Saturday: With Unveiled Face
WEEK 34
SATURDAY
WITH UNVEILED FACE
Jude 24-25
We are looking at the mastery of the secondhand in religion.
Here is a potent passage: “Right up to the present day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. The veil is not removed because it is taken away by Christ. Even today . . . a veil lies over their hearts. But whenever someone turns back to the Lord, the veil is removed” (2 Cor 3:14-16). “Whenever someone turns back to the Lord, the veil is removed”; when you get to the Lord, not to the system or the creeds or the ritual built up around God but really to God, then the veil is removed.
Veiled minds and hearts are the breeding grounds for doubts and fears and defeats. The veiled becomes the vague, and the vague becomes the victim. Veiled religion is powerless, without contagion and without growth.
But this is unveiled religion, “All of us are looking with unveiled faces at the glory of the Lord as if we were looking in a mirror. We are being transformed into that same image from one degree of glory to the next degree of glory. This comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (v. 18). “With unveiled faces”—veils of struggling and trying to be good, veils of taking our faith from others and echoing them, veils of half surrenders and half allegiances, veils of double-mindedness—these are all taken away, and we stand face to Face, “looking . . . at the glory of the Lord.” The glory of the Lord is not a half-lighted-up Jesus, but the real Jesus in all his glory and power. Result? We are “transformed into that same image from one degree of glory to the next degree of glory.” A firsthand Jesus produces firsthand Christians made into his own image. And everyone can see it! A boy of fifteen said of a certain Christian, “You may question his words and his arguments, but you can’t question his face—his face is the face of one who has lived with Christ through the years—it shows.”
And this is added to this Scripture passage: “This comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” It is the result not of trying but of gazing into his face, for the Lord at whom you gaze becomes the Spirit within you. You look at God and then find that the Holy Spirit is within, working in you what God does himself.
O Lord at Whom I gaze, become within me the Spirit who makes the miracle of the changed countenance and the changed life; take utter and complete possession. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I gaze this day with unveiled face and heart into God’s face, and will be made more like Christ.