The supreme manifestation of God’s beauty is seen in the person of Jesus Christ. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:6, “For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” The beauty of Jesus has nothing to do with how He smelled or looked or the sound of His voice or the strength of His arms or the color of His hair or the way He dressed. Jesus is beautiful because He has a glory, an excellence, a spiritual supreme beauty-that can be self-evidently true. That is to say, when you see Him there is a direct and personal apprehension of the beauty that you see. It’s like seeing the sun and knowing that it is light, or tasting honey and knowing that it is sweet.
There is a direct apprehension and attraction once you see Jesus that affects your thinking, your will, and your feelings, it goes deep and does something to your very soul. It changes your life.
We see this illustrated in the story of the conversions of some of His disciples in John 1:35-49,
“The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God!" The two disciples heard him say this (Obviously seeing him as well), and they followed Jesus. Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, "What are you seeking?" And they said to him, "Rabbi" (which means Teacher), "where are you staying?" He said to them, "Come and you will see." So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour. One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, "We have found the Messiah" (which means Christ). He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, "So you are Simon the son of John? You shall be called Cephas" (which means Peter).The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, "Follow me." Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathaniel and said to him, "We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph." Nathaniel said to him, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Philip said to him, "Come and see." Jesus saw Nathaniel coming toward him and said of him, "Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!" Nathaniel said to him, "How do you know me?" Jesus answered him, "Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you." Nathaniel answered him, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!"
There is just something about Jesus! His beauty is such that when these men saw him, they left their lives and followed him, and passionately told others about what they had seen. John writes of his experience with Jesus in John 1:14, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
When it comes to the beauty of Christ, who can adequately describe glory and beauty that is infinite and is therefore beyond description? There is no one like Christ in this regard.
Spurgeon said it well:
“Hope not, my brethren, that the preacher can grapple with such a subject. I am overcome by it. In my meditations I have felt lost in its lengths and breadths. My joy is great in my theme, and yet I am conscious of a pressure upon my brain and heart, for I am as a little child wandering among the stars. I stumble among sublimities, I sink amid glories. I can only point with my finger to that which I see, but cannot describe. May the Holy Spirit himself take of the things of Christ and show them unto you.”
What makes Jesus Christ so precious, so beautiful, and so glorious is what Jonathan Edwards calls in his profound sermon series The Excellence of Christ, “an admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies” Christ's attributes work together in harmony. And there is a glory in Christ that exceeds any of His individual characteristics. It is like a rainbow in which the individual colors are beautiful, but their combination heightens the sense of beauty. The effect of seeing these excellencies is described by Edwards in this way:
“The excellency of Christ is such, that the discovery of it is exceedingly contenting and satisfying to the soul. The carnal soul imagines that earthly things are excellent-one thinks riches most excellent, another has the highest esteem of honor, and to another carnal pleasure appears the most excellent. But the soul cannot find contentment in any of these things, because it soon finds an end to their excellency. Worldly men imagine that there is true excellency and true happiness in those things which they are pursuing. They think that if they could but obtain them, they would be happy. But when they obtain them, and cannot find happiness, they look for happiness in something else, and are still upon the pursuit. But Christ Jesus has true excellency, and so great excellency, that when they come to see him they look no further, but the mind rests there. It sees a transcendent glory and an ineffable sweetness in Jesus! It sees that until now it has been pursuing shadows, but that now it has found the substance. It sees that before it had been seeking happiness in the stream, but that now it has found the ocean.”
How do we see those excellencies? The Apostle Paul describes this path to discovery in 2 Cor.4:6, For God, who said, "Light shall shine out of darkness," is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” We can see the preciousness of Jesus through the portraits of Christ given to us in God’s word by reading it and hearing it proclaimed. This portrayal, accompanied by God’s shining in our hearts, appears to us what really is-“the glory of God in the face of Jesus.” Or to put it another way the beauty of Jesus Christ. God shows us that Jesus is beautiful through the word and the work of God opening our blind eyes to see His beauty.
John Owen was the greatest Puritan thinker of the 17th century. He outlived all eleven of his children. The last thing he prepared for publication was called Meditations on the Glory of Christ. It was his dying testimony and his way of preparing for the unspeakably great moment of meeting the Lord face to face. It is a 160-page exposition of John 17:24, “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory.” In it he gave five ways we can behold the glory and beauty of His mercy:
1. Fix it in mind that this glory of Christ in the divine constitution of His person is the best, most noble, useful, beneficial object that we can have in our thoughts and affections.
