Looking at the Face of Jesus, Part 2
2 Corinthians 4:2
We come to the time in the Word of God this morning with great joy in our hearts as we return to 2 Corinthians chapter 4. As you know, we are working our way through this masterful epistle of the beloved Paul. We're learning so much about ministry and so much about spiritual life because this really does come from his heart.
And as we have come to the last verse of chapter 3 and then on in to the first six verses of chapter 4, we're in a little series entitled, "Looking at the Face of Jesus...Looking at the Face of Jesus." Let me read this text for you so you'll have it in mind, beginning in chapter 3 verse 18: "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. Therefore since we have this ministry as we received mercy we do not lose heart. But we have renounced the things hidden because of shame, not walking in craftiness or adulterating the Word of God but by the manifestation of truth, commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing in whose case the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving 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 bondservants for Jesus' sake for God who said light shall shine out of darkness is the one who is shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ."
The Christian life, as we noted last time, is, after all...is blown away and the truth remains a life related to Jesus Christ in a very personal and intimate way. In fact, this is the distinction of the new covenant. The gospel of the new covenant is that God may be personally and intimately known to us because He is revealed in the person of Jesus Christ to look fully into the face of Jesus Christ and we find to be a saving and a sanctifying look. It is that look which saves, it is that look which brings about growth.
We suggested to you last time that the Scripture is very clear that the Christian life is all about gazing at the glory of God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ. It is a Christ-centered life. It is a Christ focus, the vision is Christ at all times in Christian experience. And that's the way it began. Even our Lord Jesus Himself described salvation in these terms when in John chapter 6 and verse 40 He said, "This is the will of My Father that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have eternal life." Eternal life belongs to those who see Christ, who see Him for who He is and who is revealed in Him, namely God the Father. Jesus Christ is the one in whom the fullness of the Godhead is expressed visibly. Jesus Christ is the one full of grace and truth, that grace and truth which is the very glory of the Father.
So, new life begins when we see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And growth in that new life continues as we look at the face of Jesus. Christian life then again I say after all is blown away and the truth remains is a life related to Jesus Christ in a very personal and intimate way.
The song writer many years ago captured this truth when he wrote these familiar words, "Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace." There is great truth in that. There is biblical truth in that. There is profound truth in that. The Christian life is gazing at the glory of Jesus Christ and watching the things of this earth grow dim. The Christian life is looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, fixing our eyes on Him as Hebrews 12:2 says it. As we run the faith race with endurance, free from entanglements and besetting sins, we do so with our eyes on Jesus Christ.
A more modern chorus that we often sing puts it this way: "Open our eyes, Lord, we want to see Jesus, to reach out and touch Him and say that we love Him." Your spiritual condition is measured by your gaze at the glory of God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ.
That's how it all started when you were saved. And I hope that vision is unsullied and unhindered and unobstructed and the constant focus of your life every day. A vision of the Lord Jesus at one point in time lifted the veil of spiritual ignorance and brought you to the knowledge of the truth in your heart. The vision of Jesus Christ dispelled the fog of confusion that was produced by your sins so that you could see the work of God in salvation and reach out to receive the blessing of the gift that He offered you.
If you're a Christian at some point in time you saw Jesus. You beheld the Son, to borrow His own words, and you received eternal life. You looked into His face and you saw in His face the revelation of the glory of God. You saw God, you saw who He was and what He required and what He provided and you believed and were saved.
Let's go back and talk about the Apostle Paul since this text is really a personal testimony of his. And let's remember that Paul had never seen Jesus physically. Unlike the other Apostles, he was an Apostle sort of out of due season. He was a unique Apostle who had never seen Jesus physically during His earthly ministry. The first vision he ever had of Jesus was a blinding, blazing vision of His glory on the Damascus road. There were several other visions of the glorified Christ after that but up until the time of his conversion he had never seen Jesus. And yet in 2 Corinthians 4:16 he says, "He knew Christ after the flesh." What did he mean by that? He had never seen Jesus, how did he know Him after the flesh? He simply meant he knew the historical story of Jesus. I knew the human Jesus. I was familiar with the historical information and data about him.
