The Bible always has a newness to it. Even the most familiar passages are new when they are received by people who are continually being transformed, because we’re never the same when we come to them.
When I read a passage as an 18 year old, it has an effect. And it’s effect is entirely new when it lands on the different person that I was at 20, 25, 30 years old. I’ve read the Bible so many times, but I never read it as the same person. Every time there are differences and changes in me–in my circumstance and the transformation God’s working–and every time there are new beauties that I couldn’t see yesterday.
“It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.” (1 Corinthians 15:44-49 ESV)
“We shall bear the image of the man of heaven.” It’s as though I’v never read it before. There is so much discussion about being made in God’s image. It’s good and sometimes helpful. Yet, that image was so horrifically broken by sin that in a very real sense, our image bearing was made untrue by sin without Christ. In sin, we bear the image of the man of dust. But for those in the incorruptible Christ, we bear the image of One who will never tarnish.
