“That,” says Paul, “is precisely the process through which we Christian men become like Christ.”  We go back to the presence of Christ with unveiled face; and as often as we stand in His presence, as often as we deal in our spirit with the living Christ, so often do we take on a little of His glory.  The glory of Christ is His character; and as often as we stand before Christ, and think of Him, and realise what He was, our heart goes out and reflects some of His character.  And that reflection, that glory, is not any longer merely on the skin of the face; as Paul wishes us to recognise, it is a spiritual glory, it is wrought by the spirit of Christ upon our spirit, and it is we ourselves that are changed from glory to glory into the very image of the Lord.

Now obviously this mode of sanctification has extraordinary recommendations.  In the first place, it is absolutely simple.  If you go to some priest or spiritual director, or minister of the Gospel, or friend, and ask what you are to do if you wish to become a holy man, why, even the best of them will almost certainly tell you to read certain books, to spend so much time in prayer and reading your Bible, to go regularly to church, to engage in this and that good work.  If you had applied to a spiritual director of the middle ages of this world’s history and of the history of Christianity, he would have told you that you must retire from the world altogether in order to become holy.  Paul says, “Away with all that nonsense!” We are living in a real world; Christ lived in a real world:  Christ did not retire from men.  And He says all that you have to do in order to be like Christ is to carry His image with you in your heart.  That is all.  To be with Him, to let Him stand before you and command your love, that will infallibly change you into His image.  I do not know that we sufficiently recognise the simplicity of Christian methods.  We do not understand what Paul meant by proclaiming it as the religion of the spirit, as a religion superior to everything mechanical and external.  Think of the deliverance it was for him who had grown up under a religion which commanded him to go a journey three times a year, to take the best of his goods and offer them in the Temple, to comply with a multitude of oppressive observances and ordinances.  Think of the emancipation when he found a spiritual religion.  Why, in those times a man must have despaired of becoming a holy man; But now Paul says you will infallibly become holy if you learn this easy lesson of carrying the Lord Jesus with you in your heart.

Another recommendation of this method is that it is so obviously grounded on our own nature.  No sooner are we told by Paul that we must act as mirrors of Christ than we recognise that nature has made us to be mirrors, that we cannot but reflect what is passing before us.  You are walking along the street, and, a little child runs before a carriage; you shrink back as if you were in danger.  You see a man fall from a scaffolding, crushed; your face takes on an expression of pain, reflecting what is passing in him.  You go and spend an evening with a man much stronger, much purer, much saner, than yourself, and you come away knowing yourself a stronger and a better man.  Why?  Because you are a mirror, because in your inmost nature you have responded to and reflected the good that was in him.