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According to the reading of the original which is adopted, this passage bears an indicative or an imperative meaning. If imperative, then it is an admonition to cultivate and perfect in our character and life, even now upon earth, the moral and spiritual image of the Divine Lord. If indicative and future, then it is an assertion that, in the coming time, the time of celestial glory, Christians shall bear the image of the heavenly.

I. WHOSE IMAGE IS THIS? The answer to this question cannot be doubtful. The heavenly One, whose image Christians are to reflect, can be none other than the Divine Lord himself. There is a measure in which this resemblance is attained even upon earth, and many admonitions are addressed to Christians, to cultivate moral resemblance to their great and glorious Head. But in the future state hindrances to assimilation shall be removed; and "we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2). As St. Paul expresses it elsewhere, we shall be "changed into the same image." So that the apostles agree as to what shall constitute the peculiar privilege and glory of the coming state of felicity.

II. IN WHAT DOES THIS IMAGE CONSIST?

1. It is a spiritual likeness, consisting not in the similarity of form or feature, but in that of character, of moral life.

2. It is a likeness in true holiness. God's holy Child or Servant, Jesus, is the model of all purity and perfection, and to be like Christ is to be holy even as he is holy.

3. It corresponds to God's original intention as to what man should be. He at first created man in his own image; and although that image was marred by sin, grace restores it; and the great Father and Lord of all beholds his original conception realized in the regenerated and glorified humanity.

III. BY WHOM IS THIS IMAGE PARTICIPATED?

1. Properly speaking, it will be apparent in all those who by Divine grace are brought upon earth to the enjoyment of Christian character and privilege, and who are led safely home to glory. It is the family likeness by which the spiritual children are identified.

2. There is a wider sense in which all the holy intelligences who people heaven may be considered as bearing this image. There are those who have not borne the image of the earthly, who from their creation have been citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem, in whom appear the spiritual lineaments which are the mark of a Divine parentage and the earnest of a blessed immortality.

APPLICATION. That this image may be borne in all its brightness and beauty hereafter and above, its first rudiments must be traced here. The life of faith, obedience, and aspiration is the divinely appointed preparation for the glories and felicities of heaven. And no religion is of worth which does not form and cherish the spiritual likeness which alone can qualify for the employments and the society of heaven. - T.

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KJV: And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.

WEB: As we have borne the image of those made of dust, let's also bear the image of the heavenly.