Saturday, February 21, 2009
Isaiah 53:2 He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
HIS GREATEST GLORY REVEALED
One of my favorite pictures of the baby Jesus is a close-up where Mary is holding the child in her lap with the dark night sky behind them. The thing I like about the painting is that Jesus is glowing, lighting up the front of Mary's robe as she peers down on Him.
Of course, Jesus didn't really glow. When He became a man, God the Son suppressed his unlimited wisdom, his unstoppable power, and yes, He veiled the bright glory that was rightfully His.
His glory was not gone, just put away for a time. Hidden under the flesh and blood of His human body.
Yet from time to time that glory was revealed to the world. Like rays of sunlight that peak through the clouds on an overcast day, the Son's glory shone forth in each miracle that He performed.
If you've been to church during Epiphany, you've probably heard about a good number of these miracles. Sometimes that glory flashed out before few, like when Jesus changed the water to wine at the wedding in Cana. And sometimes it flashed out to crowds of onlookers, like when four-day-dead Lazarus was raised to life and left his tomb on his recently decaying legs.
But the greatest revealing of Jesus' hidden glory was yet to come.
Tomorrow is Transfiguration Sunday. That's the day on which we remember how Jesus showed His visible "God-glory" to three of His disciples on a mountainside. But even that remarkable event wasn't the greatest revealing of Jesus' hidden glory.
Jesus took away the horror filled punishment for our sin by suffering it in our place. There on the ugly cross of Calvary, where a Man bleeds and sweats and breathes heavy; there in the darkness of Good Friday's afternoon is the greatest revelation of Jesus' hidden glory. We see it in His uncompromising love.
Go to church tomorrow. See His glory. And God bless you this Lent.
