Sermon Bible Commentary
2 Corinthians 4:6
I suppose each one has his own ideal Christ. As you think of Him He appears with the face your imagination loves to give Him. If we do not know much about the actual outline of His face, there are many things that we do know concerning it, and I want to turn a few lights of Scripture on the lovely face of Jesus Christ. Let us see what is said about His countenance.
I. I observe, first, that the face of Jesus was a sad face. Think of the sorrow, care, grief, fastings, watchings, anxieties, which this Man of Nazareth had. Do you think that any man could be, as He was, a man of sorrows and griefs acquaintance, and not bear some marks of it upon his face? His countenance became so careworn and haggard that He looked twenty years older than He was; for when but thirty, the Jews, guessing His age, said, "Thou art not yet fifty years old." Look into those sad eyes of His, and when you have had a little communion with the Man of sorrows and grief's acquaintance, I believe you will drink in an inspiration to bear your trials which you never had before.
II. The face of Jesus Christ was a face full of purpose and indicative of force of character. "He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem." Go and see Christ just before that baptism of His into sorrow and suffering, and go forward to bear your cares and sorrows aright; and when you look into that face so steadfastly set to go towards Jerusalem, ask God to give you also an unswerving spirit in treading the path of Divine direction.
III. The face of Jesus Christ was an outraged face.
IV. It was a face shrouded in death.
V. It was a glorified face. It shineth like the sun now.
VI. It is the terror of the ungodly.
VII. It is a face that may be sought. "When Thou saidst, Seek ye My face, my heart said unto Thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek."
A. G. Brown, Penny Pulpit,new series, No. 828.
The Light of the Heart.
I. The first and simplest truth involved in the text is the universality of the grace of God in Christ at least, its capability of application to all mankind. This is implied in the unlimited range of influence attributed to the Divine light, as shining not on a chosen few, e.g.,on the Apostles themselves, but on all whom St. Paul addressed, uniting his brethren with himself in a community of participation of the same grace, the same light shining on ourhearts; and also in the imagery employed, the light of the day being a universal gift, shed without limit for the common benefit of all creatures. Thus the light of Christ hath shined without respect of persons on our common humanity.
II. Moreover the text touches upon the momentous difference permitted between the elect of the past and those of the present dispensation of God; the marked distinction in the relation in which Israel stood towards Him and that which we occupy. In the Epistles there is expressed no such cry as that which continually rose out of the heart of old Israel. On the contrary, the most restful spirit, though in the midst of sorest trials, marks the language of the Apostles, and their ground of rest lies in the inherent consciousness of God.
III. The light shining in our hearts is not merely the manifestation of the truth or the possession of an idea. It is the light of the glory of God in the Faceof Jesus Christ which has shined in our hearts.
IV. It requires to be carefully noted that there is a momentous difference between the inward shining of God in the heart and the heart's own embracing of this perfect light. We may be all alike in regard to the one, but infinitely differing in regard to the other.
V. Again, we see here the basis on which a true human fellowship is formed. Our feelings towards our fellow-creatures are true, if we view them in the light which the Incarnation has shed on our redeemed nature. Natural love, when combined with this new bond of union with God, becomes the deepest rest and satisfaction of the heart's language towards God; and spiritual ties may become as close, as tender, as full of sympathy, of rest and trustful communion, as the fondest ties of nature, through the unction of the Holy One uniting heart with heart in the circle of Divine love which is shed abroad upon the creature in his transformation in Christ.
T. T. Carter, Sermons,p. 359.
The Gospel of the Face.
Consider if there is not a gospel of the face, an all-transcending fact-form, life-form gospel made out for us, which it behoves us always to live in, and have always living in us; for the most living form of the doctrine is that, of course, which as our human nature works will have the most immediate and divinest power.
I. Let us look into the New Testament, and distinguish, if we can, what is called preaching there. And we find our Apostle testifying, " Whomwe preach that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus." He does not say aboutwhom, or the just account and formula of whom, but whom:the fact-form Man, the life and life-history and feeling and sorrow and death and resurrection of the Man. The souls to be gained are to be presented perfect in Christ Jesus; that is, in the new possibilities and powers of grace embodied for them in the face and person, or personal life, of their incarnate Redeemer.
