The teacher should also call attention to the figure of the mirror employed here. A mirror can reflect only what it beholds; even so the Christian will reflect in his daily life only so much of Christ as he sees. If there is a veil upon his face, he will see imperfectly; therefore, he must so yield to God that the veil shall be taken away. Call attention to the veil upon the heart and the blinded minds mentioned in this chapter as true of unbelieving Israelites, and note the contrast in reference to the people of God. “We all with unveiled faces” see Him. But, do we see Him as clearly as we should? Does it not seem as if a veil was upon the minds of many Christians? They seem to be living in a sad twilight, reflecting an incomplete Christ, when it is their privilege to constantly gaze upon the glorious beauty of a Majestic Conqueror and to reflect Him in their lives.
Let us remember that as mirrors we cannot reflect what we do not see. If we see Christ in His Substitutionary work only, we shall not be able to manifest His Victory over sin and Satan; or, in other words, if we do not see Him as our Representative in every respect, the Holy Spirit will not be able to cause a manifestation of His Life in our daily lives. And how are we to see Him? By finding out what God’s Written Word says about Him and believing every word that we read.
Conformity, the end; transformation, the way. From glory to glory up towards conformity; we are transformed into the same Image, from glory to glory. Step after step, out of the shame of self-complaint, into the glory of the Lamb-life, from glory to glory, even into the same Image....When a man awakens to the consciousness that he has not only been pardoned, but that he has by His Heavenly Father been foreordained to such a thing as conformity to the Image of the Son of God, everything loses its importance, its weight, its power. Joy cannot lift us up too high, and grief cannot break us down. Every circumstance brings us out of the wicked image of the First Adam, out of our wicked character into the full Image of the Son of God. (Pastor Stockmayer, in Sanctified Ones)
The teacher must so present every phase of the subject of transformation, that the members of the class will be led into a state of restful cooperation with the Holy Spirit. They must see that God, the Holy Spirit, will not fail to cause the yielded personality to appropriate all that God in Christ purchased at Calvary. The attitude of the Christian, which should be maintained day by day, is indicated in the following words:
Let us henceforth consider the Cross of Christ as a knife in the hands of the Holy Spirit to slay our sin-stained self life. And let us regard the Resurrected and Ascended Life of our Glorified Lord as an inexhaustible Storehouse from which the Holy Spirit supplies us with what we need for spirit, soul and body moment by moment.
The members of the class who have carefully followed the lessons up to this point will not be inclined to limit the “gospel” to the substitutionary work of Christ, precious as that is. They will henceforth be able to perceive the full gospel message, to believe it, and earnestly desire to live it out and to tell it out.
In this course of study the attempt has been made to present the complete cycle of Redemptive truth and to show the correlation of subjects as plainly as possible.
It is hoped that the students following this method of Bible Study will be enabled to discover the scarlet thread of God’s Plan of Redemption throughout the whole Book, and will perceive the relation of this Redemptive Plan to God’s Eternal Purpose for the human race.
As a supplementary course in Redemption Studies, the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy and Joshua in the Old Testament, and Hebrews in the New Testament, may be studied with great profit. Every detail of God’s Plan of Redemption will be found pictured within these books and set forth in logical order. Redemption, in type, however, should not be presented to a class until the doctrinal truths as stated in God’s Word are plainly perceived. It is also urged that the student carefully examine the epistles to ascertain what is therein stated in reference to the various subjects that have been presented in this course; e.g., notice what the Apostle Paul states in reference to the gospel which he preached in 1 Corinthians 15:1-4; Hebrews 10:12-17; 9:28. This may be summarized as follows: Christ died for our sins. He was buried. He rose again. He ascended to the right hand of God. He is coming again. These vital truths are stated again and again throughout the New Testament. Notice also that these statements are always shown to be “according to the Scriptures.” The wonderful unity of God’s Written Word is herein shown. Historical events that are narrated in the New Testament were predicted by writers of the Old Testament centuries before their fulfillment. Every detail of the historical execution of God’s Plan of Redemption was typified in various ways, thousands of years before the Cross of Calvary.
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