Spiritual Vision | 2 Corinthians 3:18, 4:3-6; Hebrews 12:1-2
Brian Hedges | June 4, 2023
I want to invite you to turn in your Bibles this morning to 2 Corinthians 3. We’re going to be in a couple of different passages of Scripture.
Most of you probably know that today is my last Sunday in the pulpit before beginning sabbatical. That begins tomorrow, and I’m going to be out for the next twelve weeks. This is a time I’ve been looking forward to and I’m very grateful to our church for providing this for us. I think it will be an important season in the life of our church. I’m excited that Pastor Brad is going to be filling the pulpit most of that time and is going to be teaching through the letter to the Colossians. That’ll be beginning next Sunday. He’s been preparing for this for several months, and I know that you’re going to be well fed during that time.
This being the last Sunday and in between series, I’ve been praying about what to share with you this morning. Of course, the thought crossed my mind, maybe I should just preach on, “Do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together,” because I don’t want you to go anywhere while I’m gone. Actually, I had something on my mind Thursday and Friday this week, I thought I’d landed; and then yesterday I completely changed direction and felt like the Lord gave a fresh message for today.
It’s something that is right at the heart of things that I believe deeply are important for the Christian life, important for the life of our church, and even as I go into a time of rest and pulling away, some of the things I’m talking about this morning are things that I want to be true for me.
I’ll begin it this way: How many of you have ever visited an optometrist office where you have to do the vision check where you’re looking at an eye chart? Has everybody been through that experience? I’ve had to do that dozens of times in my life; I have an eye condition, so I have to do that probably more often than some. When you do that, you’re getting a vision check.
What I want to do this morning is something like a spiritual vision check. I want to talk about spiritual vision, and I want to do that more topically than expositionally, but I want to ground it in two passages of Scripture that use vision-type language. Those two passages are 2 Corinthians 3-4 and then Hebrews 12:1-2, especially the three first words of verse 2. So I’m going to read those two passages, and then in the course of the message I’m going to bring other passages to bear as well.
Let’s start in 2 Corinthians 3:18. You can follow on the screen or in your own copy of God’s word. The apostle Paul is writing. He says,
“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord [underline that word ‘beholding’], are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”
Drop down to 2 Corinthians 4:3.
“And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
Then Hebrews 12:1-2. This is a familiar passage; most of you will know this. The writer says,
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”
This is God’s word.
What those two passages have in common is this language of seeing or looking or beholding. You can see it in 2 Corinthians, where Paul talks about “beholding the glory of the Lord” and “seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ,” and you can see it in Hebrews with this implicit exhortation that we are to “run the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus,” with our eyes set on Jesus, the founder and the perfecter of our faith.
These authors are doing something that’s common in Scripture: they’re taking a physical faculty, such as sight, and they’re using it as an analogy for a spiritual faculty. Spiritual vision is what I’m calling it this morning.
What I want to do is ask some questions about this, essentially, “What, why, and how?” What is spiritual vision, why do we need it, and how do we get it?
1. What Is Spiritual Vision?
I just want to put some definition on this to help us understand what this is, what it means to look or to behold the glory of God, to look to Christ.
I think we can say three things about this, and these things kind of build upon one another.
(1) First of all, perception. That’s the key word here. Perception is the awareness of spiritual reality. So when we’re talking about spiritual vision we’re talking about a spiritual perception that gives us an awareness of spiritual reality.
When you think about the faculty of physical sight, we’re all familiar with this. Have you ever wondered how sight works? Maybe somebody’s explained it to you or maybe you remember this from high school biology. I looked it up on the Internet! Here’s what the Internet says—I think this is basically right.
“When light hits the retina (a light-sensitive layer of tissue at the back of the eye), special cells called photoreceptors turn the light into electrical signals. These electrical signals travel from the retina through the optic nerve to the brain. Then the brain turns the signals into the images you see.”
So, the organ that is receiving this light is the eye, the various parts of the eye, especially the retina. Light then is transmitted into these signals that produce the images in the brain. So it is a physical faculty that gives us perception of the external world around us, communicating those images to our brains, to our minds.
In Scripture, the various physical senses are often used metaphorically to speak of spiritual senses, spiritual reality. We could say that spiritual sight is something like this; it is a spiritual faculty of perception by which we sense or perceive the light of truth, the light of reality, that is transmitted through what Paul elsewhere calls “the eyes of the heart,” and is communicated to our hearts, to our souls, to our inner being. It’s perception, and it’s perception of spiritual reality.
Now, here’s a significant thing that you need to grasp, and you get this especially from 2 Corinthians. Not everyone has this spiritual faculty of sight. Not everybody has spiritual vision. There are people who are unable to discern spiritual reality. In 1 Corinthians 2 Paul says that “the natural person” (that means the person without the Spirit of God) “is not able to discern spiritual things.” He’s not able to do so. Paul here in 2 Corinthians talks about those who are unbelievers. He says, “The god of this world has blinded their minds to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.”
