“Bible promises: Now we see in a mirror dimly”
I Corinthians 13:12
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” So said the wicked witch in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
As far as we know, mirrors have been around for a long time, dating all the way back to two thousand years before Christ. It’s when the ancient Egyptians first poured bronze into flat, round discs to honor their sun-god Re and when the Aztecs polished a slice of volcanic rock, obsidian, till they could see their face.
That is, by the way, how the word “mirror” got its name. It comes from the Latin word “mirari,” a word that means “to marvel at,” “to wonder,” and “to admire.”
Now the mirrors we’re used to seeing really haven’t been around that long. You see, back in the 1600s, men made mirrors by coating glass with mercury and tin. And when they cooked off the mercury, voila!, out came a beautiful, shiny, tin mirror. The only problem was, breathing in evaporated mercury was a really bad idea!
But thankfully, along came a man named Justus von Liebig who figured out how to make mirrors with silver nitrate instead.
And ever since then, we’ve used his mirror formula in lots of different ways, from microscopes to telescopes, from flashlights to headlights, from shaving mirrors to makeup mirrors, to full length mirrors, to room mirrors, to rearview mirrors.
Mirrors, it seems, are almost everywhere!
And believe it or not, you can even find mirrors in the Bible! Isaiah wrote, “In that day the Lord will take away the finery of…the festal robes, the mantles, the cloaks, and the handbags; the mirrors, the linen garments, the turbans, and the veils” (Isaiah 3:18, 22-23). Job wrote, “Can you, like Him, spread out the skies, hard as a cast metal mirror?” (Job 37:18). And James wrote, “Anyone who hears the Word, but doesn’t do what it says, is like a man who glances at his face in the mirror, sees himself, and immediately forgets what he looks like” (James 1:23-24).
And one more, our text for today, from I Corinthians 13: “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (I Corinthians 13:11-12).
So far in our time together, we’ve looked at quite a lot of Bible promises, like Psalm 103, “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His steadfast love toward those who fear Him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:11-12), and Romans chapter 8, “And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28), and I Corinthians 10, “God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear” (I Corinthians 10:13).
And Jesus made quite a lot of promises too! He said in Matthew chapter 7, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7). And He said in John 14, “In My Father’s house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2).
Look closely enough and you’ll find more than eight thousand, eight hundred promises in the Bible, from God to man, from man to man, and from man to God. Do the math and you’ll see that there are more than twenty-two promises for every day of the year!
That’s a lot of promises!
So it is in the words of I Corinthians 13.
Now if I could refresh your memory for just a moment, Paul wrote his first letter to the Corinthians towards the end of his second missionary journey, right about twenty years after Jesus died and rose again.
And if you didn’t already know it, the church in Corinth was a troubled church, a deeply troubled church. In fact, as I like to say, if anything could go wrong at a church, it did go wrong in the city of Corinth. There were quarrels, lawsuits, and divisions of all kinds. Some liked Paul better. Others liked Peter. And still others liked another man named Apollos. That’s why he wrote, “What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth” (I Corinthians 3:5-6). And he wrote, “We are God’s fellow workers, and you are God’s field, God’s building” (I Corinthians 3:9).
And in the midst of this letter to a very trying and troubled church, Paul took a breath for just a moment to write one of the most beautiful chapters in all of the Bible. It’s what we call “the love chapter”--I Corinthians 13.
You know how it goes: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing” (I Corinthians 13:1-2). And he wrote, “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude…Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (I Corinthians 13:4, 7).
Studying the words of I Corinthians 13 is what pastor and teacher G. Campbell Morgan once said was like dissecting a flower. He said if you tear it apart too much, you lose its beauty. And it’s what Alan Redpath said could give you a spiritual suntan from the warmth of its glow.
So what did Paul mean when he said, “For now we see in a mirror dimly” (I Corinthians 13:12)?
Of all the trades and businesses for which the city of Corinth was known, making mirrors was one of them. In fact, historians tell us that Corinthian bronze, a special alloy of copper and silver and gold, was worth even more than gold in the ancient Greek world.
