The Necessity of Feeding upon the Glory of Christ
By Jay Wegter
Our natural condition in Adam is the love of darkness (Jn 3:19-21)
Scripture is replete with descriptions of the human condition, but apart from looking into the mirror of God’s Word, we will not see the depth of the ruin of every individual in the sight of God. The Bible tells us an alarming fact that our entire species has revolted against God, and that every individual is born into this revolt as an enemy of God. The sin barrier that shuts us off from God cannot be penetrated from man’s side. “And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach” (Col 1:21-22).
The Law of God is the great diagnostic tool to show us our moral and spiritual condition before God. “Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God; because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin” (Rom 3:19-20).
God has issued a mandate to engage in renewal of our minds by His truth
When a person is born again he or she receives the ‘mind of Christ’ (1 Cor 2:16). God’s Spirit indwelling the believer grants (through the illumination of God’s Word) an understanding of our matchless riches in Christ. But it is our responsibility to pursue the transformation of our minds by Scripture (Rom 12:1-2). Believers must have their minds constantly renewed by Scripture in order for them to grow, obey, and worship properly. Mind renewal by the word brings heightened discernment in terms of good and evil (Heb 5:14).
We could describe the faculties of our soul as a unity of mind, affections, will, and conscience. The mind is a kind of sentry or gatekeeper; it is the watchmen over the house of the soul. The mind explains to the affections whether or not something is a worthy object of desire. The affections are curious, restless, filled with passion (often truant), and like a child interested in the next shiny thing. The mind educated and renewed by Scripture is prepared to exalt God in conversation. “Great is the LORD, and highly to be praised, and His greatness is unsearchable. One generation shall praise Your works to another, and shall declare Your mighty acts. On the glorious splendor of Your majesty and on Your wonderful works, I will meditate. Men shall speak of the power of Your awesome acts, and I will tell of Your greatness. They shall eagerly utter the memory of Your abundant goodness and will shout joyfully of Your righteousness” (Ps 145:3-7).
Our affections need guidance by the mind renewed by Scripture
Our affections need radical guidance by our minds. When the mind allows a sinful desire to take root in the affections, and that sinful desire is fed and nurtured, it becomes a ruling lust. A ruling lust then looks for an opportunity to commit sin (James 1:14-15). We could describe it this way: a ruling lust seeks to fool us by its misdirected desire. If given permission, it can fill the imagination, offering the lie that we can get our needs met by sinning. This is why Scripture refers to these ruling lusts as “the lusts of deceit” (Eph 4:22).
Sin has misery with it—the way of the transgressor is hard (Prov 13:15)
Whether we are saying ‘no’ to sin or ‘yes’ to sin, the conscience (the heart) is continually busy either excusing or condemning each one of our ethical choices (Rom 2:14-16). And so a universal aspect of the human condition outside of Christ may be described as follows. We are caught in a vice: one arm of that vice is the moral demands of the law of God. The other arm of that vice is comprised of our lusts. When we sin, these two arms squeeze the faculties of our soul. As a consequence, there will be stress, anxiety, guilt, self-hate, feelings of worthlessness, for these are the fruits of sin.
Now one reason this happens is because the fall of our first parents into sin did not change our creational identity by one iota. We are created bearing the moral image of God. Our creational job description is to reflect the moral excellence of our Maker in all of relationships. We are the image of God, made to carry that image and reflect the moral majesty of our Creator.
Therefore, sin does not create a new reality. It just means that we are radically maladjusted to our Holy God and we are living in defiance of our created purpose. This is why the Gospel is such good news. The Gospel comes bringing pardon, renewal, wholeness, and unity to the faculties of our soul so that mind, affections, will, and conscience are able to operate in harmony to the glory of God—rebuilt around Christ. The Gospel applied by the mighty saving work of the Spirit makes the believing sinner a new creation (2 Cor 5:17). The old things have passed away; new things have come. The believer is given both the ability and desire to obey God and put sin to death (Rom 8:12-13).
Now the Gospel is to reign as king over the conscience of the believer
Every Christian is aware of what a busy place his conscience is. As those redeemed by the blood of Christ, we are to have the gospel reign as king over the conscience. “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be thankful” (Col 3:15).
