Christ – the Image of God

For the Lord’s Day:  the 27^th of October  2002

 

Hebrews: 1: 3b

 

In these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, …

the exact imprint of his nature.

 

Introduction:  Today we must start with a consideration of translations to make certain we know what we are talking about.  In The New King James, we read our text in these words:  “the express image of His person.”  The New International Version reads:  “the exact representation of his being,” while The Revised Standard Version reads: “the very stamp of his nature”.

 

The reason we have to be careful here is summarized by the Scots commentator John Brown who would clarify the textus receptus phrase of the authorized King James versions in these words:  “The term person is not here used in the sense which it bears in systematic theology, as expressive of the distinctions which exist in the one divinity – a sense which the words did not assume till about the beginning of the fourth century.  The phrase seems more analogous to another theological term, the Person of Christ – which means just Christ Himself.  The person, or substance, or mode of subsistence of God, is just equivalent to God Himself, and when Christ is called the express image of God’s person, the idea is, the exact resemblance of His Father, as the figure engraved is a resemblance of the object it represents.”

 

“The exact imprint of his nature,” is the phrasing of our English Standard Version, which I have chosen to follow in our meditation for today.  And I believe that the carefulness of those words do convey the phrasing in the Greek which uses an engraving term only here in the New Testament to describe the exact, express or very stamp of the Father’s substance, being and nature.

 

And just because we are being careful in how we word this, it is not because we are being deferential to the doctrines of the church which developed over several centuries.  All we are saying is that what Jesus tells the disciples in the glorious Gospel of John.  Turn with me to (John 14: 8-11) “Philip said to him, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.’  Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.  How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?  The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.  Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.”

 

Let us make certain that no one is thinking of the obvious bodily features of Christ!  I have met students twenty years after we knew each other, and believe me we have all changed – recognition comes to us in those circumstances because of other less obvious elements – the way a hand moves, the posture of the body, the sound of a voice, a laugh or if I may use a worldly word: the persona of the person.  Most of my former students realize my hair color has matured and that I have grown a second chin amongst other obvious changes over the decades.  But we still are able to realize the nature of the person in question.

 

What we are getting at is wrapped up in the real danger of using pictures of Christ for teaching and letting actors portray Him in films and plays.  Recognition then is thought of in all too human terms and experience.  God is Other than we are, but not beyond spiritual perception and recognition if He allows it!  This is why Christ was so easily recognized after His resurrection, once the initial surprise of the human impossibility of the moment is put aside.  Didn’t the two disciples on the road to Emmaus catch the persona correctly – in His words and knowledge of Scripture, rather than in His appearance?

 

Development:  Now, we have spent enough time getting around the obvious problems in understanding this passage.  Let us move on to a more detailed consideration of what the writer to the Hebrews really wanted to convey.  In Paul’s letter to the Colossians (1: 15) he writes about Christ:  “He is the image of the invisible God.”  Then Paul goes on in great detail to say much the same as did the author of Hebrews about who Christ was what He accomplished before time began and in the last days when He showed the very nature of God to those called to Himself.  John’s Gospel is also full of wonderful nuggets of wisdom in the same regard, especially in the prologue of the first chapter, and even in the book of Revelation 3: 14 we find a hint of this same theme:  “The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s creation”

 

 

 

 

 

Let us develop several lessons from these passages.  Look first at Colossians 1: 15-20.  F.F. Bruce describes this passage as a three strophe hymn of the early church, with the three strophes reflecting:

 

1.        Christ the Agent in Creation                                            (15-16)

2.        Lord of the Universe and Head of the Church            (17-18a)

3.        Christ the Agent in Reconciliation.                                 (18b-20)

 

For our purposes this morning, we will consider only the first two verses:

 

¹⁵             He is the image of the invisible God,

                                the firstborn of all creation.

¹⁶             For by him all things were created,

                                in heaven and on earth,

                                 visible and invisible,

                                whether thrones or dominions

                                or rulers or authorities

                all things were created through him and for him.