There was a time in your life—maybe you remember this—when you were also blind, where you were unable to discern spiritual things. People talked about God and it kind of fell on deaf ears. Maybe you didn’t believe a word of it. People would open the Bible and it didn’t mean anything to you. There was no perception of the glory of God or the importance of eternal things or the reality of the truth of God’s revelation of himself in Scripture. You were lacking that spiritual perception.
But then something happened in your life. It’s as if the lights came on. It’s as if you were given a faculty of spiritual sight, where all of a sudden you’re able to discern something. You’re able to see light. You can’t not see it anymore, because something has changed. You once were blind, but now you see.
Now, there may be some of you who don’t really remember that time because you were raised in the church, you’ve always believed in God and believed in Jesus, and if that’s the case it may be that you were born again at a very, very young age. If that’s the case, don’t be bothered that you can’t remember the before and after. That’s a tremendous gift, if you came to Christ at such a young age that you don’t remember what it was like to not be a Christian, to not be a believer. But for many of us we can remember the difference between before coming to Christ and after coming to Christ.
It might be that there are some who are here this morning who have never really believed. You’re here for some reason or another—maybe there’s an awakening or a stirring in your heart and there’s an interest in spiritual things—but you’ve never really believed in Christ, you’ve never accepted the Scriptures as the very word of God. But now something’s going on in your heart. If that’s the case, pray and ask God to give you this gift of spiritual sight, and may you come all the way into faith in Christ as you see the light of the glory of God in the face of Christ. It’s a spiritual perception, an awareness of spiritual reality.
(2) Here’s the second thing about spiritual vision: the key word here is attention. Here I have in mind the focus of this spiritual awareness.
Again, to borrow here from secular literature, psychologists will sometimes distinguish between general awareness and focused awareness. We all know the difference between being generally aware of something and actually paying attention to it, actually noticing something. We have peripheral vision, and we may be generally aware of things that are in our surroundings without really noticing. Or it may be that there are things within our field of vision, and we just don’t see it. Let me give you a couple of illustrations.
A few days ago our kids had their last day of school at Granger Christian School. This is where three of our kids go to school, it’s where Holly works. So I went Thursday morning to this program for the younger kids, and I came into the office and Holly said, “Did you see that we got forked last night?”
I said, “What?”
She said, “There are plastic forks stuck all over the Granger Christian School yard. You didn’t see that?”
I was like, “No, I didn’t see that.” I was completely oblivious.
This is typical, folks. My head is usually somewhere else; I’m not paying attention. So it was within the peripheral vision; I just wasn’t noticing. The awareness was not focused on that. Holly, on the other hand, notices everything.
Now, there are some things I do notice. A couple of years ago I got a new vehicle. I got this gray Honda Pilot. I was really proud of that vehicle. Did you know that there must be 500 people who drive gray Honda Pilots around here? I mean, they are all over the place! A few days ago—this is no joke—I was at an intersection and there were three of us in the same vehicle! Now I notice gray Honda Pilots everywhere I go, now that I have one. That’s because (the scientists tell me) there’s something in the brain called a reticular activator, and when that thing gets activated by some certain object, you see it. That’s the difference between general awareness and focused awareness.
The point I’m trying to make is this, that spiritual vision has not just to do with the general awareness that there is a God and that Jesus is Lord and that the Bible is true, but it also means that you are training your attention on these things, that you are focusing on these things, that you are setting the gaze of your soul on these spiritual realities as you behold the glory and as you look to Jesus. Those are actions. Those are things you do. You behold the glory and you look to Jesus.
(3) That leads to the third thing—here’s the third word—contemplation, the steadfast gaze of the soul. “Contemplation” comes from a Latin word, contemplari, “to gaze attentively.” The old theologians used to talk about this. They talked about the “beatific vision.” It is the vision that brings supreme blessedness, that brings beatitude, happiness, joy.
The church father Irenaeus one time said, “The glory of God is man fully alive, and the life of man is the vision of God.”
Just think about that for a minute. “The life of man is the vision of God.” What do you think he means by that? I think he means that true life, eternal life, is to know God, it is to see God. It is to have a vision of God, a spiritual vision, a spiritual perception of who God is and to be in relationship with him.
The Scriptures use this language of sight in so many different places, so many different ways. Here are just a few other texts.
In 1 Corinthians 13:12, do you remember how Paul is writing and he says, “For we see now in a mirror dimly, but then [there’s coming a day when] we will see face to face”? Or the apostle John in 1 John 3:2 says, “We know that when Christ appears we shall be like him [why?], for we shall see him as he is.”
Or take Revelation 22:4. It’s the last chapter of the Bible. It talks about this river of life that’s bringing healing to the world. It’s talking about the Lamb of God and the throne and the removal of the curse. And those who are there gathered in Christ’s eternal kingdom, it says of them, “They will see his face.”
This is the beatific vision. It is that sight of God which we will finally have in the final day. If we are in the kingdom, if we are born again, if we are saved, we will have this sight of God that will bring supreme blessedness, unending joy into our lives.