Luther warned (in his excellent commentary on the book of Galatians) that if we allow the law to crawl back up and rule the conscience, it will function as both a source of pride or accusation. For the law ruling over the conscience is a two edged sword—it demands that I live by my works. And if my successes define me, so must my failures define me as well. If my strengths define me, my weaknesses must as well.
The conscience, when ruled by the law will not let you get away with gloating over success without berating you for failure. I think about the story of the boy who fired a dozen arrows into the side of the barn, and the farmer discovered the boy and his arrows, each arrow sat in the center or the bull’s eye of a target drawn in chalk. The farmer asked the boy, “How did you become such a good shot?” The boy answered: “Easy, I drew the targets around the arrows after they were shot.”
In many ways this describes how the law can sow to our pride. Like the Pharisees, we pick something we are good at then make that the standard for ourselves and everybody else. Well that can work okay until you meet someone with a scorecard different than yours. You can feel quite satisfied because you are donating to missions or volunteering in your church, and then you meet a believer who memorizes a verse a day 365 days a year.
There is a danger in allowing the law to be the ‘master accountant’ of conscience
The law still plays a valuable role in the life of a believer, for the law establishes the boundary upon the flesh which must not be crossed. And the law is now in the hands of a placated Mediator. Thus the law is the safeguard of love (Rom 13:8-10). And the law as the guardian of love to neighbor is now designated the ‘royal law’ (James 2:8). But the law is not to be king of the conscience for a believer—that role is reserved for the gospel. For when the law functions as a master accountant of the conscience, it tends to betray us, for it says: “Your failures in obeying the law of God must be addressed by returning to the law with greater effort for relief.”
Yet returning to the law as master accountant of the conscience is our default mode. Our consciences are hard-wired for law, for strict justice. As MacArthur says in his book The Vanishing Conscience, the conscience is a place of strict justice and verdicts. The conscience is suspicious of words such as ‘mercy’ and ‘compassion’. The law is like a private eye hired to collect dirt on you. The conscience when ruled by law is always trying cases and re-trying cases. The conscience ruled by law is on a ceaseless search to collect evidence for the prosecution and/or the defense. Therefore the law frequently tells us we are not the sort of person we ought to be—and that is the religious cause of stress and anxiety.
When the law rules as king of the conscience, it functions as a tyrant
“Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death. But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter” (Rom 7:4-6). “It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery” (Gal 5:1).
The law invites us back to itself for relief from our failures; but that is to run on the treadmill of performance. “However, the Law is not of faith; on the contrary, “HE WHO PRACTICES THEM SHALL LIVE BY THEM” (Gal 3:12). Attempting to relieve the conscience by works of the law is like throwing a handful of sand into the Grand Canyon in order to fill it. How thankful we are for the Gospel, that Christ fills that infinite gap between a holy God and us who bear a broken moral image of God. The law beckons us to live by our performance and attempt to stand by our performance, but that is a zero sum game. Let’s examine why this is so.
Christ alone is fit to answer our ruin in Adam, we cannot repair ourselves
The flesh is attracted to the works of the law as a means of self-repair. But that is a fool’s errand for a very important reason. Few people understand the infinite weight of carrying the moral image of God and the infinite weight of carrying a sin nature. What a sobering and grave thing it is to carry the mechanism of one’s own eternal torment.
The conscience itself is a place of verdicts determined by the moral standards of the law of God, and since we are transgressors of that law, the conscience demands payday, judgment, condemnation, and retribution. This is why a defiled conscience is a source of misery now and torment in the afterlife. For once a person dies outside of Christ and that conscience is set afire by the wrath of God, it will be ruthless to the reprobate. On Judgment Day it will be horrific for those outside of Christ. For on that day, the conscience, the law of God, the books of God and the verdict of God the Judge will all be in agreement in the sinner’s damnation. The conscience will rise to its full stature and take its eternal revenge against its impenitent ungrateful host.
It is for a very important reason that this author keeps returning to the subject of what it means to carry the moral image of God. With the moral image of God comes what we owe God. So great is the ruin of original sin, that all of our efforts at personal moral repair will ultimately be mocked by our striving to walk upstream against the current of our natures. Behavior modification falls infinitely short of what is actually needed: a new nature granted by the Holy Spirit in regeneration is the only remedy (Titus 3:4-7).
