Reflecting His Glory

1 John 1:5 says, “This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.” 

Philipians 2:14 says, “Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe.”

The word shine means to reflect. In the world of science, they would refer to this as albedo. Albedo is a measurement of how much light a celestial body reflects. Neptune has an albedo of .84, 84% of the sun's light that hits Neptune is reflected. That is why we can see in in the night sky even though it millions of miles away. By contrast, our moon, has an albedo of .07, only 7% of the light that hits the moon is reflected. That is why we don't have daylight at night. The moon absorbs most of the light that hits it.

Spiritually speaking, our goal should be a spiritual albedo of 1, we are totally reflecting the glory of God to our world completely. 2 Corinthians 3:18 says it this way: “We, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord.” I usually use the New Living Translation when I study, an I love the way this verse is translated there: "… as the Spirit of the Lord works within us, we become more and more like him and reflect his glory more and more."

Don't miss what Paul is saying. Christlikeness isn’t something we can produce or manufacture. It is about reflecting the glory of God. Christlike qualities in our lives are a reflection of His character. My godly love is only a reflection of His love. Any righteousness in my life is a mere reflection of His righteousness. My joy is a reflection of His joy!

For that to happen, we must be able to see Jesus. But the struggle so many of us have is that we have become absorbed with the cares of our daily lives to such an extent that we have a difficult time reflecting His glory. We have been darkened by the pollution of our culture to the extend that our spiritual albedo is very non-reflective.

How do we cure this? Remember, Christlikeness isn't something we can produce or manufacture. I occurs when we reflect the glory of God. the passage from 2 Corinthians begins with a reference to Moses' face shining with the glory of the Lord when he came down from Mount Sinai after spending time with God and receiving the Ten Commandments. There it is! We radiate with God's glory when we spend time with God! It's so simple. The more we spend time with Him the more we reflect His glory to a darkened world. But more about that tomorrow.