The ‘Marital Vows’ made by Christ
By Jay Wegter
INTRODUCTION: Why are observatories constructed at very high altitudes? (Hubble is the highest). Answer: for the clearest view of the heavens. Theology is our ‘observatory’ to give is the clearest views of God’s glory (see 1 Peter 1). As a much younger man, I can remember hearing sermons about the glory of the Lord. And, for the life of me, all I could muster up in my mind’s eye was a celestial light show. My friends, indeed the Lord dwells in unapproachable light, but that does not really describe the essence of the glory of the Lord. According to 2 Corinthians 4:6, divine glory is perceived as a ‘reflected glory’ in the face of Christ who is God in human form, having entered human history to reverse the ruin caused by Adam’s sin.
The glory of our King and Great High Priest has numerous dimensions. These involve His conquering the enemies of His bride—enemies which held her locked down in spiritual and physical death. His glory is associated with the fullness of the Godhead dwelling bodily in Jesus of Nazareth who came to seek and to save.
This glory is filled with great wonder; that a man, Jesus of Nazareth, should bring human nature into the heart of the Holy Trinity—and He did so that by the oath of God, every believer shall have perfect representation forever. God will not change His mind about this: “Thou art a priest forever according to order of Melchizedek” (Heb 6:17-20).
That Jesus should become exalted Lord of glory goes back to the eternal counsels within the Godhead. For, Christ’s high priesthood is like no other. 1) He is both Priest and King. 2) He is both Priest and the sacrifice offered by His office as Priest. 3) As the slain sacrifice, He is ‘consumed’ by the wrath of God, yet rises in indestructible life—ever living to make intercession. 4) And now, as both Priest and sacrifice, He sovereignly distributes the benefits of His sacrifice (if you wish to do business with God, you must go to Him—Mt 11:25-30).
Christ is glorified mediatorial King—think of it, a King who represents His subjects by the power of His shed blood. In other words, Christ’s obedience in laying down His life (and taking it up again) has furnished Him, fitted Him, equipped Him to make intercession for His people (Heb 7:25). Our King has taken His stand between our sins and God Almighty.
This marvelous truth of Christ’s unique priesthood is articulated by Jonathan Edwards who summarizes much of the book of Hebrews with this thought. Christ’s obedience unto death on a Roman cross has become His ‘equipment’ to save to the uttermost. His ability to save to the uttermost, is an ability won by His obedience—this is His glory. How the church needs to feed upon His glory, that she might see the dignity, sufficiency, and might of the One who is taking her from corrupt dust, to flawless glory.
How we need to be frequently rocked and staggered by a vision of His glory (2 Cor 3:18). For, this world is a wasteland without a crumb for our souls to feed upon. Without this ‘beholding’, countless professing Christians are living in ‘existence mode’— not fixing their eyes on the glory of the Lord, but just slogging along, only looking at their feet as they place one tiring step in front of another. If that describes your experience, then take heart, this morning we want to lift our eyes to behold the glory of the Lord, and be transformed by it in joy, delight, and consecration.
I. We love, obey, worship, serve, and enjoy a ‘covenant-making’ God.
God can only be known in covenant. He only gives Himself within covenants. He is a covenant-making God. Each covenant He makes contains terms that describe what devotion to Him should look like. When God makes a covenant it is unilateral, He does negotiate with the other parties. And yet, God’s practice of making covenants is a massive commentary on His condescension. For in cutting a covenant, God binds Himself on His side to the terms of the covenant. Those who know God realize what a rock of support He is, for in binding Himself to the terms of the covenant, He is letting His people know that He is predictable and faithful, and not capricious. Note the scores of promises of His faithfulness in the Psalms made to believers.
The God of Scripture promises to be faithful provider and protector to those who love Him. In a sense, He harnesses His own attributes and puts them at the service of His people’s care. This is why idolatry is so serious a matter. To deny that God has bound Himself by oath to exercise covenant faithfulness is to turn to idols; that is the greatest imaginable slight to God’s name. (See promises such as Psalm 25:14; 27:4.)