Christians need to have their consciences educated by the Gospel
If we never committed another sin after salvation, there wouldn’t be a problem. But each believer sins every day and continues to fall short of loving God with our whole being. This is why believers are in such desperate need of having their consciences educated by the Gospel. We must labor to enter a place of ‘Gospel rest’ (Heb 4:11). This Gospel rest requires spiritual discipline, for the Gospel is very counter intuitive. Our natural bent is to fall back on the law in order to deal with our conscience. The law is our default accountant of the books of conscience. The major way we seek to bring peace to the conscience is by moral comparisons with others. We imagine that we can be our own source of self-differentiation, that we can do what’s necessary to carry our own worth, value, esteem, lovability, significance, and standing. Oh my friends, the law is a ruthless master when it is working together with our religious flesh. Nothing can disarm it but the cross of Christ (2 Cor 3:4-11). A conscience continually educated by the Gospel yields peace, joy, comfort, and hope (Rom 15:13).
Our creational identity is the image of God. Only in Christ is that image restored, and with it the ability to live as the image of God. We have no clue as to the weight of what it means to carry the moral image of God. For that moral image can mean the potential for holy ecstasy and bliss forever in our glorified state in heaven. Or it can mean crushing condemnation and wrath unending in eternal hell.
The Gospel solution to man’s dilemma brings trauma at first
What a sobering thing it is to comes to terms with who God is—because that involves coming to terms with what we are in God’s sight. So radical is the gospel solution to the guilt of man that we are initially shocked, scandalized, horrified, confused, crestfallen, when we first discover that our natural religious instincts to work our way out of condemnation are dead wrong. You see, the law on the conscience is a ruthless tyrant, simply because sin is so destructive to the moral image of God. But the law has an evangelical function. The law is the ‘tutor’ of Galatians 3:24 with only one lesson to teach: we cannot supply the righteousness God requires; it is only found in Christ.
The Gospel solution of grace humbles us to the core, to the lowest point imaginable. It kills our natural pride driven sentiment that we have the powers of self-differentiation. It devastates our imagined self-determination when we discover that our only hope is the sovereign grace of God in regeneration. It strips us of all imagined self-righteousness, for the law of God demands justice against our sins. When the law does its work of mortally wounding the sinner, there is devastation over our guilt before God. There is destitution in discovering our lack of righteousness. And there is desperation that we do not hold the solution to our ruin.
We must never cease being cross-centered
The cross applied means that we will throw our arrogant dreams of self-determination overboard, and find our only hope in sovereign pity. This powerful sovereign compassionate call of God is not a sidebar issue (1 Cor 1:26-31). The Gospel proclaims that God is invading human history by means of the glorious call of Christ. He is exalting his perfections and glorifying His grace in sovereignly calling sinners to Himself (Eph 1:6). Faithful ministers of the Word must cooperate with His purpose of preaching the cross that men might be stripped of pride, of imagined self-differentiation, of arrogant self-determination, and of all optimism that they may balance the books of conscience themselves. As men we are particularly vulnerable to the pitfall of self-differentiation. That is the misinformed belief that we have the power to distinguish ourselves above our fellow man in a host of areas (spiritually, morally, physically, financially, etc.).
How humbling is the doctrine of God’s electing love—that there is but One who differentiates, God Almighty. “For who regards you as superior? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?” (1 Cor 4:7).
The cross alone cancels the unholy alliance between the flesh and the law and the world
“But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal 6:14). The cross is the costly cure, for the flesh and the law are married to each other, it is a suicidal tryst which works hand in hand with the unfathomable potential of self-deception, for self-deception is an attitude of sin.
We love our scorecards more than the grace of God, that’s the rub. Scorecards deliver just enough false peace to the conscience that they are exceedingly addictive, but these scorecards are nothing but the wisdom of the world (see 1 Cor 1-4 and James 3).
The horror of sin against God is known by its affects, for sin dishonors God, makes us polluted rebels who face physical, moral, and spiritual corruption. For the reprobate will face disillusion of body and soul followed by the disillusion of the soul itself in eternal fragmentation, this is the second death (W. G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology).
