Several years ago I read a story online about a young man who had a bad crush on a girl in his school. The problem was, this young man was not popular. He was small and kind of wimpy, and the popular kids in school refused to hang out with him for these reasons.
The young lady he was crushing on, on the other hand, was very popular. She was a cheerleader, pretty, and was never at a loss for friends -- until one day she got in a car accident while driving to school. The accident was bad; her car was completely totalled, and she came out of the hospital weeks later paralyzed from the waist down. The accident and resulting wheelchair made her feel ugly; she ended up going into a pretty deep depression and rarely left her home except to go to school.
When the young man saw this, it broke his heart. He walked up to her and told her that she was still beautiful to him. He told her that he wanted to take her to their senior prom. She just laughed -- what’s the point of going to a dance if you can’t use your legs? He replied that he was serious, and the fact that she couldn’t use her legs didn’t matter to him. He told her that he would take care of everything -- her dress, his tux, transportation, the works. She finally agreed, and he began to prepare.
In addition to all of the normal preparations for prom, this young man joined a gym. He went to the gym every morning before school and every afternoon after school let out. He was at the gym daily for months until the day of prom finally arrived. When he arrived at the girl’s house, she was shocked. This dude was completely transformed! He was no longer the skinny, wimpy kid who asked her to prom so many months ago, he was now a big, muscular young man. All the time he spent at the gym paid off -- while they were at the dance, he was able to physically carry her in his arms the entire time, making her feel like she didn’t have anything wrong with her anymore for the first time since her accident.
After graduation, they ended up getting married.
I don’t know if this story is true or not (I did read it online, after all). But the point remains -- change is necessary for something amazing to happen.
For the past two weeks we’ve been discussing the different steps needed to bake bread -- first you must harvest the wheat, then you thresh and winnow, next you grind it into flour, and finally you combine it with the other ingredients. Tonight we are going to talk about the third step -- grinding the wheat into flour.
Grinding wheat into flour is a fairly simple task. All you need is two stone surfaces -- put the wheat kernels in between these two surfaces and flour is the result. You get coarse or fine flour based on how long you grind.
In ancient times, flour mills were powered by oxen -- they would tie the oxen to a pole and walk them around a circle. At the other end of the pole they affixed a large stone, which would ride on top of another stone. These two millstones would work together to make flour.
As technology progressed, windmills and waterwheels became popular. These worked on the exact same principle, although instead of relying on an animal’s brute strength to move the millstone, it used wind or water power. This worked much better for everyone involved because it was cheaper -- there were no animals to feed -- and gave a more consistent product.
Once the wheat had been ground into flour, it was no longer recognizable as kernels of wheat -- it was transformed into a fine powder. In fact, if the wheat is not ground into flour, it’s not very useful at all. That transformation from wheat kernel to wheat flour is what made the difference.
Likewise, we also must be transformed. As soon as we accept Christ during the harvest, and choose to remove the chaff covering our lives during threshing, we begin to change. 2 Corinthians 3:18 says, And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
This verse says it quite clearly. It starts with “And we all”. Who is “we”, here? Is it all humans? All believers? The Greek can be translated as “all” as we think of it in English, or “every part that applies”, depending on the context of the rest of the sentence. In order to determine, then, which meaning we should use, we need to go over the rest of the verse.
The next phrase is, “who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory.” This is where it starts to get fun! “Unveiled faces” has a lot of meaning here, especially to the Jewish-turned-Christian audience to whom Paul was writing. The Jewish Law mentions specific garment to be worn, but doesn’t go into specifics as to what gender should wear them, or how they should be worn. Traditionally, though, priests and other religious authorities determined that this garment, called a “Tallit Gadol”, is only worn by men, covering their heads and outer clothes, during the daily morning prayers and during all prayers on Yom Kippur. In other words, it’s a type of veil separating the sinner from the holiness of God. This would be a normal practice for Jews at the time, and many Christian converts likely continued the practice. In this verse though, Paul is saying that we should be unveiled before God. But why?
Look to the previous verse, 2 Corinthians 3:17, “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” Freedom. This is the key! We are now free, and therefore have no need to cover our faces. This was a revolutionary idea at the time, especially because covering one’s face (or simply looking down) was the way a person spoke with a king -- they were unworthy to look that king in the eye. We, however, are no longer unworthy to be in the presence of God, because we are now reconciled to Him thanks to the blood of Christ. Paul was teaching the Corinthians that we should not see God as a vengeful king, but as a loving father.
