"Men Whose Eyes Have Seen the King" (Transcript)

by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 4 - Beholding... Changed... Transformed...

We'll just look again, not more than a glance, at Matthew chapter 17, part of this account of the transfiguration: "And after six days Jesus taketh with Him Peter, and James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into a high mountain apart: and He was transfigured before them; and His face did shine as the sun, and His garments became white as the light."

Verse 5, in the middle: "And behold, a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him".

In the second letter to the Corinthians, chapter 3, at verse 18: "We all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit" (or, margin: "the Spirit which is the Lord").

Of course the link between the two passages is in one word, unfortunately slightly obscured in translation. In your King James' Version it is 'are changed into the same image'; in the Revised it is, 'are transformed into the same image'. The Revisers certainly have made a slight improvement on the other, and perhaps with a fine sensibility, or sense of fitness, they avoided putting the true translation, and made this slight change into 'transformed'.

But the fact remains that the same word is here as is used for what happened on that Mount - 'was transfigured before them.' That is the same word exactly as is here translated alternatively 'changed' and 'transformed'. Therefore, the exact rendering here would be "are transfigured into the same image", so that the children of God have a transfiguration, as the Lord Jesus had. His was an event, an act; a thing, shall we say, as of a moment. We don't know how long it lasted, but it was at a time point. Ours is a long process; indeed, from the beginning to the climax of our Christian life, this is what is supposed to be going on with us: we are being transfigured into the same image, from glory to glory.

That at once is very challenging to us, to our Christian history, life, progress. There may be (and I am always conscious of being on very delicate ground in making a comparison between the Lord Jesus and ourselves or anyone else) there may be something different about Him. It has been said that His transfiguration was the outshining of His Deity, and I have no quarrel with that. If that was so, all right; it doesn't affect the issue at all. But then again, we have reason to believe that it was something other than that also - that it was the perfecting of His humanity, and the outshining of the glory of an absolutely Perfect Man. We do believe, and we feel we have ground for believing, that something like that was God's intention for all men, when He said, "Let us make man in our own image". And when there is so much about the glory and the glorifying which is the consummation of our pilgrimage, surely there is something in the transfiguration of the Lord Jesus which is not altogether isolated from what the Lord intends for us and I put my emphasis on that this afternoon; that is the point. Earlier in our meditation on this matter we said that. We said that the glory which took hold of Him, and emanated from Him, filled Him, and transfigured Him, was the glory of His personality as utterly satisfying to God.

His Personality as Utterly Satisfying to God

Because God's satisfaction is always the ground of glory wherever you look in the Bible. Whenever you find in any place that state of things with which God can be well pleased, you will find the glory there - the glory fills and breaks forth. That is supremely the case in the Lord Jesus, and that is why at this point the voice from Heaven attested Him, marked Him out, and said, "...in Whom I am well pleased" - completely satisfied.

I repeat, then, that it was the glory of His personality as the Son of Man; for, almost in association with that, He spoke about His coming again as being "the coming of the Son of Man in the glory of the Father". This, so far as His perfecting was concerned, was not something that took place on the Mount. The Mount was the mark of the consummation of His perfecting. I don't mean in the matter of sin - fulness or lessness - but the perfecting of His character, the perfecting of that inner man which we call personality.

Personality is a strange thing, an elusive thing, it's something that you can't get hold of, but you cannot mistake; it is the, the person within - the man inside. Now, He, in that inner life of His, had worked out this matter, this whole matter of God's pleasure, God's satisfaction, through His life. There was the Divine approval at His baptism in similar words, indicating, probably, that His thirty years were approved; certainly indicating that the step that He was now taking, right out into public with the cross accepted (for His baptism certainly implied that) that was approved. That brought the word from Heaven: "My Beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased".

