“And they shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads.”
(Revelation 22:4)
Have you ever wondered what it will be like to see the face of Jesus? Charles Haddon Spurgeon, when preaching on this verse in 1868, stated two important things about this text:
“First that they shall literally and physically, with their risen bodies, actually look into the face of Jesus. Second, that spiritually their mental faculties shall be enlarged so that they shall be enabled to look into the very heart and soul and character of Christ, so as to understand him, his work, his love, his all in all, as they never understood before.”
Now that makes sense, doesn’t it? It’s a beautiful thought to SEE Jesus some day in Heaven. The songwriter, Frank A. Breck in 1927, wrote,
Face to face with Christ my Savior, face to face – what will it be
When with rapture I behold Him, Jesus Christ who died for me?
Only faintly now I see Him, with the darkling veil between;
But a blessed Day is coming, when His glory shall be seen.
What rejoicing in His presence, when are banished grief and pain;
When the crooked ways are straightened, and the dark things shall be plain.
Face to face! O blissful moment! face to face – to see and know;
Face to face with my Redeemer, Jesus Christ who loves me so.
Face to face I shall behold Him, far beyond the starry sky;
Face to face in all His glory, I shall see Him by and by.
But how can we see Jesus today? We need to look beyond the “faintly now I see him, with the darkling veil between.” We need to SEE him spiritually. 1 Corinthians 15:44 states, ”There is a natural body, there I also a spiritual body.”
When we go to God in prayer, Hebrews 12:22 says, “But you have come to Mount
Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of righteous men made perfect.” Have you ever stopped to think Who is in heaven, probably listening to our prayers?
To die for a Christian is to be with the Lord immediately in a spiritual body. To the
thief of the cross next to Him Jesus said, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” Our spiritual bodies will be existing in a different dimension. At the coming of Christ we will be totally like Christ, for the Scripture says “we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is” (I John 3:2) At His coming to this earth our decaying bodies, whether on land or in the sea, will be resurrected and restored to our spiritual body to be with Christ. Yes, it sounds rather mysterious; but that’s what Christianity is all about. 1 Timothy 3:16 states, “And by common confession, great is the mystery of godliness!” Look it up. Think about it.
First, If we want to see Jesus now we must see Him in His Word. When first
regenerated – made spiritually alive – the Holy Spirit, our heavenly resident, enables us to understand every word Jesus said. Benjamin Warfield, speaking of Biblical revelation said,
“There is not an illegitimate reading of the New Testament ideas back into the text of the Old Testament; it is only reading the text of the Old Testament under the
illumination of the New Testament revelation. The Old Testament may be likened to a chamber richly furnished but dimly lighted; the introduction of light brings into it nothing which was not in it before; but it brings out into clearer view much of what is in it but was only dimly or even not at all perceived before.”
The old saying is: The New is in the Old contained; the Old is in the New explained; the New is in the Old concealed, the Old is in the New revealed. Through the Word we can see “one like unto the Son of God” in the fiery furnace. We can see through the record of the Gospels Christ climbing the steps to Golgotha. With the eye of faith we see the empty grave and our Lord ascending to His Father in Heaven.
That’s why the Apostle Paul said, “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God” (I Cor. 2:12). The Holy Spirit within enables us, by spiritual birth, to see the Kingdom of God and its King, Jesus.
Second, the Holy Spirit enables us to see Christ in the lives of other believers. We are indwelled by the One Holy Spirit of God. Do those of your acquaintance ever comment on seeing what they would think is the character of Christ being exhibited in your life? Paul’s life goal was to know Christ and to be found in Christ; i.e., to be discovered as existing in a living relation with Christ. For Paul the mystery of the ages was "Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27).
Each day as disciples of Jesus Christ we should ask Him to renew our vision of all that He is and all that He is doing in our lives. We should testify,
I have seen with the eye of faith
what the eye of the flesh cannot see.
I’ve beheld with the eyes of my spirit
the beauty Thou art to me.
I have seen Thee, blessed Jesus,
2in the darkness of sin’s dread night,
when Your mercy came gently to cleanse me
and Your love filled my dungeon with light.
I have seen Thy beauty, dear Jesus,
when despair had brought me low;
and the sight of Thy perfect majesty
brought a peace I’d yearned to know.
And each day I see Thee more clearly,
though Thy glory I perceive but a part.
Each day I love Thee more dearly
from the depths of my unworthy heart. (1)
To Ponder:
Are you looking for Christ in the Word of God?
Is Christ being recognized as living in you?
Do you look for Christ in the lives of others?
Do you ever speak to others about this?
What is your desire about seeing Jesus?
One of the most wonderful blessings I have experienced in my elderly years has been given the ability to perceive Christ in the faces of people I meet in the concourse of daily life. It is a spiritual experience: one believer looking into the eyes of another believer. If you are not experiencing this, look into the eyes and the smile of a brother or sister in Christ. You just might be spiritually related. What a tremendous blessing awaits those who long to see a spiritual relative with whom they would be blessed by coming together in Christ, their Savior and Lord.
To Pray:
Lord, please convict me of a lack of vision regarding Your life and power in me. Please help me to see You in Your word and in the lives of others. Please change and mature me so that others might see You living through me. Please, Lord Jesus, take me, cleanse me, fill me, use me, I ask in Your Holy Name and for Your glory alone.
From: Walking With Christ Down the Byways of Life
By: Beryl Clemens Smith
December 4, 2024
(1) Beryl Smith, Embers - Poetry For Everyday Living, p. 14
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