In fact, you want to know something? He was so familiar with the life of Jesus, so familiar with the history of His life, so familiar with His teachings that Jesus had become the focus of his whole life even though he wasn't a Christian. In fact, he knew enough about Jesus so that Jesus dominated his life, not in a positive sense but in a negative sense. He knew enough about Jesus to hate Him with a passion and to hate everything that Jesus stood for and to literally devote his life to the persecution, the imprisonment and the execution of the followers of Jesus. So even as an unbeliever, Jesus was the focal point of his life, Jesus after the flesh, the historical Jesus, the earthly Jesus. He knew Him well enough, he saw Him clearly enough to hate Him. What he never saw with his physical eyes he saw with his mental eyes and rejected.
But wonder of wonders, one day on the Damascus road he came to see Jesus not with his mind and not with his physical eyes but with his heart. He came to see with spiritual eyes. And for the first time he looked into the face of Jesus spiritually. He didn't see Him physically because the blinding glory literally left him without sight. And in his blindness his heart saw Jesus for the first time as He really was. He looked into the face of Jesus with spiritual eyes and he was so totally transformed that Jesus was still the consuming passion of his life but it wasn't the hate for Jesus, it was the love for Jesus that drove him. It reversed completely the direction of his whole life and for that matter the direction of the whole world. He became the notable, most notable describer of Jesus that ever lived. He became the greatest advocate for spiritual sight that ever lived. So well and so clearly did he see the face of Jesus that he became the number one articulator of who He is and why He came and what He will do. He wrote 13 epistles of the New Testament. He founded churches all over the known world, led myriads uncountable to Jesus Christ and is still doing it through the impact and power of his letters. With his physical eyes he never saw Jesus. He thought he saw Jesus with his mind but he was wrong. One day in his physical blindness he saw the pure face of Jesus and the blinding glory of God and he says it was, in Acts 26:19, a heavenly vision. That's the vision of Jesus that counts.
I've never seen Jesus nor have any of us, obviously, because He's been long gone from this earth. But whom having not seen we yet love because though we have not seen Him in the physical sense we have seen Him with the spiritual eyes. It's wonderful that people who never saw Him physically can see and know Him spiritually. And that's the story of salvation. But it's so tragic to think back to the fact that there were so many people who were alive when Jesus walked on the earth who saw Him physically but never understood Him. They saw Him with their physical eyes and they never saw the glory of God at all. They looked into the face of Jesus but never saw the glory of God. It was there all the time, manifestly there. He was in the world, the world was made by Him and the world...what?...knew Him not. He came unto His own and His own received Him not. There they were looking into the face of the revealed glory of God and they never saw it.
How sad. A.T. Robertson writes in his book The Glory of the Ministry, "Many persons had looked on the face of Jesus while in the flesh who did not understand Him. There was beyond doubt a wondrous fascination in the face of Jesus that no artist has succeeded in putting upon canvas. The pictures of Jesus are either too effeminate or too crude. No face has ever so haunted and baffled the greatest artists. This face was really human but free from the taint of sin and disease. No specter of the past looked through those eyes, no shadows of forbidden secrets flitted past. Pity, unutterable compassion looked out of the depths of purity and unsullied strength. Untarnished truth looked out on a world of lies. The noblest impulses of man met the shock of hate and envy. The clear light of heaven's love gazed longingly at the suffering and the sinning. Those eyes could flash with terrific power upon hypocrites who used the livery of heaven to serve the devil in. Before His wrath, men slunk away like cowed beasts guilty and condemned. But the penitent and the contrite saw a new hope as they looked in the face of Jesus. There were some who could never forget the thrill of joy which came to their hearts as they gazed into that face. At moments they could be amazed at the struggling emotions in His countenance. There were three who beheld His majestic glory on the mount. But not all men could see all this in the face of Jesus. The rabbis were angered to desperation as they saw that calm and powerful face. Its very innocence enraged them," end quote.
