TAKING ON GLORY
[p. 55] TAKING ON GLORY
2 Corinthians 3:11 - 18; 2 Corinthians 4:1,2; Acts 7:55 - 60; Luke 9:28 - 36
I have in mind, dear brethren, to speak about the glory; it is a very great subject so that it is only in my mind to refer to it in connection with the verses read, that is, first of all christians in general as taking it on, and then in service, and finally, how it is seen in Jesus.
Stephen began his address with “The God of glory”, showing how he had entered into the mind of God at the call of Abraham. In his service he had advanced from deaconship to the greatest position in the testimony, evidently in a short time. “The God of glory” — he could hardly have begun in a more suitable way an address covering thousands of years in the course of the testimony and he closes it with “the glory of God”. Now in 2 Corinthians we have the thought of taking on glory, as seen in the ministers, but involving all christians. The reference is to Moses and how his face shone as having imbibed the glory. He is the great prototype of all ministers; it is said of him that he “was faithful in all his [that is, God’s] house” (Hebrews 3:5), a great tribute to him personally; he was capable of taking on glory and reflecting it. That is what I was thinking in connection with these verses, of taking on the glory of God: first of all, the covenant glory shining in the face of Jesus. Paul was a minister of this new covenant ministry. Like Moses in the Old Testament, he speaks of “vessels of mercy, which he had before prepared for glory” (Romans 9:23), a word which we should all take in, each taking it to himself, as a vessel of mercy, before prepared for glory; that is, God had in mind that we should be capable of glory. The idea is not simply that I win it, but I [p. 56] take it on, that there should be no disparity between what He puts upon us and what we are in ourselves. God is leading many sons to glory, but already we have been invested with glory, and that requires a condition, and Moses had acquired that condition. It is what is developed in Exodus 32 and 34, the two descents from the mount. He had been on the mount forty days receiving the pattern of the tabernacle; in the first descent there was no shining, but moral glory shines out in his faithfulness in the crisis and after he returns to Jehovah. He ascends again with the two fresh tables, tables which were to be put into the ark, and it was then that he requested for himself, “Let me, I pray thee, see thy glory” (Exodus 33:18). How God would delight in that! No asking like that would be denied; it was a noble request. God says, “I will make all my goodness pass before thy face”, but still there was the request; it lay, so to speak, on the table of heaven. God would not deny it. Then we have, “When my glory passeth by ... I will put thee in a cleft of the rock”. The place is secure, it was only a question of time, and the glory should be seen, the glory of Christ. It takes many centuries to bring out certain prayers, but they are answered in God’s time, for He is seen later on the mount of glory in the gospels. The Lord’s prayer in John 17 is being answered now. His prayers for unity were never forgotten.
Now you get the word to Moses, “After the tenor of these words have I made a covenant with thee and with Israel” (Exodus 34:27). It is the spirit of the thing. And then we have, “Moses knew not that the skin of his face shone through his talking with him” (verse 29). It is the glory of the covenant. God had talked with Abraham previously, but there is no word about glory in Abraham’s face, but there is in Moses’ face; and that is what I have in mind, the thought of the condition of taking on glory in a man.
[p. 57] God had let out something in that wonderful interview in the second visit to the mount, something that suggested glory, and there it was in the face of Moses. And Moses called to them and they turned to him, turned to the glory; that is the point now, turning to the glory; there is nothing like the glory shining in the face of Jesus Christ. There are those who turn away from the glory; the apostle says that those to whom it is veiled will be lost (2 Corinthians 4:3). And so it says “We all, [that is, all the saints] 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”. For us the veil is gone, not yet for poor Israel; they are going back now, but the veil is there; they are dark as ever, but the time is coming when they shall turn to the Lord, and what a change will be effected in them then! Turning is the thought; it is really conversion; but “we all”, that is christians as I understand it, “looking on the glory of the Lord, with unveiled face, are transformed ...” You can see that is all we have to do, to look at Him!
