Following Judah's Lion

The Glory of the Risen Christ

II Tim.2:10 - Therefore I endure all things for the elect’s sake, that they may also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.
II Cor.4:6 - For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

The glory of the Lord. We understand finite and earthly glory to suggest a title or office or even power. But all those are of the earth and are only substantive when it is bestowed upon a man, not that he has that intrinsically of himself. Take a baby that is born to a king and bring him to another nation and he is nothing. His princely bloodlines are not recognized in that country so he is without the benefits of his birthright. So in essence he is just another baby if his royal birth is not acknowledged by the people because his comes from a man made king and his blood is only just that, it is not royal in substance.

So that is man’s glory, that which comes from one man to another which can be withdrawn at anytime and exists at the whim of man. Man’s glory is confined to this world and is fallen and passing. Caesar is no longer king, neither Tutankommen or Hitler or Charlemagne, all have passed and are no longer given esteem or power. And this man made glory can pass off a living person also. Soon after a sitting president is not re-elected he loses much of his protective entourage and although he may be still respected the glory he once had is now gone. The glory of man is only of value in the mind of man itself.

But not so with the glory of God. God’s glory of course includes His mighty deeds but they are only a reflection of the glory that abides in the Godhead itself. God’s glory is God Himself. The absolute divine glory that radiates in many forms both visible and invisible generates from Who God is eternally, and His acts of love and mercy and power are vehicles through which His existent glory manifests itself. Before God spoke the first created Word He dwelt in infinite and colossal glory. We who are so dependant on the visual have a difficult time envisioning the glory of God before creation because creation itself reflects His glory, but go a little further in your worship. God is glory in and of Himself and the reflections of that glory are actually reflections of Him.

Now the most visible manifestation of God’s glory is Jesus Christ Himself which again is God Himself. I realize we are going into deep, deep waters but can you not sense the Spirit leading us into the more intimate and breathtaking reflections of the glory of God? If anyone desires to see God in all His inherent glory do not look at the stars, they are reflections. Not the mountains, not the seas, not the planets, they are still magnificent reflections of God’s glory. But there came a day when God said He would remove the veil and reveal a manifestation of His glory that would eclipse any and everything we had seen heretofore. Cast you faith gaze upon Jesus the Christ, He is not just a reflection of God’s glory, behold, He is God’s glory because His is God.

No man has seen God in His fullness and lived, as when the Lord Jesus came to earth He softened the brightness of His glory by a human body. But make no mistake that glory which authenticated His divine Lordship as God and Creator, peeked through His humanity and gave majestic glimpses as to who this earthly stranger was and always had been. God of God, Very God of Very God. Now the God of the Old Testament dwelt among men and displayed the glory of His presence between the cherubim above the Mercy Seat in the Holy of Holies. One significant night in Bethlehem God removed His glory from the Temple and brought God's glory with Him in the form of a human son of Judah. The angels gathered in a cloud of God’s glory and proclaimed His arrival to the world but they were just magnificent created instruments of God’s glory, this baby was God in all His glory. To explain it is to diminish it, Paul says it is a great mystery. It is beyond the human mind to realize that as the shepherds peered over the trough and saw the hours old infant they were looking into the face of Him Who had made them. The mysterious God who man had considered unapproachable had now come to both proclaim “I am” and also completely pay for the sin that stood in the way of the knowledge of the Holy One.

So this God man lived upon the world He had made and sinlessly struggled through this cursed earth until He arrives at Jerusalem. This was the battlefield which would decide the eternal glory, and this was the cross that would meet death. The Lifegiver would meet death on its own turf and in an incomprehensible act of glorious power He momentarily surrenders His glory. Or did He?

Oh please, do not ever believe that Jesus the Creator ever gave away any of His glory, on the contrary, the glory of the cross bound Savior shines most brightly upon this instrument of death. While the carnal eyes of the flesh see a dead Jew, the eternal eyes of the Spirit recognize the immensity of a victory that would eternally redound to the glory of its very “victim”. The enemy of death had stalked Bethlehem’s arrival since the day He was born. Having caught up with Him on Golgotha death is suddenly captured in its own snare. The Incarnate One captures death in His own prepared body and defeats it for whosoever will receive it by faith in the Victor. The gore, the cuts, the thorns, the nails, the stripes, and the blood reflect the glory of the sacrificial Lamb, if you can see through the Spirit.

But as infinitely glorious was the cross, the incubation of three additional earth days holds in it a glory that will forever be matchless in its praise. The Captain of our Salvation has not only defeated death in His own body and removed our sins, He has resurrected from that same death. Oh if the enemies of God had only known they might have realized that God was actually using their own evil schemes to perfect His ultimate plan. And on the third day that prepared body rises from the loaned slab with death in shambles, enters into life again, and a new glory walks from Joseph of Aramathea’s tomb. It is now not just Bethlehem’s divine baby, not just the miracle working Messiah, not just Calvary’s Lamb, this is the Risen Christ!

So at the ascension the Risen Christ in all His eternal glory again enters heaven from whence He had come.

“Lift up your heads, O ye gates and be lift up ye everlasting doors and the King of Glory shall come in. Who is this King of Glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle!

The Second Person of the Godhead rides as it were back into His eternal dwelling place and there is a throne reserved for Him. Oh look and wonder at Him, He had left with all the fullness of the glory of the Godhead, but can you not see that He has about and in Him an everlasting glory that He has gained through His victory? The Author of Life has defeated death and is the first born from the womb of the grave and His glory illuminates all of heaven. Shield your eyes all you earth dwellers because you will buckle under the weight of such enduring glory. He is He who was dead, Who now lives forevermore, exuding a everlasting glory that crowned His incarnate head when “up from the grave He arose, a mighty Victor ore His foes”.

How is it possible that God, who has all glory, can gain more glory? That question from a son of man exhibit’s a profound lack of understanding about the strength of death found in sin. The victory that Christ won by His death and through the eternal promenade of His resurrection is beyond words. And to document the path to His resurrection He maintains His nail scars, glorious wounds of remebrance lest we forget. And those of us who caused His sufferings can by faith be granted an entrance into His actual presence and allowed to fall before this Majestic Lamb of Glory and worship Him forever. Selah.

So go ahead those of you who feel any sense of awe at the feats of man, or those who swoon at dignitaries and monarchs, or who follow sports figures, or are breathless at great buildings, go ahead. But there is coming a day when upon the very first glimpse of the glory of the Risen Christ all the glories of men and angels will be forever swallowed up in the pitifulness of their own inadequacy, and in just the shadow of His glory will they be seen as darkness.

And all of heaven will at one great and august moment bow before the throne and will be eternally consumed with the object of their worship, the glory of the Risen Christ.