We shall be like Him

In the red half-dark of a darkroom, a sheet of photographic paper lies face-up in a shallow tray of chemicals, and at first there is nothing on it but pale grey. Then, slowly, a shape begins to surface from the blankness, an edge here, a shadow there, a face starting to gather out of the bath. The one who developed it is not anxious; the image is coming, it simply has not finished arriving. John stands a reader in front of exactly this tray. Beloved, he writes, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He is revealed, we will be like Him, for we will see Him just as He is. There it is, the whole condition of a remade life named in a sentence. The picture is real, the chemistry is working, the likeness is genuinely forming. It is simply not yet resolved. And the moment of its resolving is fixed: the day the face of Christ comes clear before you, you will at last come clear into His likeness.

You are not the finished version of yourself, and on hard days that can feel like proof the whole project has failed. It has not. You are a print still developing in the bath, the image surfacing but not yet sharp. John will not let you read your half-formed state as the end of the story. What you will be has not yet appeared, he says, but when Christ is revealed you will be like Him, because you will see Him as He is. Read both halves. The remaking that this long upheaval has been working in you is real; and its completion is not a hope you must talk yourself into but a guarantee fastened to a specific day, the day you see His face. Paul says it from another angle: He will change your lowly body to be like His glorious one. So be patient with what is still blurry in you. The developer is not finished. The image will resolve, and it will resolve into Him.