2. Diligently study the Scripture and the revelations that are made of this glory of Christ in them.
3. Having attained the light of the knowledge of the glory of Christ from the Scripture, or by the dispensation of the truth in the preaching of the gospel, meditates frequently upon it.
4. Let your occasional thoughts of Christ be many, and multiplied every day.
5. See to it that all thoughts concerning Christ and His glory are accompanied with admiration, adoration, and thanksgiving.
Oh reader, God invites us to do just what David desires. He has created the longings and satisfies the longings of our soul (Jeremiah 31:33). In Psalm 42:8 we receive an astonishing invitation from God, "You have said, "Seek my face.” My heart says to you, “Your face, LORD, do I seek.” God invites us to seek His face, to dwell, to see, to gaze, and reflect upon His beauty. How does that affect you? This is God’s desire for you: “SEEK MY FACE”!
Some of you perhaps are not accustomed to receiving an invitation to anything. You rarely get invited to lunch after church, to birthday parties, to weddings, or to share your opinion on an important topic. Also some of you are notorious for turning down invitations (like me!) but this is one you don’t want to miss. This is the greatest invitation to the greatest experience of all! God wants you and me to seek His face! We seek to behold his beauty, to be with him, to meditate on him.
This is the central business for your life- to see the beauty of God. To get your head into the heavens. To know him for whom he is. He is the main reality- not buildings, not Christians, not ministry, not missions, not heaven. God himself is what we seek. And David adds in Psalm 40:16, Let all who seek You rejoice and be glad in You.’ David did not dishonor this beauty by saying, "Ho hum." How could you possibly see the beauty of God and respond that way? No. This is God’s mission and our mission: to rejoice and be glad in him. To delight yourself in the Lord! (Psalm 37:4)
There is nothing beyond this. Nothing more urgent. Nothing more important. Nothing more satisfying. This is what moved Jonathan Edwards:
“The pleasures of loving and obeying, loving and adoring, blessing and praising the infinite being, the best of Beings, the Eternal Jehovah, the pleasures in trusting Jesus Christ, in contemplating His beauties, excellencies, and glories, in contemplating His love to mankind and to us, in contemplating His infinite goodness and astounding loving kindness…these are the pleasures that are worthy so noble a creature as a man is.”
Do you have a desire for that one thing? Here is what I mean by having a desire for the one thing. Here is what God had in mind when He created and redeemed you. Here is what God had in mind when He created and fashioned your heart and stamped His indelible image upon it. Sam Storms describes it in this way:
“You, we, were made to be enchanted, enamored, and engrossed with God; enthralled, enraptured, and entranced with God; enravished, excited, and enticed by God; astonished, amazed, and awed by God; astounded, absorbed, and agog with God; beguiled and bedazzled, startled and staggered, smitten and stunned; stupefied and spellbound; charmed and consumed; thrilled and thunderstruck; obsessed and preoccupied; intrigued and impassioned; overwhelmed and overwrought; gripped and rapt; enthused and electrified; tantalized, mesmerized, and monopolized, fascinated, captivated, and exhilarated by God; intoxicated and infatuated with God!
Does that sound like your life? Do you want it to? Do you find yourself desiring those “fruitless pleasures” of the world? “The One Thing” is what God made you for. Kierkegaard said it well, “Purity in heart is to will the one thing”. May we join David and from our hearts desire to see God’s beauty. Amen!
A Prayer
“Father in heaven! What is a man without You! What is all that he knows, vast accumulation though it be, but a chipped fragment if he does not know You! What is all his striving, could it even encompass a world, but a half-finished work if he does not know You: You the One, who are one thing and who are all! So may You give to the intellect, wisdom to comprehend that one thing; to the heart, sincerity to this understanding; to the will, purity that wills only one thing. In prosperity may You grant perseverance to will one thing; amid distractions, collectedness to will one thing; in suffering, patience to will one thing. Oh, You that give both the beginning and the completion, may You early, at the dawn of day, give to the young man the resolution to will one thing. As the day wanes, may You give to the old man a renewed remembrance of his first resolution, that the first may be like the last, the last like the first, in possession of a life that has willed only one thing.” Soren Kierkegaard
No comments:
Post a Comment