But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
Verne
Remember that, in the garden of Eden, the situation was that God had created man in God's own image, and that Adam and Eve were yet sinless. The serpent came along and offered a way to improve on what God had made them.
It would seem that likewise in the second creation the devil is still at it offering improvement through self-righteous hypocrisy.
Why don't you simply accept the verse for what it says instead of trying to project your own notion of what others think it is saying.
The verse says that we
behold, and the Spirit of God
transforms. How you get self-righteous hypocrisy out of anything that verse says I cannot fathom.
I would suggest that you spend time thinking about the difference between sinlessness and holiness. If you do not understand the difference, you will make no distinction between the first and the last Adam Stephen. Comparing Adam to the new man in Christ is a serious error.
You're misrepresenting the case by saying that all those things were known. In fact the focus on appearances prevented the discovery of the truth because critics were silenced for the fault of marring appearances!
Am I?
Did you read the same accounts of assembly history that I have Stephen?
There is a former leading brother on this BB who has publicly acknowledged that very early on they knew George Geftakys to be a liar.
There has been testimony by numerous witnessess that David's abuse of Judy was reported to George and the leadership decades before the collapse.
There have been numerous witnesses who confirmed the man's smoking and drinking vices which he engaged in for many years. Don't tell me that people did not know for that does not comport with the facts. It may be true that the rank and file did not have these details but the men in leadership knew.
George actually used his traveling companion, a man in leadership responsibility to pass
inappropriate letters to a young single sister and when an accusation of inordinate affection was levied at this man, despite the evidence available to this individual he kept quiet, supposedly deciding the extent of his responsibility was to advise the the brothers in Fullerton and let them handle it.
Do you doubt for one instant that what prompted these men to action was not so much that they had hitherto unknown facts about this man at their disposal but that the
facts had become public!WHATEVER HAPPENED TO HOLINESS IN MEN OF GOD??!!The weight of the evidence demolishes that lame excuse my friend. Completely.
I am afraid there is no misrepresentation on this score. The fact that you or I may not have known what was going on is entirely irrelevnant for we were not charged with oversight.
If those in leadership did not know, that is an even greater indictment.
The verse that you quote seems like a poor choice for defending your use of the term "Christ-likeness" because it seems to suggest self-righteousness, in other words that you are satisfied with how much you are like Christ.
This subjective self-centered way of interpreting things is an aberation of our time and has its origin in psychology. Atheism requires such an interpretation since the possibility that God might really exist has been excluded, so those who seek God must really be seeking something subjective within themselves.
David wasn't looking for something within himself. He was looking for the Lord.
There is a sense in which we see the Lord's face in his righteous acts. David had just prayed for the Lord to keep him from the wicked in Psalm 17:8-9. He was going to be satisfied with seeing in the answer to his prayer the evidence of the Lord's presence with him.
Psalm 9:16
The LORD is known by the judgment which he executeth: the wicked is snared in the work of his own hands. Higgaion. Selah.
There is nothing subjective about the work of the Spirit of God in the life of the believer.
That work is to make us like Christ.
It is not self-centered to examine ourselves, to see whether we be in the faith.
Nothing prompts me to want to change more than a realisation of how unlike Christ, in the flesh, I really am. This is not some kind of personality or beauty contest. It is about seeing the pupose for which the Son of God gave His life accomplished in these earthly tabernacles
Holiness of life is
objectively visible. You cannot be holy unless the Spirit of God makes you thus so subjectivity had nothing to do with it. Holiness cannot be counterfeited.
Verne
