Faint Light Through A Cracked Vessel

Faint Light Through A Cracked Vessel

Notice the words of our Lord prior to and in anticipation of His death: “Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in Him. If God be glorified in Him, God shall also glorify Him in Himself, and shall straightway glorify Him” (Jn. 13:31-32 KJV ). Here He shows us the necessary consequence and proof of His perfectly glorifying God. He must be immediately glorified, the accomplishment of which Peter declares: “God ... hath glorified His Son, Jesus” (Acts 3:13). The Man who on earth glorified God to the utmost degree is now glorified, and from the very face that men dared to spit upon and mar, the glory of God radiates – “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6).

We think of Christ as the perfect pattern, the One who was all that we ought to be, but are not. However, if He were merely that, considering Him would only make us miserable. But He is much more than that to us. He is the source of transforming power: “We all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:18).

As we behold Him, the all-glorious One revealed to us through the Word of God, and as our hearts are occupied with Him, we shall be changed, transformed little by little “into the same image.” The “glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” beheld on the throne, will by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit be transferred, so to speak, to the “earthen vessel,” where in fact it is viewed in 2 Corinthians 4:6.

However, let none of us look within the earthen vessel for the glorious treasure, for we shall surely look in vain! But, as “we see Jesus crowned with glory and honor” at the right hand of God, perhaps some faint beam of that glory will shine through a crack in the earthen vessel to the encouragement of a fellow saint or the conviction of a sinner.

By Carolyn Gibb