The judgment to come of the lost will be accompanied by eternal confusion
I know that I instinctively live by the law, that is my religious instinct, but the flesh betrays me, telling me that my soul is secure when it is not. Think for a moment how terrifying it will be to face the fury of God when one has no place to stand (Rev 6:15-17). From the self-righteous cultists to the self-congratulating moralist to the self-possessed cool hipster to the complacent reprobate to the gloating rich man the power of sin’s self-deception to bribe the conscience into silence will be invaded in a moment of time.
When divine judgment comes it will not only bring the instant horror of wrath and crushing suffering, it will also bring confusion. The conscience that has settled for a false place of refuge will find that it is driven from all the places of false safety. These spurious hiding places will spew out their occupants who hid themselves there and then the nakedness of the soul shall be exposed publicly. “On the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus” (Rom 2:16). “Therefore do not fear them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known” (Matt 10:26).
This event will be a spectacle to men and angels all false refuges shall be revealed as fraudulent, as folly. But a part of the eternal torment shall be endless confusion. But why? Because self-deception is an attribute of sin (Jer 17:9). And then an endless loop shall run through the mind of a lost person, “How did I end up here? This is impossible. I had life figured out; I was religious, spiritual. But I thought…” This confusion will never let up. The conscience will answer back to the confusion saying, “You were a despiser of the Lamb of God, of His cross of Christ, and His shed blood. And that means that you were a secret despiser of the grace of God, and of the will of God” (Matt 7:21-23).
Believers are called to the blessed privilege of beholding the glory of the Lord
Oh Christian, that you might see the blessed privilege and duty it is to behold the glory of the Lord (2 Cor 3:18). For the saints this is our vitality, and our savor. It is endlessly beautiful and it is satisfying to the health of the soul to see God in our nature commending us to the Father.
“But Jesus, on the other hand, because He continues forever, holds His priesthood permanently.
Therefore He is able also to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them. For it was fitting for us to have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens; who does not need daily, like those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the sins of the people, because this He did once for all when He offered up Himself. For the Law appoints men as high priests who are weak, but the word of the oath, which came after the Law, appoints a Son, made perfect forever” (Heb 7:24-28).
Consider the wealth of benefits to the soul of beholding the glory of the Lord now:
- It means first and foremost that seeing Christ glorified educates the conscience about what God has done to our sin and guilt. I love Luther’s point that your relationship with God is based upon your sin and what God has done with it. This massive guilt transfer at Calvary now defines believers as sons of the beloved of the Father. It grants a new identity for us. It gives us a standing, a status, a destiny of belonging and security.
- It means that the moral image of God we carry has been renovated, renewed, regenerated, resurrected to glorify God.
- It means that the great accountant which balances the books of conscience is Christ and the Gospel. It means that the verdict of Calvary, which is the verdict of heaven, is now the verdict of the conscience.
- It means the peace of Christ can make the call in the conscience every day (Colossians 3:15). It means that Christ is your eligibility your qualification for the unbroken flow of the Father’s love that you might be perfected in love (1ˢᵗ John 4:17-19).
- It means that when the Gospel is ruling as King in the conscience, Christ is ruling there too. It means that you are delivered from the debt, the burden, the penalty, and the judgment of the law to now serve Christ and bear fruit in Him (Romans 7).
Beholding the glory of the Lord is a spiritual discipline
Seeing the glory of Christ is a spiritual discipline, for if your conscience does not see justice satisfied by your Christ, your Substitute, then your conscience will demand you satisfy that justice yourself. There is a daily humbling involved in this, admitting that in God’s sight we do not raise ourselves morally above our humble man. We are stripped of all self-righteousness that we may be clothed with the righteousness of another (Phil 3:8-11).
The cross kills the dream that we can be good enough to offset any of our judgment. Our poor consciences are beat up and defiled by our sin, they naturally look for a place of refuge. God created that refuge by giving Christ for sinners. Jesus is friend of sinners for that very reason.
