‘Changed into the same image, from glory to glory.’  The lustrous light which falls upon Christian hearts from the face of their Lord is permanent, and it is progressive.  The likeness extends, becomes deeper, truer, every way perfecter, comprehends more and more of the faculties of the man; soaks into him, if I may say so, until he is saturated with the glory; and in all the extent of his being, and in all the depth possible to each part of that whole extent, is like his Lord.  That is the hope for heaven, towards which we may indefinitely approximate here, and at which we shall absolutely arrive there.  There we expect changes which are impossible here, while compassed with this body of sinful flesh.  We look for the merciful exercise of His mighty working to ’change the body of our lowliness, that it may be fashioned like unto the body of His glory’; and that physical change in the resurrection of the just rightly bulks very large in good men’s expectations.  But we are somewhat apt to think of the perfect likeness of Christ too much in connection with that transformation that begins only after death, and to forget that the main transformation must begin here.  The glorious, corporeal life like our Lord’s, which is promised for heaven, is great and wonderful, but it is only the issue and last result of the far greater change in the spiritual nature, which by faith and love begins here.  It is good to be clothed with the immortal vesture of the resurrection, and in that to be like Christ.  It is better to be like Him in our hearts.  His true image is that we should feel as He does, should think as He does, should will as He does; that we should have the same sympathies, the same loves, the same attitude towards God, and the same attitude towards men.  It is that His heart and ours should beat in full accord, as with one pulse, and possessing one life.  Wherever there is the beginning of that oneness and likeness of spirit, all the rest will come in due time.  As the spirit, so the body.  The whole nature must be transformed and made like Christ’s, and the process will not stop till that end be accomplished in all who love Him.  But the beginning here is the main thing which draws all the rest after it as of course.  ’If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies, by His Spirit that dwelleth in you.’

And, while this complete assimilation in body and spirit to our Lord is the end of the process which begins here by love and faith, my text, carefully considered, adds a further very remarkable idea.  ’We are all changed,’ says Paul, ‘into the same image.’  Same as what?  Possibly the same as we behold; but more probably the phrase, especially ‘image’ in the singular, is employed to convey the thought of the blessed likeness of all who become perfectly like Him.  As if he had said, ’Various as we are in disposition and character, unlike in the histories of our lives, and all the influences that these have had upon us, differing in everything but the common relation to Jesus Christ, we are all growing like the same image, and we shall come to be perfectly like it, and yet each retain his own distinct individuality.’  ’We being many are one, for we are all partakers of one.’