So we have “the Lord the Spirit”; it is one of His offices; He has got material now. When the heavens were garnished there was material to take on that ornamentation, but now it is the saints, they are the material. The apostle begins with that thought in the chapter, the idea of material, of what takes on an impression; and the Lord is doing that, exercising this great office to bring about a change in His people, not a passing change, but a real change, one glory to another, the glory of the Lord; He is effecting it Himself, and it enters into our assembly service. Of course, most of us know that from the end of verse 6 to the end of verse 16 is a parenthesis; it is as if the apostle turns aside to show us what a wonderful thing this is, that God is seeking that we should take on glory. It is by the ministry of the [p. 58] Spirit, no less than that, and it is “the ministry of righteousness”. How much enters into that, especially where people live and trade, how much the element of righteousness is needed. It is not that it is not needed everywhere, but it is the scarcest thing on earth, practical righteousness; and so we have a ministry of righteousness, and it is towards us in effective ministry to bring out what the apostle had to say, and the apostle says it “abounds in glory”; there is substance in it. Then he returns to his great subject, that “the Lord is the Spirit”, operating in this way, and “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty”. There is a condition created suitable, and then “we all”, because it is in the spirit of liberty that we turn away from ourselves. I am not detained by any thought, any legitimate thought; I am able to look on Jesus. That is the idea, dear brethren, “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”. This is what the Lord is doing, but our attitude is stressed; am I able to look? Aaron and the leaders were not, they turned back. Is anyone inclined to turn away? There is a constant inclination; we are tired of the meeting, tired of the Scriptures, alas! one has to say it even of christians, turning away! But Aaron turned back and talked with him. The Lord will talk with us as we turn back, but the Lord is grieved if anyone turns away; “But we are not drawers back to perdition, but of faith to saving the soul” (Hebrews 10:39).
Now what I read in Acts will show how this works out in ministry. It is a very solemn thing that a brother who can really minister Christ should not be received, and yet it happens. The Lord says “he that receives you receives me” (Matthew 10:40). They really represent Christ; and so Paul says, “Do we need, as some, commendatory letters to you, or commendatory from you?” (2 Corinthians 3:1). So that he turns to himself and his fellow-ministers in chapter 4, and tells us what kind of men they were, as though to say, ‘We are not talking to you about the glory and yet not representing it in ourselves’. “Therefore, having this ministry, as we have had mercy shown us, we faint not. But we have rejected the hidden things of shame”. Of course, all this alludes to what was at Corinth, when the apostle wrote this; you can understand what pain of heart he had; how little I know of it; where he had laboured above eighteen months, and now things are like this! Later on in his epistle it says, “His letters, he says, are weighty and strong, but his presence in the body weak, and his speech naught” (2 Corinthians 10:10). Think of a brother in that assembly saying that of the great servant of Christ! “His presence in the body weak, and his speech naught”. How much is said of his speech! Such a man as this will seize anything and make the most of it to discredit the servant, and the apostle is doubtless alluding to what was amongst them. All this kind of thing is now current in christendom; thank God for those who can speak of the glory in the face of Jesus, and of that same glory in their hearts: “God ... who has shone in our hearts”, he says, “for the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels”. One of the most beautiful things I know, “We have this treasure in earthen vessels”! Fragile, breakable, “that the surpassingness of the power may be of God”! “For”, he says, “we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus Lord, and ourselves your bondmen for Jesus’ sake”. The very suggestion of a man preaching something of himself, like Simon Magus, making out that he was some great one; how many of us are like that! The flesh will always assert itself, but “ourselves your bondmen for Jesus’ sake”! You can understand the pleasure of heaven in that man, because he was such a reflection of Jesus. He was conscious of the treasure for it is only a man of wealth who can speak in this way, as conscious of the treasure he has.
