THE LIGHT OF THE GLORY OF CHRIST

The light of the day in which we live is the light of the glory of Christ. When He rose from the dead, it was the morning of an eternal day. I would draw attention to the fourfold effect of the light as seen in the apostle Paul, (1) it convicts and brings down; (2) it liberates, and lifts up; (3) it transforms; (4) it governs the whole life of the believer.

As Saul journeyed to Damascus, suddenly there shone round about him a light from heaven. Elsewhere he tells us it was a great light, above the brightness of the sun, a light eclipsing even the midday sun. This could be nothing less than the light of the glory of Christ, the light of the glory of God. A voice spoke to him out, of heaven, he heard one saying, “I am JESUS”, Acts 9: 5. The light shone into his conscience; he found that the One whom he hated and whose saints he had been persecuting was the Lord of glory. Jesus is the Lord of glory. What a discovery to make, to find out that with all his religious zeal and self-righteousness he had been fighting against the Lord of glory. The name of Jesus was one he associated with a man who was crucified, dead and buried. But now he hears Him speaking out of heaven from the place of power and glory. He said, “Who art thou, Lord?” He fell to the earth, a convicted, helpless sinner. The first effect of the light is to make all things manifest and to shew things to be what they really are. For the first time Saul saw himself to be what he really was, a sinner, yea, the very chief. The light revolutionised all his thoughts and judgment of himself. The chief of Pharisees is converted into the chief of sinners, compare Phil 3: 4-6 with 1 Tim 1: 12-16. The light brings the soul into the presence of God, so that he judges himself in relation, not to men, but in relation to God and to Christ. It is there we discover what we really are. With all our morality and religiousness we find out that there is hatred to Christ and to God in our hearts; that is the root of all sin, and its worst feature. It was the testimony of God revealed in Christ and maintained in the saints which drew forth all his enmity.

It is hard for us to believe that this enmity is found in all our hearts, but so it is. Christ is the great test for our heart. “What think ye of Christ?”, Matt 22: 42. We may be very moral and religious, yet there may be no place for Christ in our hearts. We may profess to love Christ, but the test is, do we love the saints, those who are beloved by Christ and in whom Christ lives? If we do not love the saints and appreciate their company, it proves that we do not really love Christ. Saul was tested in this way; the Lord said to him, “Why persecutest thou me?” How depraved the heart must be which sees no beauty, no comeliness in Christ, the One in whom God finds all His pleasure, His well-beloved Son. It was thus that Saul discovered that he was the chief of sinners. Such a discovery might well bring us down to dust and ashes and banish from us all our pride and self-confidence. We must needs be brought down before we can be lifted up.

(2) The same light which convicts and brings down, is that which liberates the soul and lifts up—the light of Christ as Man in the glory of God. The presence of Christ as Man in glory is the great proof that the sin question has been settled to the glory of God. His place in glory is God’s righteous answer to the work accomplished on the cross, the expression of His complete satisfaction in the work which clears us from all our guilt and sin. On the cross He took our sins upon Him, and when He had offered one sacrifice for sins, He for ever sat down on the right hand of God. What stronger proof could we have that those sins have been for ever put away! He has not carried them up into heaven. But more than this, He not only took our sins upon Him, but was made sin for us. That is, He was on the cross identified with all that we were as sinful men, so that all might be condemned and thus be for ever removed from before God. Now He is before God in all the virtue and acceptance of the work in which He has glorified God, and so represents us there.

The more we see His glory, the more we see the greatness of His acceptance and of our acceptance in Him. He is our righteousness before God; He is our life; in Him we are brought nigh to God. Christ in glory is manifested to be God’s beloved Son, and we are taken into favour in Him, so that we see that the love which rests on Him rests upon us in Him. Christ in glory is the living expression of God’s thoughts toward us, and of our place before Him, and of the place and glory to which He will ultimately bring us. This light of a glorified Christ may well liberate us and lift us up. If on the one hand the knowledge of what we are brings us down, on the other hand the knowledge of what God is to us in Christ lifts us up.

(3) In the next place the light transforms us. “We all, looking on the glory of the Lord, with unveiled face, are transformed according to the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit”, 2 Cor 3: 18. How strikingly this is seen in Paul. The man who was the most inveterate enemy of Christ and of the saints, becomes the most devoted servant of Christ, one who was ready to surrender everything, and lay down his life for Christ and for those who were His. The one who had formerly exhibited the traits of a man in Adam, a proud, overbearing man, a blasphemer, and a persecutor, became a model for the saints, as one in whom the spirit and grace of Christ were so beautifully manifested, more perhaps than in any other man. He became meek, gentle, humble, self-sacrificing, one who could say, “Be imitators all together of me, brethren, and fix your eyes on those walking thus as you have us for a model”, Phil 3: 17. What an example of the transforming power of the heavenly light. The same transforming effect will be seen in every one of us in proportion as we are walking in the light of the Lord. The apostle had no thought of confining it to himself; he says, “We all”, &c.. We cannot by any effort or will of our own transform ourselves, but beholding the glory of the Lord we are transformed; unconsciously to ourselves, others take account of it.

The apostle exhorts us, “be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind”, Rom 12: 2. The mind being engaged with Christ, and all that is revealed of God in Him, the transformation goes on progressively from glory to glory, until the Lord puts on the finishing touch and transforms our bodies of humiliation into conformity to His body of glory at His coming. The great work going on at the present time is the moral transformation, and this is one great reason why we are left here.

(4) Then, lastly, we see how the light governed the whole life of Paul, He could say, “In that I now live in flesh, I live by faith, the faith of the Son of God, who has loved me and given himself for me”, Gal 2: 20. We are still in bodies of flesh, and in a life of service and responsibility in various relationships and circumstances. It is our privilege to take up all in the light of the Son of God; that light should govern us. We look up to heaven and see that glorious Person, the Son of God, in the place of power and glory, and we can say, He “has loved me and given himself for me”. What a Person to serve! What a mighty influence is the love of Christ. Nothing else will hold us to Him, nothing else will deliver us from being self-centred. “For the love of Christ constrains us, having judged this: that one died for all ... that they who live should no longer live to themselves, but to him who died for them and has been raised”. If we are to be freed from self, we must have an object outside ourselves, and God has given us One well worthy to engage our thoughts and affections; One, too, who is well able to support us in every condition into which we may be called in following and serving Him. His grace is sufficient, and His strength is made perfect in weakness. We have nothing to fear. And if it be a life of reproach, and suffering, and loss, what is that compared with the present fulness of grace and the future glory revealed in the Son of God? “I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the coming glory to be revealed to us” (Rom 8: 18), so said the apostle. He could say he counted all things to be loss on account of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord. Under the influence of the light of the glory of the Lord, his life was one of devotedness to the Lord and of self-sacrifice and un-wearying service for the church.

And heavenly light makes all things bright,

Seen in that blissful gaze,

And stayed by joy divine,

As hireling fills his day,

Through scenes of strife and desert life,

We tread in peace our way.

May we all prove the blessedness of this life of faith as we walk in the sunshine of the love and glory of the Son of God.

From Goodly Words vol 2 (1924)