BUT NOW FACE TO FACE
Keep the first century covenantal tradition in mind while reading. 🙏
I’ve heard it many times, and perhaps you have too: We only see through a glass darkly.
Maybe when a someone encounters a Scripture they don’t understand, faces a difficult situation, or struggles to make sense of something in life, and those familiar words become the explanation. We only see through a glass darkly. Or the big one, one day, when we get to heaven, we’ll finally understand.
Certainly, we don’t know everything. We all have questions, and we all have room to grow. But was Paul describing our circumstances today? Was he giving every generation a statement to explain everything they might not understand?
I don’t think so.
Maybe he describing the covenant transition taking place in his own generation?
Look at the scripture in a different light.
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
1 Corinthians 13:12
Before we make Paul’s NOW our NOW, we need to understand his THEN.
The glass was a mirror. Paul pictured the difference between seeing an indirect, obscure reflection and the clarity of face to face.
But what would bring that approaching clarity?
Consider the covenant setting in which he wrote. Christ had come. The gospel light was shining. Yet the old covenant temple still stood, sacrifices continued, and the operation and administration of the law was approaching its appointed end.
The light had dawned while the order of SHADOWS remained.
For the LAW having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect.
Hebrews 10:1
A shadow gives an outline. It points toward something, but it does not reveal its fullness.
The law contained God-given shadows pointing to the image which was Christ. Its sacrifices, priesthood, and sanctuary anticipated the reality He would establish.
That is the larger connection we need to consider: darkness, shadows, and obscured understanding giving way to the fullness revealed in Christ.
Paul made the relationship between the old covenant shadow and obscured understanding expressed elsewhere:
But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which vail is done away in Christ.
2 Corinthians 3:14
But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart.
2 Corinthians 3:15
This day is not our day.
Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be taken away.
2 Corinthians 3:16
Notice where Paul located the veil: in their reading of Moses without recognizing the fulfillment in Christ.
And notice where it was removed: in turning to the Lord.
“It” was the heart.
Paul then used the mirror illustration again:
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.
2 Corinthians 3:18
They were already beholding Christ’s glory with unveiled faces. The Spirit was transforming them. Yet the historical transition in which they participated had not reached its final end.
Christ’s satisfactoriness was complete. The old covenant order was still passing away.
This helps us understand how Paul could already walk in the light while anticipating a fullness still approaching.
Now consider the expression face to face.
And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.
Exodus 33:11
Face to face communicated closeness, direct communication, and relationship. It did not require an unrestricted physical sight of God’s countenance. In that same chapter, God told Moses that he could not see His face and live.
The expression described the intimacy of their relationship.
The LORD talked with you face to face in the mount out of the midst of the fire,
Deuteronomy 5:4
Here, too, face to face described God addressing His covenant people directly.
That Old Testament background matters. Paul’s language can express covenant nearness and clarity without requiring us to place its fulfillment at the moment of physical death.
Immediately before speaking of the mirror, Paul illustrated the movement toward completeness through childhood and adulthood:
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
1 Corinthians 13:11
Elsewhere in Galatians, he associated childhood with being under the law and its schoolmaster. That supports the covenantal picture.
But Paul’s personal maturity did not mean the covenant transition had been consummated. He still included himself when he wrote NOW we see through a glass, darkly.
He knew Christ. He understood the gospel. He was mature in his ministry and understanding. Nevertheless, he lived while the order of shadows still stood.
Though Paul had received many revelations from God, he still included himself when he wrote for now WE see through a glass, darkly. He already walked in the light of Christ, yet he and his readers lived while the old covenant shadows were still passing away. His personal understanding had matured, but the covenant transition had not yet reached its consummation.
From a fulfilled covenantal perspective, his contrast between NOW and THEN belongs within that first-century movement toward the completed transition.
With the completion of that transition in AD 70, the old covenant administration reached its end. The temple order fell. The shadows had fulfilled their purpose.
We now live in the fullness of the covenant reality to which they pointed.
That does not mean we know everything about every Scripture or understand every painful circumstance. The completeness of Christ’s work does not make our individual knowledge free from error.
But our unanswered questions do not place us back beneath the old covenant veil.
We are not living under a partial light awaiting the removal of the law’s shadows. We live in the light of its fulfillment in Christ.
Our access to the Father is established. Our covenant standing rests in the Son. We have been brought near.
We do not have to wait until death to enjoy the relationship Christ opened to us.
The next time we hear We only see through a glass darkly, let’s remember to ask whose NOW Paul was describing.
Paul wrote during the passing of the shadows.
We live in the light of their fulfillment NOW.
In Christ, the veil is removed, the way is open, and we enjoy the covenant nearness expressed so beautifully in those words: face to face.
