Day 18: God’s Word: Mirror of the Spirit

There is always perfect harmony between the Spirit and the Word. They are never in disagreement. This harmony affects our personal lives too, because the Word is the mirror of the Spirit.

The apostle James in his epistle tells us very clearly that one of the functions of God’s Word is to be a mirror, which does not reveal to us our external appearance but reveals to us our inner nature and being.

“For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.” (James 1:23-25)

Now Paul is using the same figure in 2 Corinthians 3:17–18, where he says:

“Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.”

In other words, while we are looking in the mirror of the Holy Spirit and seeing what we are really like within, the Holy Spirit works on us to transform us into the image of what we should be, as revealed in Scripture. The Holy Spirit gives us a self-image which is not our own image but the image of what we are in Christ. As we continue to look in that image, the Holy Spirit transforms us into the likeness of what we see.

That’s why the Word of God is so important in relation to the Spirit because when the mirror isn’t there, the Holy Spirit doesn’t work. He only transforms us while we are looking at what we see in the mirror of God’s Word.

Once we turn away from the Word, the Holy Spirit ceases to work, but the beautiful thing is that Paul says He’s transforming us from glory to glory. It’s a progressive revelation of what we are in Christ into which the Holy Spirit brings us.

Reflect: When I take time to read and do God’s Word, the Holy Spirit will continue to work in me and transform me from glory to glory.