II. God’s covenant with His people is a love relationship which Scripture likens to marriage.
“For your husband is your Maker, whose name is the LORD of hosts; and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, who is called the God of all the earth” (Is 54:5).
“I will rejoice greatly in the LORD, my soul will exult in my God; for He has clothed me with garments of salvation, He has wrapped me with a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels” (Is 61:10). “It will come about in that day,” declares the LORD, “That you will call Me Ishi (my Husband) and will no longer call Me Baali (my Master) (Hos 2:16) (Hos 5:19-20; Jer 31:32).
Rather than the covenant God makes being based upon a business arrangement between divine and human parties, the covenants God makes involve mutuality, communion and fellowship. In other words, the covenant contains the rules and provisions, if you will, for how God and the creature give themselves to one another in a permanent bond of love (note the emphasis on ceremonial cleanness in Tabernacle worship). This is why, the supreme metaphor to describe God’s covenant with His people is marriage—it is the image chosen by God. How significant it is that the closest earthly relationship, marriage, is what God points to describe our covenant relationship with Himself. What began in the Torah as “I will be your God and you will be my people,” becomes consummated to the fullest in the unbroken communion of the eternal state, heaven, then face-to-face (1 Cor 13:12).
III. The Son of God entered a kind of covenant with His Heavenly Father in order to redeem the people His Father had given to Him.
Isaiah 53 – “All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth; like a lamb that is led to slaughter, and like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, so He did not open His mouth. By oppression and judgment, He was taken away; and as for His generation, who considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due? His grave was assigned with wicked men, yet He was with a rich man in His death, because He had done no violence, nor was there any deceit in His mouth. But the LORD was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief; if He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, and the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand. As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied; by His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, as He will bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great, and He will divide the booty with the strong; because He poured out Himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet He Himself bore the sin of many, and interceded for the transgressors” (Is 53:6-12).
Isaiah 53 – Vv. 6-9 -- Our natural condition is one of alienation, straying, lostness, estrangement from God. He would bring us to God by radically identifying Himself with sinners —so that He becomes the curse of sin in order to carry it away. For, in His self-sacrificing love, crushing suffering comes upon Him according to the appointment of God. As a mute lamb, He is led to the slaughter bench. This is incongruous to natural reason that the Author of life should be sentenced to make the grave His abode. V. 10 – “But the Lord was pleased to crush (bruise) Him.” Though sinful men inflicted the punishment, in the whole, the supreme cause was God. The predetermined course was that this would be the suffering servant’s way to glory. This is how He would establish His church. He would make a sacrifice so highly valued by God that it would grant believing sinners the right to walk the courts of God forever and ever (Keil and Delitzsch, “Isaiah,” pp. 304-342). . Vv. 11-12 – He reaps the fruit of His sacrifice in His priestly role (in which He is the Mediator of the benefits of His sacrifice). He is the Righteous One who makes others partakers of righteousness through their knowledge of Him; His Person and work and through their entrance into living fellowship with Him. God is only known through Christ—in emphasizing His High Priestly role. Christ prays, “Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight. All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him” (Mt 11:26-27). In His exaltation, He exercises His mediatorial priestly work, and rises to more regal glory. He who was dead is now the living One who imparts life—and because of His sacrifice, He is an eternal Priest who lives to distribute the blessings He has acquired. He submitted to the death and punishment that a sinner deserved. And, now He rules above with the offices of sovereign King and Priest united in Him.
We can see that Isaiah 53 is filled with the language of substitutionary atonement—or vicarious suffering. And, it also contains the language of a covenant, or legal agreement or contract. The Son of God voluntarily agrees with the ‘terms’ of the covenant—a ‘covenant established in the counsels of the Godhead in eternity past. For, Peter says of the death of Christ that He was delivered up by the ‘predetermined plan and counsel of God’ (Acts 2:23). And, the nature of this covenant between the Father and the Son is conditional. For, this is the wording in verse ten (the verse about God being pleased to crush or bruise Him) indicates that: “If He would render Himself a guilt offering, He will see His offspring” (53:10). Christ fulfilling the terms of the covenant is responsible for every dimension and facet of grace: “. . . blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (Eph 1:3). The covenant purpose of God, to bruise His Son at Calvary is the greatest reality in the history of humanity (it must fill our consciousness) (Pastor Alan Cairns, “The Covenant of Redemption,” www.sermonaudio.com).