What a face...what a face. But for Paul, finally he looked in to the face of Jesus and saw the reality. And so has everyone who has come to Christ, so has everyone born again under the new covenant. It is a coming to see the face of Christ. And in that face the glory of God revealed.
Famous blind preacher named Matthison wrote these words about Paul, he said, "Remember the Christ whom Paul first saw was the Christ of heaven. He never gazed upon the man of Galilee. His earliest vision was the vision of a Jesus glorified, not on the road to the cross did Christ meet him. He came to him panoplied in heavenly splendor. What his inner eye beheld was the Christ of the future, a Christ of majesty, a Christ if power, a Christ who came clothed in the lightning and wreathed in the conqueror's robe. That was the first Christ Paul's soul saw. It is wonderful that it should have been the first Christian image in his writings."
Well that famous blind preacher had seen into the secret of Paul's heart, hadn't he? He saw Jesus. He saw Him on the road to Damascus. He saw Him not with his eyes but with his heart and he never stopped gazing at Him as long as he lived. And even when he came to the very end in 2 Timothy chapter 4 and he takes up his pen for the very last time and writes his last letter and waits to be executed, he identifies himself as a member of an association of people who love His appearing. He has seen Him all his spiritual life with the eyes of his heart and he longs to see Him with those glorified physical eyes. And he will, and so will all of us.
Once Paul saw Christ on the Damascus road, he never again took his eyes off Jesus. And that's why he was the man that he was. That's where all of his strength and power came from. That's where the truth came from, that vision, that look, that perception. That's where courage and boldness came from. That's where virtue came from and wisdom. He never took his gaze off Jesus Christ. He said to the Philippians, "This one thing I do, I press toward the goal." And who was the goal for him? Jesus Christ, the prize of the upward call. His whole life was focused on following Christ and following Christ and following Christ. And he said on several occasions, "Be ye followers of me as I am of Christ." He never took his eyes off Christ.
And, beloved, it is that glorious vision of God revealed in Christ that is the essence of new covenant blessing. It is that which the Old Testament saint never saw. It is that reality which sets the new covenant apart. The veil is gone and we see Christ and we see the glory of God blazingly revealed in His fullness in the face of Jesus Christ. And Paul says I came to that vision and I've never left it. Jesus is my vision and my focus, the object of all of my life. And he found in looking into the face of Jesus Christ strength for every issue, grace for every need.
And that is the plea of the great text before us. The plea of this text is to hear the testimony of a man who had an indomitable life, who had a successful spiritual life, who was mightily used by God, who enjoyed peace and comfort and tranquility and hope in the midst of turmoil because he never took his eyes off Jesus Christ. That is the plea of this text to call us to that same vision to see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ and find a glory sufficient for every issue of life.
Now remember, we've already learned that at the time in which Paul writes this, he is no doubt in the greatest turmoil and distress of his own personal ministry. The accumulated difficulties of this period of time are heavier than any other time. Not only the external persecution, the threat of death which was already around him in an endless way, every turn he took was potentially the last turn. But also this burden of carrying the pain of defection in the church, people leaving sound doctrine, falling into sin, being disobedient and add to that the unending character assassination that was going on against him to totally discredit and destroy him. All of this mounted accumulated stuff had placed him under a burden which was more than he could bear. He even says, "I was depressed." But he never lost his vision of Christ. And as he turned to look at the face of Jesus in the midst of all of this he found joy, he found hope, he found reassurance, he found confidence.
