Our glorious Lord is the foundation of all the work of God in every age; the source of every blessing for His people of all times; the unique element of cohesion in the whole universe; whether physical or spiritual, historical or moral, on Him everything depends. He is the One in whom: “all the fullness was pleased to dwell” (Col. 1:19); “in him all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily” (Col. 2:9); who is the visible form of the invisible God (Col. 1:15).
This One is the exact expression of the personality of God (Heb. 1:3); who ascends to glory as “this same Jesus”; who will come again exactly as He went away (Acts 1:11); and who is “the same yesterday, and today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8). What He was in the past, both in eternity and in time, He is today, and shall be forever.
Only as our eyes, minds, and hearts are filled with Him in all His love, power, holiness, majesty, and total worthiness can our lives as Christians ever be what God wants them to be. Only then can we know true satisfaction, joy, and peace. Only while beholding Him as He truly is, in all His transcendental power and beauty, shall we find fulfillment and fruit in our service. Only while we are completely occupied with Him, and not questions about Him shall we know what true worship is.
The Scriptures are full of illustrations of this. Abraham found his joy in seeing “Christ’s day,” the day of His supremacy (Jn. 8:56). Isaiah saw His glory and worshipped Him before he was sent out in service to “speak of Him” (Jn. 12:41). The psalmists and poets sang as they mused on His greatness. The prophets poured out their hearts in the most moving and sublime prose as they “all gave witness to Him” (Acts 10:43).
The glory of this One so dimmed every other light and superseded every other loyalty that for love of Him, men, in the measure in which they “saw” Him, left all and lost all just to be His and to serve Him with no thought of self. His was the first name on their lips as they found new life in accepting His Lordship. His was the last name they whispered as they yearned only for acceptance by Him while they died for Him in the stonings of Jerusalem; through the obscene agonies of the Roman arenas; the pogroms of the dark ages; the massacres of China, Japan, South America and the Near East; the horrors of the Inquisition; the fires of Smithfield; the exterminations of Alva and Claverhouse; the cannibalistic orgies of the South Seas; torture and death in Africa.
For Him all is given, all is attempted, all is suffered. To Him all is surrendered, all is devoted and dedicated. But it is to Him, as He truly is, in all His fullness and glory, and not to some limited, watered-down, phantom-Christ who, though called Emmanuel (God with us) and prophetically named The Mighty God, yet found Himself with inward conflict between two opposed natures. It is not an unreal Christ who either emptied Himself of His power and knowledge, or else while “possessing” them could not use them in acting as God in case some mere man should disqualify Him from being the Saviour for so doing. And it was certainly not a Christ so sectionalized that He could know things (as God) and not know them at the same time (as man); could do everything and yet could do nothing.
No, it is a full-orbed Christ who, though in a body and displaying the wounds of His humiliating yet triumphant death, drew from the prostrated disciple the almost gasping exclamation of awe and worship, “My Lord–my God.” It is the Christ who now sits above waiting to appear as “Our great God and Saviour” and who, this same Jesus, will burst the clouds radiating the title “King of Kings and Lord of Lords.”
It is the One who now walks among the churches in all the majestic wisdom of “the Ancient of Days,” who sees everything, knows everything, can do everything, and is everything (Rev. 2 and 3). And it is the very same One who is seen “in the midst of the throne and of the 24 elders, and of the four living creatures,” in Revelation 5, the very seat and center of Godhood and to whom Heaven, Earth, and Hell are prostrated while the redeemed of the Lord chant with the music of the heavens,
“Thou art worthy.”