What does it do to a believing sinner when he casts themselves upon Christ afresh, reckoning fully that the Son of God has place Himself between God and that sinner’s guilt? According to 1 John chapter one, when we take Christ for the reasons God gave Him (taking our sin to Him and going to Him for righteousness), we are communing with God Almighty. How humbling and counter-intuitive this is. For, out of love, Christ takes our deserved penalty upon Himself. And, what the His cross teaches us is that the immutable justice of God was not altered or lifted in the case of our salvation.
The ineffable principle of: sowing and reaping, sin and judgment, iniquity and wrath, transgression and death, was not set aside in the salvation of sinners. The cross teaches me that God’s unbending justice was not alleviated in order to save me. In the atoning work of Christ, divine justice was prosecuted to the fullest. The curse of the Law did its worst in the case of my personal sins which had been committed against God.
The crushing penalty of sin fell upon my willing Substitute. When I feed on these truths in the depths of my soul, there is love to Christ, overflowing gratitude, consecration, bold confidence in Him, hatred of sin, a longing to imitate my Savior, and a desire to be subject to the moral government of God. The gospel of the cross believed motivates and empowers a person to run the race with endurance pressing on to Christ-likeness. And, the word of the cross sets a man on a course of putting to death the sine that Christ died to destroy. To see and trust, and know God through the cross of Christ means that Christ’s atoning work can never be a mere safety valve or an emergency strategy. For, the genuine believer understands that the cross is the vindication of God. For by it, God’s righteousness is revealed in His saving of sinners (Rom 3:24-26). By means of His cross, Christ has become my acceptance, my favor, status, covenant, righteousness, and adoption. All of these blood-bought blessings in the heavenly places are foreign to the innate carnal religion of the natural man. The gospel of the cross reveals that God ‘wills to be known’ by means of the satisfaction of His unchanging standard of righteousness, by means of the perfect Substitute whom He has appointed. Not a single soul will inherit eternal life apart from this satisfaction of perfect righteousness. And, there can be no saving knowledge of God but by the cross of Christ. For, only by the cross is God made known as the God who atone, and who is atoned for. How incredible for our conscience to hear that God is satisfied with what His Son has done on behalf of believing sinners.
Thus, out of this perfect rest the believer has in Christ comes service and worship. We work from a position of reliance upon Christ. We give ourselves back to Him daily without reservation—to Him who was given for us. This mutual giving is prefigured in the marriage covenant, the consummation of which will be the marriage supper of the Lamb. The entire creation is poised for this event, ready for the liberty of the sons of God at which time the creation will be liberated from the bondage of decay.
IV. In order for Christ to ultimately be ‘wedded’ to His church, He voluntarily took certain ‘marital vows’ which involved laying down His life.
John 17 -- “I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world; they were Yours and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word. Now they have come to know that everything You have given Me is from You; for the words which You gave Me I have given to them; and they received them and truly understood that I came forth from You, and they believed that You sent Me. I ask on their behalf; I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom You have given Me; for they are Yours; and all things that are Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine; and I have been glorified in them (Jn 17:6-10).
“For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth” (17:17). “I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.” “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.” “O righteous Father, although the world has not known You, yet I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me; and I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them” (Jn 17:20-26).
In Christ’s ‘High Priestly Prayer’ of John chapter 17, our Lord is no longer speaking as a suffering servant, but as the High Priest by means of the work which the Father gave Him to do (17:4) (Pastor Paul Orchard, “The Covenant of Redemption,” www.sermonaudio.com). The great burden of Christ is for His church. Christ is praying about His Righteous Father honoring the covenant vows between the two of them—as He, the Son is coming as a payment of that covenant. In this prayer, we see Christ claiming His reward. Christ anticipates His love gifts and inheritance—the people given to Him before the foundation of the world (‘those whom the Father has given to Me to be with Me’—17:2, 6, 9, 11, 24). For their sakes, “I sanctify Myself” (17:19). Christ regards His people, the Church, to be the reward of His suffering.