But now this period between the baptism and the cross is concluding, and what a period! What a period! One writer says that He was, "tempted in all points like as we". Crowd that into three short years and a few months. Yes, hell tested Him; the world tested Him; in a sense Heaven tested Him. He was tested, He was put through it in every detail, and won through. He, in that time, was "made perfect through sufferings", "learning obedience through the things which He suffered" - in that time, brought that inner life, that inner personality, to perfection. Now, you'll see why I am saying this at the outset; it's not new to you, it's not fresh, I don't suppose it strikes you as anything perhaps interesting, but it's basic to everything else, you see. That's the point.

Now when the apostle takes hold of that very word, and says: "We all..." I am glad he uses the little word with its so comprehensive meaning.

"We All"

We all... he's not talking only about himself and his fellow-workers, brothers in the work, he is talking about the Corinthians and all believers. "We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory, the glory of the Lord, are transfigured into the same image". He takes hold of that same word, and brings it over to all saints and making of that which had been perfected and completed in the Lord Jesus, a process, a continuous process in the life of believers. He is but saying: "What had been completed and perfected in that One, has now to be reproduced in us progressively: that perfection, that character, that personality - the personality of the Lord Jesus - perfected, brought into us, developed in us, manifested through us". If you don't like the word 'personality', if it sounds too technical, if you like: 'character'.

Now, the first thing to say about this, which is, of course, so helpful and encouraging, is where the apostle finishes this statement: "As by the Spirit Who is the Lord". Dear friends, with all that we know about the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Person and the work of the Holy Spirit, all the effects of the Spirit's advent and indwelling, let us recognise this as supreme: the inclusive work of the Holy Spirit. That is, whatever He does, all that He does, His manifold activities, the inclusive work of the Holy Spirit is one thing: to reproduce the Lord Jesus in a people. Now, when again you pray about the Holy Spirit, and you speak about the Holy Spirit, remember that. Remember that! The Holy Spirit's supreme and comprehensive object is to reproduce the Lord Jesus in His character, His personality, His perfected manhood or humanity, in a people.

This is very testing to you and to me. If we really contemplate it (and it has challenged my own heart to the point of making me very hesitant to speak freely) the test of the Holy Spirit having His way in your life and mine, the proof that He is there and He is doing His work, is our transfiguration. Is our transfiguration! In other words: is what Christ is in His perfect humanity becoming more and more true of us, in our natures, in our hearts, in us and of us?

The real test of a Spirit-governed life lies here: the progressive, the progressive increase of the character of Christ. If we are going to meet one another as really Spirit-governed lives, men and women, what we must meet in one another is the Lord Jesus. And that must be not just today and then it stops, not just in one time of our lives and there it ended, but going on, going on all the time.

That is, that is the test and the proof and the challenge of the Holy Spirit's presence, and the Holy Spirit's liberty to work. You see, the apostle says that here, just in the sentence earlier: "Where the Spirit is Lord, there is liberty".

"There is Liberty"

He is, of course, making a comparison, or a contrast, with the old dispensation of the Law - Moses coming down with the Law. And there it was all compulsion; there it was all so 'you must' and 'you must not' - bondage, thraldom, limitation, suppression, repression, and anxious fretful striving. Now all that had gone, and the Spirit, the Spirit comes and has His way. And whereas in the case of Moses, as representing that order of things and that dispensation, he had to put a veil over his face - not to hide the glory, but to hide the departure of the glory, and pretend, pretend. And you know, it was a dispensation of pretend, on the outside. That was what the Lord Jesus was up against in His day with the Scribes and Pharisees. He called them 'hypocrites', that is, pretending to be something that was not true; it was all put on the outside. The glory that had gone was not seen through this veil of pretence.

But all that, says the apostle, is gone with Christ. The Spirit has come, and come within and now we are set free from all that sort of thing. It's spontaneous! Where the Spirit is Lord, it's liberty, it's spontaneous, it's free, it just happens! You don't have to make believe, strive, fret, and worry, and suppress: it happens if the Holy Spirit is there. And what happens, what happens? The glory of the Lord - that is, the Perfection of His Manhood - begins, and goes on to express itself in us spontaneously. That is:

The Life of the Spirit.