This also answers the question from earlier -- who is “we”? The answer, of course, is all believers. We cannot be reconciled to God through the blood of Christ unless we accept that gift for ourselves. We must choose Christ. When we do, we choose the gift of His blood, and are only then able to look upon the glory of the Lord.
There is another meaning to this phrase -- the word “contemplated” was a very interesting choice. In Greek the word is “katoptrizomenoi” (katop-triz-om-enee), which means “to look as in a mirror”. In other words, even with the freedom granted to us by Christ we still cannot look upon the glory of God directly, we must see it reflected in the person of Christ.
Next, the scripture says that we “are being transformed into his image”. The word used there for transformed is the exact same word Matthew and Mark used to describe the transfiguration of Christ, when the disciples finally saw him as more than just flesh-and-blood, but as the very Son of God. This says, in other words, that by looking on the image of God reflected in Jesus Christ, a change comes over us. The image of our old, worldly nature is gradually transformed into one of a new person, an image after the likeness of Christ Himself.
This passage ends with, “ with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” “Ever-increasing glory” here is a way to express completeness. In other words, it doesn’t mean that we will pass from one “stage” of glory to another, higher stage, but that our transformation from the image of the world to the image of Christ is completed only through the glory of God as reflected in Christ. Here again, Paul is reiterating that the only way to be transformed from the ways of the world is through Jesus Christ.
This is a very powerful passage that explains very neatly what happens after we choose a life in Christ and allow Jesus to hold the winnowing fork and remove the chaff from our lives. When this happens, we become transformed into a new creation -- one that is unrecognizable from what we had before. Paul says this again in 2 Corinthians 5:17-18, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 18All this from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation:”
As believers, we are new creations! We have been transformed from our old, sinful selves to match the very image of Christ. We no longer must feel unworthy of God’s love, because he has brought Christ into our lives to cover our sin with His blood. But why? Why must we be transformed so drastically that we are unrecognizable in order for us to show the image of Christ?
Because a complete transformation is necessary for us to shed our sin. We were all born in sin, ever since Adam and Eve’s disobedience brought sin into the world for the first time. In Psalm 51:5 David -- a man after God’s own heart -- says, Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” Sin is so pervasive, it covers us and is such an integral part of our lives here on earth that it literally takes an act of God to remove it. That act by necessity transforms us completely.
But there’s more meaning behind our complete transformation. Let’s look at the life of Christ for a few moments.
In John chapter 6, Jesus feeds the five thousand with five loaves and two fish. Afterwards he went across the Sea of Galilee. When people heard about his miraculous feeding of five thousand men with such a small amount of food, they begin to look for him. Eventually they find him on the other side of the sea and ask him “When did you get here?” Starting with verse 26,
“Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. 27Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”
28Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”
29Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
30So they asked him, “What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? 31Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ”
32Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
34“Sir,” they said, “always give us this bread.”
35Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
Jesus said that he is the bread of life. This was greatly offensive to the religious rulers, the priests, Pharisees, Sadducees, and the Sanhedrin. They didn’t want to believe that Jesus -- the carpenter’s son -- was in reality the Messiah they’ve all been waiting for.
A few chapters later, in John 12, Jesus had just entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. During the festival, several Greeks (and by this John means Gentiles) came up to Philip and said they wanted to see Jesus. Philip went and told Jesus that people wanted to see him. Verse 23:
“Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”
Jesus referred to himself as a kernel of wheat. Now it’s all starting to make sense! We can’t make bread without grinding up kernels of wheat to make flour. Now Jesus says that he is like a kernel of wheat! If Jesus had not been ground into flour by his crucifixion, then he could never have been the bread of life! Jesus was transformed during the crucifixion: he went from the Son of Man to the sacrificial lamb. When he had the sin of the world on his shoulders, he was unrecognizable as Jesus, the son of Joseph, but became Jesus, the son of God. When he died and rose again, the transformation was complete, and we were all finally allowed to live without fear, and with the freedom that Jesus’ death gives us.
Likewise, when our bodies die, our transformation into the image of Christ will be complete. And, just like Jesus, we will never truly die -- we are guaranteed eternal life with Jesus in the presence of our Father in heaven. All this is only possible thanks to our transformation from the image of the world to the image of Christ; which can only happen because of Jesus’ transformation. Jesus, the kernel of wheat, was ground into flour on the cross and turned into the bread of life.
A complete transformation is necessary for us to continue living in Christ. We must also be ground into flour and become unrecognizable to our former selves. But, this is not the end! No, there is one other step that must be performed before bread can result. We will discuss this step next week. In the meantime, I pray that you all stay happy and healthy until I see you again.