After He prays the high priestly prayer of John 17, He crosses over the brook Kidron with His disciples to the Garden of Gethsemane.
The experience of our Lord and Savior in Gethsemane (‘oil press’), is where a crushing took place in which our Lord sweat great drops of blood (Lu 22:39-46). During this trial, he was deeply conflicted as He thought upon the baptism of fire He was to go. We cannot imagine eternal hell compressed into six hours. This Gethsemane account is recorded in Holy Scripture that we might understand the voluntary nature of Christ’s sacrifice.
This historical account is punctuated with a most significant phrase, “not my will but thy will be done” (v. 42). Concerning this cup of wrath, filled with indescribable suffering—in His full omniscience as eternally God the Son, He had looked into that cup and had agreed to every detail. But that was when He was in heaven prior to taking on a body of flesh. But, now in Gethsemane, He is an embodied person of flesh and bone, He is fully human with sensitive skin, emotion, arteries and veins that bleed and countless nerve endings. He has a frail human heart that can burst and break. Thus, in Gethsemane, He’s looking into a ‘virtual cup’, which is revealing the shocking horrific preview of what His passion will entail.
According to Luke’s account, Christ’s looking into the cup produced agony in Him (Lu 22:44). He’s peering into the cup as a mortal man, with all the human instincts of self-preservation, survival, and the avoidance of agony and death. As He peers into the cup He must drink, He sees that the greater part of His upcoming agony will be the bearing of divine wrath. He must drain the cup to the last drop, or there will be no propitiation (no quenched wrath).
The times when we think about His passion, normally at the communion table, we fixate on what He endured for us, that most cruel form of Roman execution. It is easy for us to forget that in His sin-bearing, He was plunged into the spiritual, emotional, and physical consequences of sin (the horror of condemnation, abandonment, alienation, shame, worthlessness —all amidst excruciating pain). These judgments coursed through His body and soul like bolts of lightning. For, the guilt and shame and penalty of His people was charged to His account. He bore our sins and their penalty up to the cross (1 Pet 2:24; 3:18).
Though He is the spotless Son of God, pristine and innocent, He recoils from the contents of the cup. Jonathan Edwards poses this query of Christ’s Gethsemane experience, “Why were clots of blood mingled with His sweat?” “What manner of angst could have caused such a trauma to His body. Such accounts of martyrs are unheard of. What kind of strain would cause the capillaries around His sweat glands to hemorrhage.” Edwards brings up a sobering reality. With the sins of all who would ever believe heaped upon Him, so that He became the very curse of God, our Savior contemplates this suffocating collision of wrath, curse, torment, and death. What if, under the crushing strain and stress and agony (the unbearable nature of it), He should give up His spirit before the wrath of God was exhausted and quenched?
What if under the crushing wrath of Almighty God, He should come short of the six hours and release His spirit with the sins of millions of souls upon Him? No, He must drain the dregs of the cup. He must endure the cross, the agony the wrath, the sin-bearing and the forsakenness by His father, until He can cry, “It is finished.” Only then will the veil to the Holy of Holies be rent asunder, announcing a new and living way to God almighty through the veil, that is His flesh, which He has given for the life of the world. My friends, this Gethsemane account of the Son of Man, crushed and betrayed, is absolutely essential to the story of redemption, because it captures the voluntariness of our Savior to be our substitute.
Our Lord’s willingness to suffer in our place; His desire to take on our sin and death in order to win us to Himself makes His vicarious substitution a righteous and loving act (see 1 Peter 2:24; 3:18).
V. The ‘vows’ which Christ voluntarily took contained the details of His incarnation, humiliation, atoning work, and resurrection, as well as the promises the Father made to Him for keeping these vows.
Hebrews 10:5-10 -- Therefore, when He comes into the world, He says, “SACRIFICE AND OFFERING YOU HAVE NOT DESIRED, BUT A BODY YOU HAVE PREPARED FOR ME; IN WHOLE BURNT OFFERINGS AND sacrifices FOR SIN YOU HAVE TAKEN NO PLEASURE.
