Experiencing the reassuring, transformative, and hope-giving power of God’s gracious gaze in Christ means we must practice seeing Christ’s glory.
December 22, 2023
Practice Seeing
Experiencing the reassuring, transformative, and hope-giving power of God’s gracious gaze in Christ means we must practice seeing Christ’s glory. As our King of kings, his face is our life.
In the light of a king’s face there is life,
and his favor is like the clouds that bring the spring rain. (Prov. 16:15)
As we practice seeing his face, we will become “wise for salvation” (2 Tim. 3:15).
Who is like the wise?
And who knows the interpretation of a thing?
A man’s wisdom makes his face shine,
and the hardness of his face is changed. (Eccles. 8:1)
How do we practice seeing our King’s face? How is it exactly that we behold the light of God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ? Practically speaking, how do we avail ourselves of all the graces that are ours in God’s gracious gaze realized in Christ? After all, there are times when the Bible says those who believe without seeing are blessed (John 20:29). Peter offered particular encouragement to those who love Christ without having seen him.
Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. (1 Pet. 1:8–9)
As a young man I spent my share of time in the woods fishing, hunting, and gathering berries. Gratefully, my first ventures were with men who taught me to see, because half the challenge in the woods is knowing what to look for. I had to learn to spot the leaves and the prickly bushes before seeing the red and black raspberries, to recognize the brush cover to find the quail, to distinguish the profile of a dove or duck and recognize them against the sky, and to sense the structures around and under the water to find the fish. Even today when I do the grocery shopping, with so many choices on the shelves, I often must visualize the product I’m looking for. Like the quarry of my youth, there is a seeing that must precede finding. How is it exactly that we learn to behold Jesus Christ if we can’t literally see him?
The Spirit, which inspired the word and now indwells us, testifies through the word of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
We behold the glory of God in the face of Christ with the help of the Spirit through the testimony of God’s word. The Spirit, which inspired the word and now indwells us, testifies through the word of the glory of God in the face of Christ. We “see” by “hearing.” Recall that at Mount Sinai, Israel did not see God. In that context, with the cloud and fire visible on the mountain, God adamantly prohibited making any images to represent him (Deut. 4:15–31). God issued this prohibition to the people who even as he spoke were becoming impatient and forging the golden calf. Israel was not to look at an image, but to “see” God’s mighty acts on their behalf as a demonstration of God’s covenant, character, power, and purpose (Deut. 4:3, 34). Images of other gods abounded in the surrounding peoples, but what was unique about Israel’s God was that he was a God who spoke. “Did any people ever hear the voice of a god speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and still live?” (Deut. 4:33). It was God’s voice rather than his form by which they would know the Lord. “Then the Lord spoke to you out of the midst of the fire. You heard the sound of words, but saw no form; there was only a voice” (Deut. 4:12). The pagan religions of the ancient world required gods who could be seen, but for ancient Israel the ear saw more than the eye.
This “seeing” is just as true under the new covenant. The Spirit who removes the veil is the same Spirit who inspired Scripture, which testifies to the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ. The inspired writers of Scripture told what they had seen and heard (1 John 1:1–4) so that we might hear and believe (Rom. 10:17). In addition to Scripture, Christ gave two “visible words,” the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, as visible signs through which we look with the eyes of faith upon what is invisible. Yet even when we look upon these visible words (the two sacraments), we do so through what Scripture tells us about them. We are to “look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Cor. 4:18). It is through God’s word that we “see” the invisible things.
Therefore, beholding the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ becomes a matter of contemplation of who Christ is according to God’s word. As Anne Steele wrote in “Thou Lovely Source of True Delight”:
Thy glory o’er creation shines
But in Thy sacred Word I read in fairer, brighter lines
My bleeding, dying Lord,
See my bleeding, dying Lord.1
We are meant to recount the ways in which the substance of Christ was anticipated in the Old Testament (such as in the Aaronic blessing) and appeared in the New Testament. In Christ we are blessed and kept, God’s face shines upon us, and he lifts up his countenance upon us. In Christian baptism, God’s name has been placed upon us. We are meant to contemplate how God in Christ has done and is doing these things. For example, stop to consider the ways God “keeps” us in Christ. Because he is our Good Shepherd, Christ has promised that no one will snatch us from his hand (John 10:12, 28–29). On the cross he cast out the ruler of this world (John 12:31). In union with Christ by faith we have been “delivered . . . from the domain of darkness and transferred . . . to the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Col. 1:13). Therefore, nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:39). Similarly, by faith in Christ, God’s name has been placed upon us (Rev. 3:12). Christ has given us peace (John 14:27).
Everything that was pronounced to Israel in the Aaronic blessing has been secured, is being given, and will be ours in fullness in what Christ has done, is doing by his Spirit, and will do at the consummation of the ages. Therefore, we receive the blessings of the Aaronic blessing by faith in contemplation of the person and work of Jesus Christ.
Notes:
Anne Steele, “Thou Lovely Source of True Delight,” The National Baptist Hymnal, ed. R. H. Boyd and William Rosborough (Nashville, TN: National Baptist Publishing Board, 1904), 198.This article is adapted from The Lord Bless You and Keep You: The Promise of the Gospel in the Aaronic Blessing by Michael J. Glodo.
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