedom” – implying that the perfect Love of God must be given volitionally in order to be given at all; that the Will of God can only be satisfied in our lives when we are Loving others freely – not out of a sense of obligation or to fulfill a promise or to uphold a commitment or to enliven a duty or even to satisfy an expectation …
02) It makes it quite clear that the glory of which it speaks – the ability to be reborn; to transform ourselves from mere “Sons of Adam” into glorious “Children of God” (see Galatians 5:12-14 & Galatians 3:26-27 – along with John 14:20) is innate in “all of us” …
03) It implies that we are essentially blind until we do so; that it is only with radiantly humbled, “unveiled faces” that we can truly See – and thereby fully embrace – the same glory in others that resides in God Himself …
04) It emphasizes that the “Glory of the Lord” that we then see with our freshly untainted vision is the same as our own – that in the moments we See Love in others, we see that true nature “as though reflected in a mirror” …
05) It notes just as clearly that in clearly SEEing them as such – and in acting accordingly thereafter – we become “transformed into the same [gloriously holy] image” …
06) Indeed, it notes that we were always Divine to a certain degree – that we were always worthy of Love and thus always able to See that Love in others and give that Love to them – that awakening to the Truth of others’ divinity (and thereby our own as well), we are not becoming something that we were not before, but rather are simply evolving “from one degree of glory to another” …
07) And finally, this passage reminds us that these awakenings are not to be sources of the same pride that kept us thickly veiled in the first place, but rather that we are to ever remember that it such enlightenments always ultimately blossom from within; always ultimately “come from the Lord, the Spirit.”
Amen … Let it be so.
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