II. What importance there is in a revelation or presentation of God, which enters Him into the world as He can be entered in no form of abstraction. The very purpose of incarnation is to get by or away from abstractions, and give the world a concrete personation. Thus in Christ's living person, we are to have God, who is above all history, entered into history, and by such human ways of life as history takes note of, becoming incorporate with it.
III. If there is to be any remedy for the precise disability and woe of sin, it must be such as may, in some way, restore God to His place in the soul. Re-inspiration is our first want, for not even the Holy Spirit re-inspires, save as He shows the things of Christ objectively without. God is to look Himself in again from the face of Jesus; but what is nowise different, Jesus dying into our dead sympathies, is to enter back the Divine and quicken us to life.
IV. It is a consideration having great weight, that no other kind of doctrine but that which adheres to the concrete, matter-of-fact gospel makes a true, or any but a false point for faith. Salvation, we say, is by faith, and what is faith? The faith that brings salvation is the act of a being towards a being, sinner to Saviour, man to God. "He that believeth in Me"says Christ not he that believeth some things or many things about Me. It is the act of an undone, lost man, giving himself over in trust to Jesus Christ, person to person; a total consenting to Christ, to be of Him and with Him and for Him, to let Him heal and renovate and govern, and be made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption in one word, everything.
V. It is a fact to be carefully noted, that all the best saints and most impressive teachers of Christ are those who have found how to present Him best in the dramatic forms of His personal history. Such were Chrysostom, Augustine, Luther, Tauler, Wesley. These great souls could not be shut up under the opinional way of doctrine, or even under their own opinions. Their gospel was not dry and thin and small in quantity. They had a wonderful outspreading of life and volume, because they breathed so freely the supernatural inspiration of Christ, and let their inspiration forth in such grand liberties of utterance.
H. Bushnell, Sermons on Living Subjects,p. 73.
I. God commanded the light to shine out of darkness. To this, after all, we must come. When we have discovered the properties of any natural agent, and pass from inquiring what it is to inquire whyit is, we have no answer left but the will of the Almighty Creator. He willed it, and so it was, or as His word expresses it in condescension to our human ways, He spake it, and it was. Such is the Divine character. God is not the author of confusion, not the abettor of obscurity and concealment, not the enemy of life and progress; but the God of order and peace, the God of revelation and of knowledge, the Friend of all that was made and of its highest advance to life and happiness. In the text a spiritual act of God is spoken of analogous to the creation of light in the outward world. That He who is light and the Father of light, who is the author of that which reveals and cheers the physical world, should also create the light of the intellectual and spiritual world, appears to follow as a matter of course from any consistent idea of His power and of His providence.
II. The beginning of the work of grace is the first lighting of the candle of the Lord in the heart. It is totally unlike any mere inference of the reason, or anything which can be gained by information from without. It is gentle, gradual, but none the less a certainty. The spiritual day is as real as the natural day. There are those who are blind to the daylight of this earth. But the day is none the less real for their ignorance of it. The wide world lives in its beams and walks in its light. And there are those who are blind to the light of which we treat; who never saw its rays, and though they speak of it as others do, are wholly unconscious of the reality. But it is none the less real for them. The great multitude which no man can number, the Church and people of God, live by its beams and walk in its light.
H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons,vol. i., p. 84.
References: 2 Corinthians 4:6. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxv., No. 1493; Homilist,vol. vii., p. 351; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. ii., p. 95; E. Paxton Hood, Sermons,p. 101. 2 Corinthians 4:7. Homilist,3rd series, vol. v., p. 287; J. C. Harrison, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxxv., p. 219; H. Moore, Church of England Pulpit,vol. xi., p. 283. 2 Corinthians 4:8. C. C. Bartholomew, Sermons Chiefly Practical,pp. 475, 490.