We Have Seen His Glory {John 1:1-18}featured

If you are tracking with our John schedule, we have spent the past few weeks getting a broad overview of the book, looking up the background information, and answering the Introduction Study Questions (found in the workbook available here). This past week we have been in John 1:1-18.

If you’re behind, you’re not alone. Grace, grace, grace. 🙂

Below are some reflections from my study so far. I’d love to hear what’s standing out to you. Feel free to comment here or in our groups on Facebook or the City.

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Moses said to God, “Please, show me your glory.” And God responded, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name, ‘The LORD.’…But…you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” So God allowed His glory to pass before Moses, but first, He hid Moses in the cleft of the rock and covered him with His hand for his protection (Exodus 33:17-23). Later, when he came down from the mountain, “his face shone because he had been talking with God” (Ex. 34:29). The people were afraid and asked him to put a veil over his face. The glory of God was terrifying to them–too glorious to gaze upon directly. They sent Moses as their mediator; he spoke to God face-to-face, but they heard from Moses with a veil separating them.

Jesus Christ did not just speak to God face-to-face, like Moses, rather He existed with Him since the very beginning. John writes, “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (1:3). Paul affirms later to the Colossians: “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (1:17). But, though equal with God and sharing in His glory, the eternal Son of God wrapped Himself in human flesh and “humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:8).

John writes, “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.” (John 1:14)

We have seen His glory. This is the phrase that shouts to me from John’s prologue. Like Moses, I long to see God’s glory. To gaze upon His beauty. To see His face. And here John declares, “We have seen it.” How?

When God reveals Himself to Moses, He does so by revealing His character: “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and fourth generation.” (Ex. 34:6-7)

So, too, we see God’s glory when we behold His character in the pages of Scripture. And this description He gives Moses directly corresponds to Christ at the cross. Christ’s sacrifice upholds both God’s love and forgiveness, as well as His justice. When we look to Jesus, we see God’s perfect character manifested in human form, full of grace and truth. His life and death, the ultimate display of God’s steadfast love and righteous judgment. Jesus Christ is the glory of God in the flesh. He is God’s glorious plan of redemption finally unfolded.

So now, “when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed…And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor. 3:16-18). Now, hidden in Christ, the cleft of the Rock, we gaze directly upon the glory of God. We don’t have to look at His back; we see His face as we look to Jesus, the “one mediator between God and men…who gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Tim. 2:3-4). And as we behold the glory of the Lord, we are transformed.

As I studied Philippians, I prayed to know Christ like Paul (Phil. 3:10). And as I read these first verses of John, my desire to know Him deepens. I want to see His glory that I might live to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever. Like Moses, I want my life to radiate the light that God has shone into my heart (2 Cor. 4:6), so that everyone I encounter might recognize: she has been with Jesus (Acts. 4:13).