Now Stephen follows on this thought, indeed he is the forerunner of Paul. There is no doubt the thought of glory germinated in the great servant Paul, as having seen it in Stephen, for the word ‘bondman’ is greater than ‘apostle’ in this sense. The flesh can say ‘servant of the Lord’, but ‘servant of the saints’ means I am amenable to them. They are greater than I am, viewed in this light. It may be that he saw the face of Stephen; all the council saw it. I do not know whether Paul saw his face; he saw him stoned and he saw the moral glory, if not the angelic glory, which in a sense is greater — sufferings and glory, the moral side in the sufferings, then the glory. He held the clothes, he says to the Lord, “And when the blood of thy witness Stephen was shed, I ... kept the clothes of them who killed him” (Acts 22:20). He was present there. The Spirit of God links these together, so that that young man saw it, he was present when the moral glory shone. We have been speaking of the moral glory, perhaps some do not understand it; it is easier to see the glory of an angel than the moral glory, the moral side of the position: a brother or sister suffering for Christ’s sake, suffering for the testimony, is moral glory, and that is what Saul saw. He was not stoning but he saw what happened, got a full view of it; did he ever forget it? He never did, he talked to the Lord about it. How he would feel it as he said, “I ... kept the clothes”; the first martyr, indeed! So that the Spirit of God says they in the council looked fixedly upon him, as if God would say, You must see this! The whole testimony of God was fixed on that vessel. They looked fixedly upon it; there must have been [p. 61] something powerful and attractive in that young man, and he began with glory; he was taking it on. He represented what I have been speaking of, “from glory to glory”. He began with angelic glory, and went on to moral glory, and then it says, “He saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God”. He is a man capable of seeing it and taking it on, and with true levitical skill, he tells the people what they should have known; he says, “I behold the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God”. But we do not need to say everything. It is a question of what we should say, and what people see: they saw suffering and moral glory shining. It was truly with Stephen “from glory to glory”.
Now just a few moments in Luke, for the scene on the mount links up with Exodus; it links on the whole domain of divine testimony, it brings in Exodus and 2 Kings 2. Now here were two men “in glory”. Jesus is said, in Luke, to have become “different”. It is of Himself; that could not be said of Moses and Elias, or Paul. He “became different and his raiment white and effulgent”; it was as He prayed; you do not get that anywhere else. “And as he prayed the fashion of his countenance became different”. It was not taking anything on, it was from Himself. We are to understand this; so that we understand that in this line of thought He is pre-eminent. And so we are told later of Peter and those with him, “Having fully awoke up they saw his glory, and the two men who stood with him”. They saw His glory, according to Luke. It is the kingdom of God; how much there is in that to attract us! The kingdom of God is seen here, the centre of which is this wonderful thing, a Man praying! It should be seen in our prayer meetings, seen in our individual prayers. How it was seen in Daniel as he prayed! the angel moved towards him;
[p. 62] heaven took account of that praying man, and Gabriel says, “Thou art one greatly beloved” (Daniel 9:23). Is that beyond us? No, it is what God sees in us, in our prayers. It is the kingdom of God; the prayer meeting belongs to that. It is a question of bringing the power here, the kingdom of God in the presence of evil.
So “As he prayed the fashion of his countenance became different and his raiment white and effulgent”. What was there came out, the veil as it were removed, for the veil was His flesh; what was inside shone, infinitude was there: it was always there. No change in that sense, but now it shone as He prayed. A Man looking up to God! We are not told what He said. John 17 tells us what He said at one time; but it is the attitude as He prayed, the fashion of His countenance became different. He became that; it is not the idea of taking on something, it is what He was. It is the centre of the kingdom of God, it is the idea of glory shining, so that we are at the centre of the position, which is Christ, and infinitude is there, coming out in a Man in this character.
And then two men appear, Moses and Elias. Two men are mentioned and their names given. What are they talking about? Not the events of the day, but “of his departure which he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem”. That is what they were talking about. It is the great power of the teaching of the death of Christ which should be accomplished at Jerusalem; where He should have been honoured, He is put to death.
Now when they were fully awake they saw His glory. It is not that I take it on now; it is not now the covenant glory, but the Person of Jesus in this attitude; not the Mediator of the covenant, but Son of God. “There came a cloud and overshadowed them ... and there was a voice out of the cloud saying, This is my beloved Son: hear him”. That [p. 63] is another feature of the kingdom, hearing Jesus. The veil is removed and the glory shines; then there is the announcement from heaven as to who He is, and the Person to be listened to. That is the position now, and it enters into the whole period of christianity. “Hear him”, whatever He is saying, and He is saying much by the Spirit. The point is that we are in the presence of the glory, as Peter says in the epistle, “the excellent glory”. What a change had come over Peter! Time brings about changes for good or ill; time had changed Peter, he speaks of the “excellent glory”, and says, “having been eyewitnesses of his majesty” (2 Peter 1:17,16).
That is what was before me, dear brethren. May the Lord bless His word.