It's the Life of the Spirit! It is 'normal Christian life'; there is something subnormal if it's not up to that, and something abnormal if you are putting on that. But the normal is that the Holy Spirit, having His way, does this one thing: He makes Christ more and more manifest in our mortal bodies.

So that is the heart of this. Now it's the work of the Holy Spirit. That's the point at the moment, the work of the Holy Spirit. That helps us very much, that the Holy Spirit has taken into His own hands responsibility for this. Dear friends, you and I have not to strive to be Christ-like.

With all due respect for Thomas à Kempis, it is not an 'imitation' of Christ. It is not an imitation of Christ - something that we try to do. It is this: that it is as natural to a true child of God, who is not putting something definitely in the way of the Holy Spirit, it is as natural for the true child of God to become more Christ-like, as it is to breathe. Now, you don't stop to discuss the question of whether you are going to breathe, how many more breaths you are going to take and whether you are going to breathe now, or save it up till later on, and make a theory of it - you just do it without thinking. And it's as natural as that, because the Holy Spirit is our breath, is our life. You set that over against the many difficulties that people find to be Christ-like!

Now what is said here is these two things: first of all, there is the Pattern, perfect, complete - Christ glorified. The Holy Spirit comes to work that Pattern out progressively in the children of God, in believers; He has come for that purpose, to take it over, and to do it. Now, we are not allowed to say how He shall do it; He chooses His own way. That leads me to this next thing.

Here again is the unfortunate break in the narrative by chapter numbers, the apostle goes on: "We have this treasure in vessels of fragile clay, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves". Now listen: how is it going to be done? How are these vessels of fragile clay going to contain, and increasingly contain and manifest this glory of the character of Christ? How? Not in the way that we would think, perhaps, or choose: "We are pressed on every side... we are perplexed... we are pursued... we are smitten down... we are always bearing about in the body the putting to death of Jesus... we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake... death worketh in us...".

That's rather a disconcerting, discouraging view of things! But that's how the Spirit does it. The fact remains, whether we like it or not, that it is just this: being pressed on every side, that presses us to something more of the Lord Jesus, and presses something more of the Lord Jesus into us. To gather it all up, all these things, it just means this: that you and I, you and I would never come to this, this transfiguration, only through these trials and these adversities. These are the Holy Spirit's means of our perfecting, of our growth in Christ.

It's a pity that it has to be like that; a great pity that we can't be Christ-like without being put into difficulty and trouble and suffering, but that's just it, you see, it's like that, it's like that. Give people absolute exemption from all kinds of difficulties and troubles, and see what kind of people they are: self-centred; self-sufficient; self-assertive. You know, people who are never ill have very great difficulty in being sympathetic with the sick and understanding. They have to, at least, make a great effort to be patient with them - that's why I like doctors to be ill sometimes! Perhaps that's the wrong way to say it, we ought not to like anybody to be ill, but you know, sympathy, understanding, patience, come to us along this line of experience, and painful experience; it's a matter of character, isn't it?

And so the apostle puts alongside of our transfiguration, all these difficulties and adversities, and in effect he says, "This is the Holy Spirit's material; these are the Holy Spirit's instruments for working Christ into us". It works out that way if we are not rebellious, if we don't allow bitterness to creep into our spirit, it works out that way. So, suffering and trial, difficulty and adversity, under the government of the Holy Spirit, will effect this.

But then the apostle checks us here; he says: "We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror...". The revisers have some difficulty here, as the translators of the Authorized Version had, and they have not settled that question, that difficulty. Here is a matter they did not really know what Paul exactly meant, so they put it in these different ways - what we have in the text, and what we have in the margin. Did he mean, did he mean that we are a mirror? The image is thrown upon us as a mirror, and then rebounds - is that what he meant? Or did he mean that Christ is the mirror, and we are looking into Him, and He is reflecting the glory of God? I think that's what he meant. He spoke about the "glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" - I think the word 'face' there is just another word for 'mirror'. I agree with you Greek scholars that it isn't the same word, but it's just another word in meaning; it is 'in the face of Jesus Christ'. "And we beholding, as in the Face of Jesus Christ" - that's what the apostle is talking about here.