And he gives us his testimony here but it's the testimony or should be of every new covenant believer. And that's why it starts in chapter 3 verse 18, "But we all..." This is not something isolated only to the Apostle Paul, anymore than the glory of God on the face of Moses was isolated to him. This is for all of us. We can all now behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus as 3:18 and 4:6 both say. This section is bracketed in verse 18 and down in verse 6 with the same concept, the glory of God is revealed in the face of Jesus Christ into whose face we now look by faith. And in that face we find the glory of God revealed and it is a sufficient glory to sustain us in every issue of life.
So we're talking then about looking into the face of Jesus, aren't we? And I told you last time, first of all it is a clarifying look. Go back to verse 18 of chapter 3. "We all with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord." Contrary to the old covenant with its shadows and its pictures and its types, we now without a veil, without a hindrance can look directly right into the glory of the Lord revealed to us in the mirror of Jesus Christ who is the theme of Scripture. God is on display and He's on display in Christ. And there's nothing hindering us. There's no veil. There's no obstruction. We're out of the shadows. We're into the reality. We're out of the types and the pictures, we're into the reality. And as we look clearly into the face of Christ, we see the glory of God and we see that He is sovereign, He is able, He is trustworthy for all the issues of life. The new covenant vision of Jesus Christ is a clarifying look.
Secondly, we said it is a transforming look. And this is just review. The middle of the verse says we are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory by the Holy Spirit. As we look at the face of Jesus Christ we begin to become like Him. That's the work of the Holy Spirit. Maintaining that look makes us like Him. That's why Paul says I press toward that. That's the one thing I do, I never take my eyes off Jesus because as I gaze at Him the Holy Spirit makes me like Him, moving me from one level of glory to a higher, to a higher, to a higher, ever increasingly like Him.
That old blind preacher that I quoted a moment ago, Matthison, said this and it's a beautiful thing. He said, "As Paul looked at Jesus there happened a strange thing, the picture crept into his own soul." The picture crept into his own soul...it is a transforming look.
And then thirdly we said it is a strengthening look. Therefore...verse 1 says...since we have this ministry, as we received mercy we do not lose heart. Because of the overwhelming privilege of new covenant calling, because of the overwhelming privilege of being redeemed by grace, because of the tremendous privilege of being called to ministry all from God, all amazing, all undeserved to the chief of sinners, because of all of those privileges, how could I lose heart...he says. New covenant privilege compels me.
Remember now, the word "lose heart" means to abandon oneself to cowardly surrender. And under the heat of the battle as he was assaulted and assassinated in terms of his character, as he was attacked on every front, as his life was jeopardized and his people were defecting and those who he loved most were breaking his heart, he never lost heart. Why? Because he never got his ego tied up in all of that. He was always aware he was the chief of sinners. And anything that God ever gave him was all pure grace anyway. And he just remained utterly overwhelmed by the privilege of being a new covenant person, as well as a new covenant preacher. And the basis of his courage was not the appreciation of men, it wasn't the success of his efforts, the size of his church, it wasn't a pain-free life. The basis of his courage was the privilege of gazing into the face of Jesus Christ and seeing the full blazing glory of God. The basis of his courage was a fresh vision of mercy and grace to save and call a wicked sinner like him. And what did he deserve anyway?
So he found as long as he gazed at the beauty of Jesus Christ, he found in that not only a clarifying look, but he found in that a strengthening look as well as a transforming look. Now that takes us to a fourth point and this is an important one. Gazing into the face of Jesus Christ is a purifying look...it is a purifying look.
This is indicated to us in verse 2 by these words, "But we have renounced the things hidden because of shame, not walking in craftiness." We'll stop right there.
Paul says from the start when the chief of sinners was saved there was a renouncing, there was a renouncing. Well what do you mean a renouncing? Well the word basically means to turn from, turn away from. I just turned my back on that stuff. I wanted no part of it from the start until now. From the very beginning when I first saw the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ on the Damascus road, in that moment when I saw that everything I had achieved in my works was skubalon, filth, rubbish, dung, manure as he calls it in Philippians 3...when I saw that all of that stuff was filth and I saw Christ and in Him was beauty and glory, in Him was righteousness and power and peace, in Him was sympathy and compassion and eternal hope, from that moment on I renounced the things hidden because of shame and walking in craftiness. And he also adds, and we'll say more about that in a moment, "adulterating the Word of God."