Our hunger for excellence must be daily satisfied in Christ
If you are a believer He has made you a vessel of mercy and your soul must be daily nourished by the glory of Christ. This world is filled with different kinds of excellence which require no act of faith to behold, but it does require an act of faith to behold the excellence of the glory of the Lord. We must look into the mirror of Scripture and see in the Word of Grace the perfect fitness of Christ to answer every facet of our ruin in Adam. This is your calling, your vocation so to speak.
It is a blessed work that brings boundless joy. This is your calling to behold the glory of Christ that you might proclaim His excellences. “But you are A CHOSEN RACE, A royal PRIESTHOOD, A HOLY NATION, A PEOPLE FOR God’s OWN POSSESSION, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; for you once were NOT A PEOPLE, but now you are THE PEOPLE OF GOD; you had NOT RECEIVED MERCY, but now you have RECEIVED MERCY” (1Pet 2:9-10).
Only the continual sight of the glory of Christ (God in our nature bearing our burden) can deliver us from satanic self-absorption
We live in a culture of self-absorption, of the worship of self, of endless self-concern. Let me tell you a fact: nothing can take you off of self but the revelation of Christ and the gospel. Suicides in America have reached an all-time high. The age at which people commit suicide is growing lower every year. The culture of self is satanic. Self cannot reach inside to find the solution to self-worship.
When a person descends into the labyrinth of self, there is nothing in that dark maze to get you out. There is no ladder, no map, no light, and no visible escape route. Only the Gospel can get you out of self and off of self.
We are saved by glory, for glory
So what are the benefits of beholding the glory of Christ? Why is it so important? First of all, God saved you by giving you a sight of His glory in the face of Christ. Your darkness was satanic blindness. It was blindness to the glory of God. Your default God was Satan and your default object of worship was a world full of idols.
“In whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your bond-servants for Jesus’ sake. 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” (2 Cor 4:4-6).
“But we should always give thanks to God for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth. It was for this He called you through our gospel, that you may gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess 2:13-14).
Wonder of wonders, Christ is God in our nature—given by God to sinners to make God known to us (Jn 1:18).
God is known by Christ He is the revealer of the Godhead (Heb 1:1-3). Beholding the glory of the Lord changes us into His moral likeness, for we are transformed into the image of what we worship. “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:18).
Christ is our ‘man in glory’. He is our Forerunner who has gone to prepare a place for us (Jn 14:2-3; Heb 6:19-20). This is the substance of our hope that right now there is a glorified human being in Heaven. Therefore Christ Himself is the destiny of redeemed human nature. Thus, to see His glory is the clearest view of our destiny (1 Jn 3:1-3).
The glory of the Lord is a hint about the boundless pleasures of Heaven. The unbroken communication of God to the creature will be the ecstasy of Heaven (Ps 16:9-11). Christ is our surety, our destiny is guaranteed (Rom 8:30-34). God has predestined that we should gain the glory of Christ (Rom 8:28-30; Eph 1:4; 5:25-27). The more clearly we see Christ glorified in our human nature, the more clearly we see our treasure. Christ is the focal point of all reality—the Father has given Him first place in everything (Col 1:18ff.). Christ is the goal of reality. He is the finish line, the prize. He is God giving us Himself in an eternal relationship of mutuality.
He is the covenant. “By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins; but He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, SAT DOWN AT THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD, waiting from that time onward UNTIL HIS ENEMIES BE MADE A FOOTSTOOL FOR HIS FEET. For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified” (Heb 10:10-14).
To be in relationship with Him is the ultimate fulfillment of what it means that He is our God and we are His people. “And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away” (Rev 21:3-4ff.).
To see the glory of Christ is to perceive your true treasure
For Christ is the fountain of life, He exports the wealth of the Godhead into the lives of His people. He gives the very joy and unity and love of the Trinity to the redeemed. “The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. “Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world” (Jn 17:22-24).
In the glory to come, beholding God in our nature will be endless bliss to us, for the two natures of Christ means this—that God and humanity are as close as they can finally be in Christ Himself. Therefore God and redeemed humanity will be as close as they can possibly be in Christ and glorified human beings will be as much like God as creatures can possibly be. This is the destiny of the saints, and this destiny becomes increasingly real to us as we behold the glory of the Lord.