And the word 'beholding' is a strong word; it's not just taking a look, it's 'fixing our gaze'. Fixing our gaze - that is what the New Testament means by behold and beholding. We all, fixing our gaze upon Christ, upon Christ as He mirrors in His own Person the glory of God, the satisfaction of God, the mind of God in perfection - this fixed gaze. The point is that you and I must contemplate the Lord Jesus in spirit, and be much occupied with Him. We must have our Holy of Holies where we retire with Him. We must have a secret place where we spend time with Him. And not only that in given and certain special seasons, but we must seek, as we move about, ever to keep Him before us. Looking at the Lord Jesus, contemplating Him, we shall be changed into the same image. The Holy Spirit will operate upon our occupation.

You become like that which obsesses you, which occupies you. Isn't it true? You see what people are occupied with, you see the obsessions of people and you can see their character changing by their obsession. They are becoming like that thing which is obsessing them; they are changing; they're becoming different. Something has got a grip on them and they can never think about anything else, talk about anything else; it's changing their character. Now Paul said, 'For me to live is Christ - for me to live is Christ: being occupied with Him'. It's the wrong word to use, but nevertheless it would be a good thing if He became our 'obsession', our continuous occupation. At any rate beholding, steadfastly fixing our gaze upon Him, the Spirit changes us into the same image.

'This Ministry' is for All: A Matter of Character

Now one further word and we close for the present. You'll notice the context of these words in 1 Corinthians. The apostle here is mainly concerned with the effect, the effect of the life of believers in this world, on this earth. He calls it, 'this ministry'. This ministry. Now perhaps that word needs transfiguring for us. Here, note, note: that when he says, 'we all, beholding...', we all, he covers all believers by that word 'ministry'. It is all believers he is speaking to about ministry. And here is a tremendous difference.

Our technical, professional conceptions of 'the ministry' are mostly external: that is, you give a title; you, more or less, put on a uniform; you are 'the minister'. It's all put on the outside, therefore it can be artificial. Don't take offense at that anybody, but leave it. What he is saying, what the apostle is saying here, is the ministry is not something that you put on, but something that comes out; it just comes out. We are all - you, my brothers and my sisters - are called to the ministry. You are called to the ministry. Any special application of that word would only be permissible in the New Testament, in measure, and not in kind. In measure. That is, some have a special ministry, a special ministry and they are God's ministers in that particular way, with that particular measure. It is not that they are a class called 'ministers', and other people are 'laity' - not a bit of it - such ideas are foreign to the New Testament. Here it is that, 'We all, beholding', have the ministry, resultant from the beholding. We are therefore all called to the ministry; it's the effect of our being here.

Now, what is the apostle saying about this? He is saying, so clearly, that:

The Personality and the Ministry Must be One.

How searching that is, but how very meaningful. The ministry must not be some 'thing' - preaching, teaching, and all those things which are called 'ministry' - done, and the man is different, the person is apart. What Paul is saying so emphatically here is this: that when you meet a truly Spirit-indwelt and Spirit-governed man or woman, what they say comes out of their life - is a part of their life. Their teaching, their teaching can be seen to have been wrought into their history and experience. It is known when that man or that woman seeks to teach, to 'minister', to say something to someone else of a Christian character, that that has come out of some secret history with God, something that the Holy Spirit has done in them. Their ministry and their character are identical.

That's very important, it's very important, indeed, it is indispensable. That is why the Holy Spirit is so meticulous about character, so careful about the personality, about the inner man, the inner life. Why, if we do, if we are under His government (mark you, it doesn't apply to everybody who ministers and is in Christian service) but if we are really under the government of the Holy Spirit, if we, in word, exceed, exceed what is true in our own lives, the Holy Spirit will soon take us up on that. He'll soon take us up on that and, in effect, will see to it that we are brought abreast of our teaching - that the thing is kept in correspondence and balance.

