Worth Losing Everything
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Loosening Your Grip On What Won’t Last
Real change doesn’t simply come from trying harder. If you’ve been a Christian for any length of time and you’re still waiting for that kind of change, still frustrated that the same bad patterns keep showing up, and you’re wondering if transformation is actually possible — this is for you.
So, let’s talk about this by looking at 2 Corinthians 3:18.
“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”— 2 Corinthians 3:18 (ESV)
Paul, here, has been talking about two covenants — the old and the new — and what it means to live on this side of the cross. He’s just finished explaining that the veil of spiritual blindness that kept people from seeing God clearly has been removed in Jesus. And then verse 18 is his conclusion: here is what happens to people whose eyes have been opened.
What’s at stake in this verse is not a technique for self-improvement. What’s at stake is whether you understand the actual engine of change — because if you get this wrong, you will spend your whole Christian life pushing on a door that opens the other way.
Maybe it helps to think about what it feels like to be shaped by someone you didn’t even realize was shaping you.
Picture a woman in her forties realizing one afternoon that she sets her coffee cup down the same way her grandfather always did — handle turned just so, placed in the same corner of the table. She never decided to do this. She didn’t practice it. She just spent years in his kitchen, watching him, sitting across from him, being shaped by the thousands of ordinary moments when she was near him. She became, in small ways, like the person she loved and kept returning to. We don’t always notice what proximity is doing to us — until one day we catch ourselves and realize something has been working in us all along.
“you become like what you worship”
Here is what Paul is saying. There is a principle connected how we develop: you become like what you worship. Psalm 115 said it about people who worship idols — gods that are blind, deaf, and mute. People who pour their lives into those gods, the Psalmist says, become like them – Spiritually blind and deaf and mute.
If you look around — at what money does to people who worship it, at what approval does to people who live for approval, at what comfort does to people who make it their god — you can see the Psalm is right. What you worship forms you. It always has. The question was never whether you are being transformed by what you worship. The question is what you are worshipping — and therefore what you are becoming.
So, Paul takes that ancient principle and does something with it. The Holy Spirit doesn’t break the mechanism. He redeems it. In the new birth — the Spirit removes the blindness and re-orients the eyes of the heart toward the glory of Jesus. And now the same principle that was destroying you begins restoring you. You behold the glory of Jesus — his love and sufficiency and grace. His finished work and his intercession for you — and the Spirit uses that beholding to press you, slowly and surely, into his image.
Notice the grammar of the verse. “Are being transformed.” Present tense. Passive voice. This is not something you do. It is something being done to you. You are NOT the agent of your own transformation. The Holy Spirit is. And he does not get tired or lose interest or quit. As Paul says in Philippians 1:6 — “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion.” The one who started this is the one finishing it.
This means the solution to spiritual stagnation is not more effort aimed at yourself. It is more attention aimed at Jesus. Not as a technique. Not as a new strategy. But as the natural response of someone who has been shown what is true and beautiful and real.
Sometimes God lets the need for change build until you can’t ignore it anymore — until you come to the end of yourself and turn to Jesus. Other times the change arrives suddenly. But either way, what produces it is the beauty of what is truly beautiful - Jesus.
What the Text Says Here Is…All believers, with the blindness removed by the Spirit, are continuously being transformed into the likeness of Jesus as they behold his glory. This transformation is ongoing and is being done to them — not by them — and the Holy Spirit is the one doing it.
And This Means…we need to keep our eyes on Jesus, to stay near him in the Word and in prayer and in the gathered church who’s goal is to see the beauty of Jesus through the Bible. But that call only makes sense because of what God has already done. He removed the veil. He opened the eyes. He re-oriented the gaze. And now he is using every moment of honest beholding to make you more like his Jesus. You are not managing your own transformation. You are a person being worked on by a faithful God — and the work will be finished.
Now, lets pray about this:
Father, your glory is the most transforming thing in the universe — and you have made it visible in Jesus.We confess that we have given our gaze to things that were making us into their image — blind, and deaf, and far from you.Thank you that the Spirit removed the veil, turned our eyes, and has been working in us ever since. Cause us to keep our eyes on Jesus.
In Jesus’ name we pray —
Remember: beholding produces becoming — and this means the most important thing you can do today is not try harder, but look longer at Jesus, because the Spirit is already using that gaze to make you new.
The work is his. The glory is his. And you are his — go live like it.