“THEN I SAID, ‘BEHOLD, I HAVE COME TO DO YOUR WILL, O GOD.’”
After saying above, “SACRIFICES AND OFFERINGS AND WHOLE BURNT OFFERINGS AND sacrifices FOR SIN YOU HAVE NOT DESIRED, NOR HAVE YOU TAKEN PLEASURE in them” (which are offered according to the Law), then He said, “BEHOLD, I HAVE COME TO DO YOUR WILL.” He takes away the first in order to establish the second. By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Heb 10:4-10).
VI. The ‘vows’ which Christ pledged to keep are the epitome of the love of the Father and the Son toward guilty sinners.
“In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 Jn 4:10). The greatest love story in time or eternity is unfolded in redemptive history. God Almighty has chosen a bride for His Son (Eph 1:4). In eternity past— before the creation of the universe there was a covenant among the members of the Godhead. The Son of God will be given a people without number from every tribe, tongue and nation on the planet (Rev 5:9). These individuals will be formed into a new humanity—fit for God—to be ‘wedded’ to God.
If this ‘conversation’ in eternity past between the Father and the Son in eternity past in human terms, the content could be as follows: In state in which you find her, your bride will hate you My Son, and she will be dead in sin and corruption (Eph 2:1-3). The only way for you to win, and woo, and redeem her is to become the ‘last Adam’ and take on her condemnation, her death, separation and deserved wrath (in a guilt transfer). You will have to go so low as to be tormented and killed on a Roman cross (Phil 2:8). Your humiliation will require you to go so low as to become a human corpse carried to a stone tomb by sinners.
But, your death will be her life. Your death in her place will not raise her, nor awaken love in her merely by an example of sacrificial love. No, your death and resurrection for her will produce in your bride a spiritual resurrection in which she will be given a new heart—a new nature by which she will love you forever. Your death in her place will grant her a new heart and thereby draw out her love for you forever. You will be able to say to her: you are bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. For, indeed, the church was taken out of the side of Christ.
This depth of Christ’s love for His own is expressed in Ephesians 5:22-30 – Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.
Is it possible that Christ came to earth for an unknown bride, and without knowing precisely what His sacrificial work would secure, accomplish and attain? It would be hard to conclude that from this central text on Christ’s particular love for His church. In fact, there is nothing in this text that would suggest that Christ’s redemptive work was a speculative venture— solely providing potentiality. No, this text is a love expression of the covenant of redemption— Christ being guaranteed that His sacrifice would effectually purchase His church, and would ultimately be the cause of her glorification (she would be presented to Him publicly without spot or wrinkle). The Son of God did know by name whom He was purchasing by His incarnation, death, and resurrection. He refers to them as, “those given to me by My Father.”
In Ephesians chapter five, the apostle Paul uses the language of intent—Christ gave Himself the intent of accomplishing the redemption of His bride (that He might sanctify, cleanse, wash, glorify, and present blameless and spotless—He gave Himself to accomplish this end—to bring her from dust to glory). Words to the Hymn, “The Church’s One Foundation:” “The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ, her Lord; she is His new creation by water and the Word. From heaven, He came and sought her to be His holy bride; with His own blood He bought her, and for her life He died. Elect from every nation, yet one o’er all the earth; her charter of salvation: one Lord, one faith, one birth. One holy Name she blesses, partakes one holy food, and to one hope she presses, with every grace endued (first and second stanza).
VII. The whole cosmos is poised for the glorious return of Christ for His bride, the church; He will return as King to install His Kingdom.
According to Isaiah chapter 53 and Hebrews chapter 12 and Hebrews chapter 10, Christ knew that His atoning work would secure a particular goal. He did not lay His life down as a speculative venture. There was not one iota of risk involved in His effectual work. What God promised Christ for His work, is spelled out in numerous Old Testament passages. Christ would be given a world filled only with believers. He would rule over a New Heavens and a New Earth. He would reverse the ruin caused by the first Adam. He would bring endless glory to the Godhead. He would purify for Himself a people zealous for good works. He would be given a bride who would be presented before Him in absolute perfection. He would win a kingdom for Himself of loyal subjects. He would have the joy of being their mediatorial king forever, and he would purchase the glorification of former sinners so that they would be formed into a temple of living stones, housing God’s spirit forever.
