Transposition: Look To The Lamb

C. S. Lewis preached a sermon at Oxford University by this title – Transposition – to illustrate how Higher Order Reality (The Glory of God in the Face of Jesus in 2Co 3:18) transforms low-order reality (finite human beings) into conformity with itself. C.S. Lewis gives a number of examples to show how this transposition-reality already operates in the natural world of common human experience. The idea is that there is a Higher and more complex order seeking to communicate in a lower order with a limited vocabulary of expression. Lewis used the example of the body’s feelings to describe the lower, limited vocabulary. My example would be that we cry when we are sad and we cry when we are joyful. Physiologically we cry for both at the lower level of our body, yet there is a higher level of experiences operating in us that are far more complex and even opposite in meaning.

C. S. Lewis says the most obvious example of higher to lower transposition is how we draw the 3-D world onto paper with pencils. It is an “adaptation from a richer to a poorer medium.” Light and snow are both communicated as white paper. He notes that the natural materialist is stuck in the lower realm of limited white paper vocabulary. Just as I would point to food for a dog to eat, the natural materialist is like the dog and does not perceive the meaning, but just comes up to my finger to sniff it. Furthermore, he suggests that everyone living in a modernized society is a natural materialist by default. This is an added barrier we need to recognize, in order to accept the higher way and thought that exists beyond what physical senses can detect.

C.S. Lewis describes these levels of higher reality and order of complexity like that of higher dimensions of reality. We understand the 2-dimensional realty of a flat screen and how that differs from 3-dimensional reality. C.S. Lewis suggest that this is the same for our universal experience as humans living physical bodies in time and space. There is a higher dimensional alphabet, so to speak, but we are only capable of a flatter expression in a more limited alphabet. So, multiple letters from the higher dimensional alphabet must use the same lower-dimensional letter of the limited selection to express their various higher meanings, which from our lower dimensional reality virtually look the same.

Yet, at the same time, this line of communication from higher to lower is also the lifeline by which we are transformed through transposition from the higher to the lower. The more the lower releases their grip on the lower reality, the more the higher can infill, so to speak. “Losing your psyche-life” as Luke 9:24 describes creates the “for My Sake” space of Jesus’ Life to be there and save it. James 1:21 tells us to hold tightly to this implanted Logos-Word, Who is able to save our psyche-lives.

Also, as with 2 Corinthians 3:18’s transformation from the glory seen in stories like Moses’ glowing face into the Big “G” Glory shining from Jesus’s Face, we see transposition. Even 1 Corinthians 15 brings it to the fore in verse 40 and surrounding, “the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another” (ESV). Most importantly, when Jesus tells Nicodemus about “Our Testimony” in John 3:11, He is referring to the “Our” of John 8:18, “I am the one who bears witness about myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness about me.” The “Our” is of Jesus and His Father through their shared Spirit. Thus, truly beholding the Father’s witness in the face of Jesus is Spiritual Reality that transforms us like how Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 3 – 4.

Jesus goes on in John 3:14 to connect the reality seen in Numbers 21:4-9 with His upcoming crucifixion. Beholding how the serpent is petrified on a wood pole on a hill depicts what He Who knew no sin will do to Satan when he throws everything at Jesus in His weakened state on the cross. Then as Jesus takes that Adamic reality inspired by the devil to the great hush of its nonfunctionally in His death, Jesus says that beholding this reality is actually to our practical healing from the satanic poison. Yes, hold on to the implanted Logos-Word! Look to The Lamb! Fix your eyes on Jesus (Heb 12:2)!

2Co 3:18’s Transformation Transposition functions as follows. The 2-D picture is the Bible story authored by the Spirit having place in many people. The Holy Spirit is like the 3-D reality in our illustration. Thus, our Bible record is a 2-D roll-out of the Holy Spirit’s 3-D Reality interacting with us. We can read the Bible stories like 2-D reality and never get past the moral of a story. However, the Spirit wants us to see Jesus. So, if we are set on seeing Him and thus knowing What Kind He is, the Spirit can “rend the heavens” so speak and communicate spiritually.

2Co 3’s example is Moses with a glowing face. The fact, that Paul uses this example, means that he has already taught it and the Corinthians are already familiar with it. How familiar are we with the story to the point we understand what the Hebrew word pictures about his glow, or the context of how this happened not long after Moses offered himself as a sacrifice in place of the people being destroyed? That such Jesus Pictures are not well-known, we see generally sloppy translations of 2 Corinthians 4:4, which alludes to Paul’s main point by using the rare Greek word augazó, “to beam forth like dawn”.

What a Berean would do, is camp in Exodus 34 and do some exploring of the Hebrew words that describe the glow in Moses’ face. If you take the time to read the 2-D picture of Exodus 34:35 in Hebrew, you will see that the verb used to describe the light beams means to grow horns. Light glowing like how horns grow sounds odd until you reflect how children draw triangles around a circle to depict the sun on paper. For Moses, it was a double, even triple-meaning from a higher vocabulary trying to express itself in a limited selection of flat letters.

In the Hebrew context of the Bible, horns always mean sacrificial animal, the animal’s power, and horns blown as a call to assembly in ancient Israel. All of these relate to us in the corporate body of Christ. Moses with a glowing face in the Bible story is depicted as the slain Lamb standing in all power, but our Reality is Rev 5:6, “…I saw a slaughtered little lamb standing…” at the throne of the heavens over the heavens.

Again, do not understand the words I have typed above – though necessary it is. Rather, allow the Holy Spirit of the Higher Reality to envelop you into Who Jesus is – What Kind He is giving Himself away completely. That is the ONLY reason why Moses’ face glowed, so that it would be a testimony of Jesus pictured for us today to know Him “as He is.” It is the beholding of this depiction of Jesus’s All-Authority Reality that is the key to living His Crucified Life. Jesus told Nicodemus so; Paul told the Corinthians and Galatians so, but do we even know it / Him? Behold The Lamb of God.