The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. … For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things.
COLOSSIANS 1:15, 19–20 NIV
When the eternal Son of God took on flesh and blood, He became the miraculous mirror in two significant ways. First, He became the visible reflecting the invisible. All the fullness of God dwelt in Christ and was miraculously reflected in Christ. In Christ, we see the character of God. Second, He became the mirror that miraculously transforms those who fix their gaze upon Him. As we grow in beholding Christ, we grow in our love of Christ and progressively and miraculously in our mirroring of Christ. Christ is both the mirror and the image seen in it.
In the Garden of Eden, we lost the face of God. In Christ, we may again behold the face of God positionally, personally, and experientially. The face of Christ is the relational gate. The beatific vision involves beholding Christ’s glory. This is more than mental assent. This is being swallowed up by the glory of God in the visible mirror of Christ through the mysterious working of the Spirit.
Paul identifies this two-fold miraculous mirror effect of Christ in 2 Corinthians: “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 from the Lord, the Spirit”
(2 Corinthians 3:18, nasb). Paul is looking at Corinthian followers of Christ and he explains their process and outcome. Through Christ, the Spirit of God transformed the lives of those who beheld God the Father in the miraculous mirror in which Christ the Son is beheld.
During this season, when we hear the Christmas story, we may focus on what we believe about our Savior’s birth. But let us not miss our opportunity to behold. Let us gaze deeply into the two-fold miraculous mirror of Christ revealing all of the fullness of God, transforming us to mirror Christ.