And after they heated the metal up, they flattened it out and polished it to a high shine, making something that only the rich and affluent could afford--the very best mirrors in the world!
But they weren’t perfect--far from it. Since they were made out of metal, they couldn’t help but look a little wavy and hazy. That’s why he wrote, “For now we see in a mirror dimly.”
Or as other translations put it, “Now we see through a glass darkly” or “indistinctly” or “imperfectly” or “obscurely.” We’re squinting in a fog. We’re peering through a mist. We don’t see things as clearly as they ought to be.
Sound familiar? As we live on this earth, waiting for heaven, things are about as dim and dark and obscure as they could be.
Imagine if I were to speak with my back turned to you while holding up a mirror. And all you could see of me, and all I could see of you, was a little bit here and there.
Imagine if the only way to talk with a loved one was by Facetime on your phone or by Zoom on a computer screen. You can only catch a glimpse of who they are.
I’ve seen pictures of the Grand Canyon. You’ve seen pictures of the Grand Canyon. But there’s nothing like actually being there in the Grand Canyon.
“Now we see in a mirror dimly.”
What started out as a normal Tuesday morning shoveling snow with his eleven-year-old son Jude and his brothers before school, turned into a day of absolute devastation.
You see, their father, Jamie Strickland, was a pastor at a church just outside of Hamilton, Ontario. And when his wife called to say, “Jamie, can you come home right away? A boy was just hit by a car while crossing the street coming home from school, and Jude isn’t home yet,” he didn’t know if it was Jude who had been hit. Still, he had a sickening feeling in his stomach that his life was about to change.
Apparently, his son was walking home from school that day in early December of 2020. A crossing guard had stepped into the intersection and blew her whistle twice. Still, a twenty-eight-year-old man, high on fentanyl, blew a red light, and sped through the intersection.
What happened next was an absolute tragedy. Little Jude would die thirty-three hours later in McMaster Children’s Hospital.
Later his father would say, “When Jude died, one of the most common reactions we heard from people was that it was so tragic that he died at such a young age, and didn’t get to live a full life. To die at only eleven is really sad.” He said, “In a very real way, that is true. I am sad that I won’t get to see Jude graduate from high school, or get his first job, or get married, or see him become a dad. But when I think about Jude’s life from God’s perspective, Jude lived a complete life. Before Jude was formed, God knew that he was going to have eleven years and four months on this earth. God knew the span of his life was 4,143 days long. His life was not cut short from what God knew He was going to give Jude, from the foundation of the earth. Jude’s death did not take God by surprise.”
And he said, “Losing Jude has been, by far, the most devastating thing that has ever happened to me, harder than anything I could have ever imagined. But in it all, I am thankful that I have a God who knows me, is with me, and is sovereign over all things. God is present with me in my suffering. He has held me fast.”
As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Now we see in a mirror dimly” (I Corinthians 13:12).
Gene Purdie was just like any other guy. He had a steady job, a wife named Joy, and Lincoln, a young son. Like most anyone else, he liked to cook dinners for his family, spend time with his wife, and play with their son.
But Gene saw the world differently than the rest of us. You see, he was born with something called Stargardt disease. It’s a disease where you can see out of the corners of your eyes, but everything else is blurry. And the older he got, the worse it got.
And even though he married and had a son, he could never see his wife or his son.
Until one day he was given a special pair of electronic glasses that could take a video, filter it, enhance it, then reproduce it on small screens inside the glasses.
And after he put them on and adjusted them for his head, he looked at his wife and saw her for the very first time.
And do you know what were his very first words? He said, “She’s pretty!”
It’s true that, as Paul once said, “We see in a mirror dimly.” But there’s more, lots more. For he also went on to say, “But then we shall see face to face” (I Corinthians 13:12).
And that’s a promise!
As long as we live on earth, dear Father, our vision is dim and cloudy and blurry. Hasten the day when we, by Your grace, will see You face to face, for Jesus’ sake. Amen