The full-orbed gospel involves a comprehensive biblical theism in which this ‘glory story of God in Christ—His plan of the ages is proclaimed. For, the gospel is both an account of what happened historically, and the gospel is God telling us what He did through His Son’s death and resurrection (Acts 17:30-31). The gospel is a proclaiming of the infinite dignity of the One who laid down His life by His Father’s command. By ‘dignity’ we mean that the world was created through the Son of God and for the Son of God—and that all things exist for Him, and by Him. It is His Father’s purpose that He should have first place in everything. We need to become competent at communicating the grand redemptive narrative—a narrative which involves the robust theology of God sending Christ to redeem His bride, of God giving Christ preeminence in everything so that He has first place in creation, redemption, judgment, and restoration (Col 1:15-21).
Now in this present, evil age, the bride of Christ is a persecuted alien and stranger in an enemy occupied world. God is going to ‘trash’ the ecology of this planet during the seven-year tribulation. For, the usurper, (the devil), and all those who follow him will be cast out. This will reach its consummation during the 7-year tribulation when God sends all manner of disaster to begin the eviction process. (See 2 Thessalonians 1:6-10).
This cursed world will become increasingly inhospitable to its inhabitants. Before Christ returns in glory at the second advent, He’s going to take back the title deed to the earth from the usurper and his followers. The tribulation period will be a massive eviction of sinners. In Revelation chapter 21, God says behold I’m making all things new. A new heaven and a new earth is coming, in which righteousness dwells. Only men and women made new will live in this new world.
At times, we forget that a world dominated by sin and death is a very temporary situation. The rebellion and apostasy of our first parents was an abdication of their holy stewardship. Adam’s rebellion plunged the world into corruption, decay, and death. This will all be reversed by the obedience of the last Adam. For, it is His resurrection and exaltation that is the warranty of a new people living in a new heavens and new earth. By His redeeming work, the creation itself will be restored from ruin. The bride of Christ will dwell with her divine husband in paradise.
APPLICATION: Think just how much our adoration of Christ turns upon His fitness to recover, rescue, and raise His Bride dead in her sinful corruptions. So much genuine Christian piety involves exalting Christ by continually matching His perfect suitability to answer every aspect of our ruin. It is complementarity from start to finish.
The consecrated saint is always about the business of matching the dimensions of Christ’s Saviorhood with our sinnership—His work of redemption with our ruin. “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” (Heb 7:26-27).
A true believer is staggered by the ‘vows’ Christ took to bring us from dust to glory—to make us part of God’s ‘forever family’. How we need to rub the spiritual sleep from our eyes and strive for a vivid spiritual sight of this coming glory. Overcomers gain their victories by exercising clear spiritual sight. They make it their vocation to view the glory of the Lord, and are thereby transformed (2 Cor 3:18).
In Acts 14:22, the apostle Paul exhorted the disciples to perseverance, “After they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying, “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.” The apostle Paul warned that perilous times are coming. Our Savior warned that our faith may cost us some of our friends, our relatives, and possibly our lives. How we need to search out the glory of the Lord, for from that vantage point, we can see the battlefield, what is at stake, and the marvel of the coming King and His Kingdom.
Out of spiritual sight, or vision of His glory comes spiritual affections, from which comes assurance, and the resolve to run the race with single-minded endurance and stamina. This ‘kingdom consciousness’ is vital to our victory as overcomers who finish well, and who bring to harvest (‘eye on the prize’). I am reminded of a frequent Puritan refrain: all of this life is preparation for the next life. The greatest act of faith in the believer’s spiritual journey is full confidence in Christ at the hour of one’s death—every day of life is a gracious gift to prepare for that moment. “Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; ²for our God is a consuming fire” (Heb 12:28-29).