Have you ever said something, and the Holy Spirit has checked you up, and said: "Is that true of you? Is that true, or is that something you've said?" It's like that. It's very important, and we wouldn't really have it otherwise would we, if we were honest, we want it to be like that. But you know, this, this is something that involves the glory - that's the point.

It Involves the Glory

There is such a thing as the power of the Holy Spirit in the glory. We were speaking of it yesterday as 'impact' - the impact of the transfiguration upon those men; and the impact of a seeing of the Lord by anyone afterward - what it registered of power.

Now, you and I perhaps covet and crave as much as anything that there shall be impact in our lives, that there shall be power, that we shall register, that we shall not just leave things as they were. We do crave, do we not, that as we go on, and when we have passed on, something will have been left of an impress, by either our ministry or by our presence - that it shall remain. Yes, impact is a very good word.

Well now, you see, that is bound up with the glory - that is the glory. It registers; it is something that remains. It remains - things may come, and for a time the glory may be veiled, but there is something there that will come up again. I confess to you that yet there is some understanding, because we all are made alike - but I confess to you that I have had difficulty in understanding how three men, and one of them in particular, could be on the Mount of Transfiguration, on the Mount of Transfiguration, and that one amongst them by revelation of the Father could declare Jesus the Son of the Living God, the Christ - how that man could deny Him with oaths and curses. How they all could forsake Him and flee for their very lives; well, if we didn't know our own natures and hearts, we would not have any understanding of that. But it is a bit difficult, isn't it? And yet it was only a veiling for the time being; it came up afterward.

It came up with Peter, as we know, many years afterward at the end of his life he referred to it: "We were with Him in the holy mount". It remained. It was something that they did not forget. There was a temporary eclipse, which God forbid should ever be true of us; perhaps we will never have to go quite the same way as they went. But the thing is there; what I'm saying is there's a permanence, a permanence about this matter - an abiding effect of really, really having Christ revealed in the heart; and, by that inward revelation of Him, a manifestation of His character, something that remains.

Now, we cannot say that, can we, of all that is called 'ministry'? It's a sermon, an address, something given, and it passes. And it goes on like that in rota, week after week, and week after week. But that, of course, is why we're saying this; we don't want it like that. We really do not want it like that, that we should come and go, should be just passing things, and don't leave any abiding mark. Now, there is an impact bound up with this. And so, it is not a matter of what we call 'the ministry' - something external. The 'ministry' with Paul is nothing less than, and nothing other than what is true of Christ coming out of the life of His servants, of His people; being there, and coming out.

And it is possible, of course, all will not see; as our brother said this morning in his word to the children. We can be looking, criticising the servants of the Lord, and taking account of natural features and occupied with that. Well, alright, if we are disposed to do that sort of thing we may miss something, we really may miss something. But, if at all we are without prejudices or preoccupations and all that kind of thing, criticisms, looking, looking for what is not glorious, if we are disposed to see what there is of Christ, it ought to be possible to see that the profession is supported by a possession. The words are back home by experience. The teaching is not a teaching only, it's something that has been wrought.

Now, dear friends, it's got to come back to that. I'm tremendously exercised about this in these days, wondering whether, whether I haven't done too much teaching. Not that it hasn't been real, but that it hasn't become real and living as it should be in those who have received it. And that is a proper kind of concern and exercise.

We may seek always that the teaching shall be as practical as possible and brought down to human life very closely, but of course we can't make people into what we say. But it should be our exercise (and this is why I'm saying this) it should be the exercise of every one of us that that should not just remain some truth, some teaching, something that we hear, something that goes on in certain places, something that we know in its phraseology and verbiage, but if that is God's truth, it should be real. It should be our life, it should be our character, for only so, shall we have this ministry: "Therefore seeing we have this ministry, even as we have obtained mercy... have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God". It's character. True words, and no words without character. And the character is the character of the Lord Jesus. May it be more true with us.