All glory be to God who has allowed us to see this final Sunday of February 2021. In our continued celebration of Black History, I share with you the account provided in Acts 8:26-39 that affirms the conversion experience of the Ethiopian eunuch. It is from this passage of scripture that we should clearly see that the life altering power of the gospel was experienced by an African long before the Gentile conversion recorded in Acts 10. It should never be our mindset that we are ever taking the gospel to Africa as if it had not been there before. Indeed, it is written “And [Jesus] was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son.” See Matthew 2:15 (emphasis added).
Now to the Word as recorded in St. John 1:14:
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
In this verse, we see here a word that is used twice with regards to the Lord Jesus and his awesome presence among his disciples. The word is glory.
The word glory is the divine, spiritual, moral, and majestic beauty and perfection of the essence of God visibly present before the people of God. In Old Testament times, God was visibly seen in awesome phenomenon like the burning bush, which drew Moses closer to begin his relationship with God. We read about God’s glory revealed in the pillar of cloud and pillar of fire that led and protected the people of God during their sojourn in the wilderness. His glory resided in the tabernacle (the traveling tent where God would commune with Moses) and once completed under the wise administration of Solomon the same glory was revealed and filled the Temple.
The Scriptures reveal how awesome the glory of Jehovah was as it filled the Temple in First Kings 8:10-11 and in the demonstrative act of His divine power in the parting of the Red Sea as reflected in Exodus 14:19-22. In light of these divine and majestic visible images of God’s power, Hebrew writers and scholars described His visible presence as the Shekinah glory. Please note that the word Shekinah is not used in the Scriptures but is a word found in other writings outside of the Bible. However, in 586 BC, God’s glorious presence departed the Temple as an act of judgment against Israel’s disobedience, and prior to allowing the Babylonians to burn Jerusalem and the Temple to the ground.
God’s visible presence would not return for almost 600 years. Yet, at the appointed time (in real time and right on time), it is written in St. John 1:14 “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” The presence of God reappeared in the True Temple of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, and John says we beheld His glory. It is here that John is communicating to us that the Lord Jesus was both fully God and also fully man. John is basically saying that we saw Jesus in the flesh as a man but there was an aura about Him and we experienced the awesome presence of God. How awesome is this place! Let me ask now: Do you know the glory of God? Have you seen the glory of God? Have you experienced the glory of God?
In St. Luke 9:28-36, the good doctor gives us an account of God’s glory in Christ Jesus. Verse 29 records that “And as he prayed, the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white and glistering.” As He prayed, speaks not so much to just the words of prayer but more importantly to His attitude and His posture before the Father. Hebrews 10:7 says, “Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come—In the volume of the book it is written of Me—To do Your will, O God.’” As Jesus prayed, He was showing the disciples that He was in true communion with God with the right disposition to simply do God’s will. Family, true communion with God is beyond receiving the bread and the wine, which we practice commemorating the body that was broken and the blood that was shed for that final offering to redeem us from our sins.
True communion with God and His Son, Jesus Christ, supernaturally transfigures who we are. We who are in Christ become new creatures and old things (e.g., the way that we use to look) have passed away. Such communion is not without a loving, deliberate and intentional commitment to seek out and cultivate our relationship with the Father and Son through the Holy Spirit. It requires an act of loving and living sacrifice to disengage from people, things and circumstances that have become more sovereign than God himself. It requires disengagement from those things that have become a part of our norm, habits and practices (the iPhone, iPad, iWant, iNeed, iGotstohave) that has absorbed our attention and distracted us from doing the will of God.
The Son of God was not beyond prayer. He was not beyond the need to be in communion with the Father. The Lord Jesus was not beyond exemplifying the attitude and posture that God is sovereign. And we too have also not arrived regardless of what we believe our achievements are to embrace and yield to God’s will for our lives and to live in perfect communion with the Father and Son by the Holy Ghost. Indeed, true communion is the process of sanctification whereby we work out our own salvation to both know and to do God’s will. It is through prayer and in the purity of our relationship that we see God. A man or woman that sees God, become like the God he or she sees. The evidence of spiritual transformation unmistakably alters our countenance and reflects an absolute new facial recognition by the glory of God.
So, my last question is this: Has our relationship with the Father through His Son, Jesus Christ, altered us? The answer to whether we are becoming Christlike is summed up in that one question. I believe that the beauty of holiness is the very presence and glory of God radiating upon our faces as believers and even changes the aura of the clothes we wear. In Second Corinthians 3:17-18, it is written:
Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
In this very moment, right now, whosoever believes (that’s anybody and everybody again) on Lord Jesus and diligently seek Him, faithfully commune with Him, and abide in loving relationship with Him, we all are changed into the same image from glory to glory. And as it happens, moment by moment, we obtain this facial recognition by the glory of God and He sees us not as who we were but who He has now purposed us to be in Christ.