WE SEE JESUS”
I was touched by the hymn we sang and by our brother’s prayer as to seeing the face of Jesus. There could be no greater privilege than seeing the face of the Saviour, the One whom we love, and who gave Himself in order that the basis might be laid for us to come without blame into the presence of God. That face is unveiled, and in it shines the glory of God, a face that was once marred more than any man’s (Isa.52:14), the face of the One who was the Creator of the worlds.
But while there is the joy now, by faith, of seeing Jesus’ face, there is the added glory that when we actually see Him, “we shall be like him”, 1 John 3:2. What a privilege. “But 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. What wonderful interchange that suggests between the Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit: “even as by the Lord the Spirit” as if to emphasise that the great intent of divine Persons is that we should be like Christ and that we should see His face. There will be the actuality of that by and by; we will see His face and see it eternally, but the divine desire is that, by seeing Him now, we should be formed after Him.
The Lord in John’s gospel says, “Yet a little and the world sees me no longer; but ye see me”, John 14:19. That, of course, was addressed to the disciples, but what a vista of glory opens up to us now. As we have in our scripture, “we see Jesus … crowned with glory and honour”. Not now the “man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”, Isa.53:3 or as it says, “when we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him” (v:2), but rather “crowned with glory and honour”. What glory and honour the Father has bestowed on the Lord Jesus: “For thou hast met him with the blessings of goodness; thou hast set a crown of pure gold on his head”, Ps.21:3. We sing:
‘…The Father’s greetings, honours rare,
Are heaped upon His Son’s blest brow;
He is the mighty Victor now’ (Hymn 350).
Our scripture goes on, “so that by the grace of God he should taste death for every thing”. Having done that, is He not worthy of heaven’s acclamations!
It says, “in bringing many sons to glory, to make perfect the leader of their salvation through sufferings” I paused over these words, “through sufferings”, because it had not really struck me so forcibly before that the sufferings mentioned here are in the plural. Earlier in the chapter, the reference is in the singular, "made some little inferior to the angels on account of the suffering of death” (v.9); that is, what entered into His death actually involved particular and distinctive suffering for the Lord Jesus, “the suffering of death”. There was no death to compare with that of the blessed Saviour. But making perfect “the leader of their salvation through sufferings” seems to encompass the whole scope of the pathway of the Lord Jesus here because His was a pathway of suffering. Ere the Lord Jesus could become the Leader of our salvation, He had to bear these sufferings. There was what He endured at the hands of men, there was what He suffered as bearing the special wrath on Israel on account of a broken law and then what He bore supremely at the hands of His God because of our sins, when He was forsaken. He bore these awful sufferings and paid the full price for our redemption. Every aspect of these sufferings was perfectly and completely accomplished. How morally qualified He was in every way to become the Leader of our salvation through sufferings and provide the immutable basis for us, as sons, to be brought to glory.
Bur surely, as we contemplate the glory and exaltation of the Lord Jesus, and see all these qualities in Him, there should be some practical moral effect on us. At the beginning of John's gospel, when John the baptist is there with his disciples, he sees Jesus coming to him, and says,” Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”, John 1:29. How that accentuates the immensity of His sufferings and His work that He should take away not only our sins, but “the sin of the world”. What sin there is in the history of this world and indeed of the human race down through the generations, and the work of the Lord Jesus is of such efficacy as to take away not only our sins but the sin of the world. By and by, sin will be obliterated from the whole universe of God. Think of that awesome day when the beast and the false prophet, and indeed death and hades, will be cast into the lake of fire. How triumphant is the work of the Lamb of God!
Later, again John was standing with two of his disciples and he saw Jesus. “And, looking at Jesus as he walked, he says, Behold the Lamb of God. And the two disciples heard him speaking, and followed Jesus” (vv.36,37). That emphasises that the effect of seeing Jesus should achieve something in each of us. By looking on Jesus, these disciples were induced to follow Him. I suppose the Supper has that effect. His sufferings come before us in a particular way, we see His beauty, and that stimulates us for the rest of the week, and encourages us to commit ourselves more fully to Him and to His interests. So the two disciples followed Him to see where He abode, as if divine grace would impel them to be taken further into the environment where Jesus is, where He abides.
Esaias too was affected by seeing the glory of the King and was moved to speak of Him. “These things said Esaias because he saw his glory and spoke of him”, John 12:41. What a sight he beheld and describes. He saw the King, typically the Lord Jesus, “lifted up; and his train filled the temple”, Isa.6:1. Such was the impression on him in the presence of such glory that he recognises his own inadequacy and says, “I am undone”. How could he possibly stand in the face of such majesty? Then one of the seraphim takes a glowing coal with the tongs from off the altar and touches his mouth (vv.6,7). He is cleansed, his sin is expiated. That is the glory of the One with whom we have to do. As we look on Jesus, we see the One in whom redemption has been accomplished; expiation made, reconciliation secured, so we can be at home with Him. And what is the consequence of that? Isaiah says, “”Here am I; send me” (v.8). In principle, He was now available to serve the Lord Jesus. That was the effect of seeing the glory. Isaiah says, “I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? And I said, Here am I; send me”. He is so affected, so touched by his impression of the glory that he becomes a willing servant in the hands of God.
That was what Isaiah saw in chapter 6, but a note in John 12:393 refers to Isaiah 53. Isaiah also saw the glory of a rejected Jesus, and that surely affected him. You wonder at the order in Scripture, with chapter 6 first bringing out the glory of the King in His majesty and His glory, but then chapter 53 going on to speak in type of the lowly, despised Jesus – “when we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him”. There is this wonderful mingling of the glory of the King and the moral glory of the perfect Sufferer, all perfectly exemplified in the Lord Jesus Christ, the King of glory, yet the “man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, and like one from whom men hid their faces”, Isa.53:3. Yet now “we see Jesus … crowned with glory and honour”. All this is calculated to have its effect on us.
It is a simple impression that I had as we sang that hymn together, and as our brother prayed. What it is, by faith, to see the face of Jesus, and when we see it in actuality, we shall be like Him. There have been two witnesses in the church period who have actually seen the Lord Jesus in glory. One was Stephen ere he was martyred (Acts 7:55) and the other was Paul in his sojourn here (1 Cor.9:1). But faith’s vision, spiritual vision, enables us to see His glory. Ephesians speaks about “the eyes of your heart”, Eph.1:18. How fine to have our hearts’ affections open up and focused on the Lord Jesus, the King of glory. “Lift up your heads, ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in”, Ps.24:7.
May the Lord Jesus come in freshly to our affections as we gaze upon Him in all His glory, the “King of kings, and Lord of lords” (Rev.19:16), yet our blessed Saviour, for His name’s sake.
Word in a meeting for ministry, Edinburgh
7 January 2020
Jim T Brown