 

Certainly, we see in those verses similar in impact to the whole of the first verses in the first chapter of Hebrews.  Bruce tells us, “The first strophe celebrates the role of Christ in creation, most probably in his character as the Wisdom of God.  This early Christian theme, which exercised a major influence on the church’s Christological thought.”

 

Note the use of the phrase describing Christ’s character as the Wisdom of God, which we examined in some detail last week.  And as we noted from Owen last week concerning the third verse of chapter one:  “This description of the person in whom God spoke in the revelation of the Gospel has three parts: first, declaring what he is; second, what he does, or did; and, third, the consequence of the first two.” 

 

Thus, it is difficult for us to unwrap the radiance from the imprint and the working out of the word of His power.  Our problem in description and comprehension here is aptly described by Calvin when he refers to the “radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.”  “They are words borrowed from nature.  For nothing can be said of things so great and so profound, but by similitudes taken from created things.  There is therefore no need refinedly to discuss the question how the Son, who has the same essence with the Father, is a brightness emanating from his light.  We must allow that there is a degree of impropriety in the language when what is borrowed from created things is transferred to the hidden majesty of God.”

 

Anyway, for whatever benefit we may bring from this discussion, the glory and image are not readily apparent for every person under the sun.  Paul limits “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” in 2 Corinthians 4:4 to those who are not perishing and going the way of the world.  F.F. Bruce compares Ezekiel’s vision in (1: 26) “and seated above the likeness of a throne was a likeness with a human appearance,” with Paul’s description of “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (2 Corinthians 4: 6)

 

Bruce explains that Paul “is not simply echoing someone else’s form of words here; he is expressing what his own experience confirmed to be the truth.  To say that Christ is the image of God is to say that in him the nature and being of God have been perfectly revealed – that in him the invisible has become visible.”

 

But, we are left with a nagging thought; can mankind truly comprehend everything that the Creator God puts before us?  If the worldly, the wicked cannot even see or sense that which we have known from the Scriptures, how much more of the great and awesome glory of God remains for us to realize when we are transported to eternity at the end of the age?  After all, in the Exodus experience, very many neither saw nor heard what Moses and the elders reported as the presence.  Neither did very many affirm that Jesus was the Christ when they had a first hand occasion to see God incarnate in the person of the Son of Mary.

 

Let’s move on to the first verses of John’s glorious Gospel:  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.  In him was life, and the life was the light of men.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”  (John 1: 1-5

 

Moving on to verse nine, we read:  “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.  He was in the world and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.  He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.  But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.  And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

 

Then in verses sixteen to eighteen we read:  “And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.  For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.  No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.”

 

Application:  Calvin reports in his analysis of the last verse:  “When he says that none has seen God, it is not to be understood of the outward seeing of the physical eye.  He means generally that, since God dwells in inaccessible light, He cannot be known except in Christ, His lively image.  Moreover, they usually expound this verse thus: since the naked majesty of God is hidden within Himself, He could never be comprehended except in that He has revealed Himself in Christ. … How much better our state is than the patriarchs’, in that God, who was then concealed in His secret glory, has now in a sense made Himself visible.  For certainly, when Christ is called ‘the express image of God’, it refers to the special blessing of the New Testament.”

 

And what is that blessing?  Your knowledge of Jesus Christ!  In the sense of what we are getting at in this passage that tells us Jesus Christ is  “the exact imprint of [God’s] nature”  If you understand that, if you can see Christ is revealed in the Scriptures and through Him you know the Father, then you understand what the Apostle to the Hebrews is writing about!  Praise the Lord for the saving wisdom revealed in His “exact imprint”: Jesus Christ.  Amen.

 

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PREACHING RESOURCES

 

Brown, John.  A Geneva Series Commentary: Hebrews.

Bruce, F.F. The Epistle to the Hebrews.

Bruce, F.F. The Epistles to the Colossians, Philemon & Ephesians.

Parker, T.H.L. Calvin’s Commentaries: The Gospel according to St John.

Owen, John:  Commentary on Book of Hebrews.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version

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