From the very start he says I was committed to purity. When I saw the glory of God purely revealed in the face of Jesus Christ, it was a vision of holiness, it was a vision of righteousness, it was a vision of virtue, it was a vision of purity. From that moment on he devoted his life to the pursuit of godliness. And from that moment on, I can promise you, he hated sin. Read about it in Romans chapter 7. "O wretched man that I am," he says, "who will deliver me from the body of this death? There is in me a principle of sin and I despise it, I loathe it, I hate it. Who will deliver me from it?"
No, there is a renouncing that happens at salvation, a real renouncing. And Paul is simply testifying to that renouncing. When a person is born again and when they really see the vision of the glory of God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ, they understand who God is, what He requires, what He's done in Christ, the provision of salvation and they see the vision and believe and receive eternal life, at that moment there is a renouncing, there is a turning from sin and a devoting of one's life toward the pursuit of godliness. And so, he is confessing to that reality of renunciation, turning away.
There's a little footnote I need to give you here, very important. I'm quite confident that these specific things that he mentions here are the very things that the false apostles in Corinth were accusing him of. I think in their attempt to sully his reputation and to destroy his character and to eliminate any trust that the people had in him, they were saying these things. "There's a secret life of this man, you don't know about it." They were saying things like, "You know, underneath this is a sinful man, there's a lot of wickedness in his life and it's under the surface and it's hidden and you don't know it." And I think they were saying also that he walks in deceit, he is a deceiver, he is a crafty fellow, he's very deceptive, he's very manipulative. They were trying to destroy people's confidence in him by questioning, of course, his character. And I am confident they also accused him of adulterating the Word of God. It may have been that some of them were carrying a Judaizing message and saying he's eliminated the law of God. He's turned his back on the inspired truth that was given in the Old Testament and now he twists and perverts even the teaching of Jesus. I think these are the very things the false apostles were accusing Paul of doing. And that's why he picks these out. And he says at the beginning, "We have renounced the things hidden because of shame." Listen, from the moment of my salvation on, I turned my back on a second hidden life."
You can believe he had one. You can believe while he was running around like a pious Jew who was keeping the law outwardly and blameless outwardly and a Pharisee in towing the line and walking the mark, having been circumcised, keeping the Jewish traditions, zealous and all of those things that he lists there in Philippians 3, you can believe that while he was doing that on the outside he was wretched down underneath and there was some hidden shame in his life. There was hypocrisy of a profound level because this was no Old Testament believer, this was no Christian man, this was no Old Testament saint either because even the Old Testament saints were saved by grace through faith and he certainly believed in salvation by works, and that doesn't save anybody, never did.
So here was a man who knew what it was to be running around as a pious Pharisee, holding up the standard of Judaism and killing the people who threatened Judaism, while underneath there was a life of shame because legalism cannot restrain the flesh, it never could, it never will. And a false means of salvation doesn't transform anybody. But the point at which he came to Christ he renounced that hidden life.
That's what happens when you're saved. You turn your back on that old life, that hypocritical life underneath the sort of good citizen life on the outside that you may have maintained even as a non-Christian. You turned your back on the secret things that are hidden because of their shame. He says I renounced all that stuff. I turned my back on that when I came to Christ, I don't have a secret sinful life. They may be accusing me of it but I don't have that. That doesn't mean that sin never crept into his life but when it did he dealt with it, confessed it and asked the Lord to help him turn from it. It doesn't mean that he didn't feel the plague of sin hanging on but it wasn't a willful second hidden life of shame that he was conducting. There was no secret sinful life.
The word "shame" there, aischune, means ugly, disgraceful. Has to do with secret immoralities, secret hypocrisies, things that are hidden d