When we think about contemplation and when the older writers talk about contemplation, what they have in mind is that there is a way for us to have a foretaste of that right now. Right now, in the here and now, we can begin to contemplate God and to know God in such a way that we experience that wine of blessedness, that supreme joy, as we gaze on the glory of the Lord.
Listen to what the psalmist said. This is in Psalm 34:4. He says, “Those who look to him are radiant.” That means their faces are shining. “Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed.”
I wonder this morning, have you ever begun to experience this, where you were looking on the glory of the Lord, beholding his glory, contemplating the glory of God? A steadfast gaze of your soul on the Savior.
One of my heroes of the faith is the 17th-century Puritan author John Owen. I’ve quoted him many times here. John Owen, when he was dying, wrote a book that was called Meditations on the Glory of Christ. It is an amazing book, an absolutely beautiful book, as he just wrote out his meditations on the person of Christ and what Christ has done and the glory of Christ and all these different dimensions of his glory. He wrote this as he was dying, and in that book he uses this word “contemplation.” This is what he says. Here’s an exhortation. He says,
“Let us live in the constant contemplation of the glory of Christ, and virtue will proceed from him to repair all our decays, to renew a right spirit within us, and to cause us to abound in all duties of obedience.”
I think what Owen means by that is that it’s as we gaze on the glory of God, we steadfastly contemplate the glory of Christ, that we are so helped in our spiritual life. It helps everything else. It repairs the spiritual decay, so that when we begin to grow weak spiritually, we begin to backslide or we begin to struggle with sin, it’s looking at Christ that brings the healing, it brings the repair. It’s beholding Christ that renews a right spirit within us, and it is beholding and looking upon Christ that causes us to abound in every other duty of obedience. Everything else God requires of us is found in and through this, beholding him; contemplation.
2. Why Do We Need It?
That really leads me into this next question, question number two: Why do we need it? Having defined spiritual vision as perception, attention, contemplation, why do we need spiritual vision in our lives? I’ll just give you three simple reasons.
(1) The first reason is salvation itself. Did you know and do you realize that you can’t really be a Christian without looking to Jesus? The language that Scripture uses equates looking to Christ with faith in Christ. Looking is how we are saved. So listen to a couple of verses.
Isaiah 45:22—these are the words of God:
“Turn to me and be saved,
all the ends of the earth!
For I am God, and there is no other.”
“Look to me and be saved.” Some of you will know that that was the verse that God used to bring Charles Spurgeon in faith in Christ. Charles Spurgeon is a young man, he’s struggling with conviction of sin, he’s trying to be a good person, he’s trying to keep the Ten Commandments, he’s trying to pray a lot; but he’s striving to be something that he’s not. He’s trying to work his way into salvation, and nobody has clearly explained to him the gospel. He was miserable as a teenager for several years.
One day he wandered into a little primitive Methodist chapel—there were only about fifteen people there—and a layman was preaching, and Spurgeon said he was uneducated, he didn’t have much to say, but he just kind of harped on this one string. He just kept saying, “Look to me, look to Christ!” He talked about how there’s no effort in looking, there’s no working in looking. Looking doesn’t earn anything; it’s just looking away from yourself and looking to the Savior.
This man evidently saw Spurgeon sitting there in the back, he saw how miserable he was, and he said, “Young man, you look miserable, and you’re going to be miserable until you look to Christ.”
Spurgeon says, “I looked until my eyes were out of my head!” He looked to Christ, and everything changed for him as he saw the sufficiency of Christ to save him.
Some of you this morning, you need to look to Christ. Quit looking at yourself, quit trying to make yourself into a better person, and look to the Savior who stands outside of you and who will save you by his grace.
Jesus also uses this language in John 6:40. He said, “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
Why do you need spiritual vision? Because you’re saved as you look to Christ.
(2) Here’s a second reason: sanctification. That’s kind of a big theological word that has a number of different senses in Scripture, but usually when we talk about sanctification today we have in mind the ongoing process of becoming more like Jesus, becoming more holy. I’m sure you’ve noticed this in your own life, you’ve noticed this in the life of others. When someone becomes a Christian, even though there is a definitive change in their lives, it doesn’t mean that all of the quirks in their personality go away, it doesn’t mean that all of the defects in their character go away, it doesn’t mean that they automatically have downloaded into their minds all the things that they need to know and do in order to be a faithful follower of Jesus. Instead, when they become a Christian, it begins a process of ongoing discipleship. For the rest of your life, you’re in this journey of becoming more and more like Christ.
Here’s what 2 Corinthians 3:18 is telling us: the key to becoming more like Christ is to behold him. It’s to look to him. I mean, that’s what the text says in 2 Corinthians 3:18. Look at this again.
“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed [that’s present tense] into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” So there’s a progress here, there’s a progression. “For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”
So there’s something about beholding the glory of Christ that leads to being transformed and changed and becoming more and more like Jesus Christ.
Or take Hebrews 12:2. Hebrews 12 gives the exhortation to run the race that is set before us with endurance; but how do we run? We run looking to Jesus. We run with our eyes on Jesus. Runners don’t look at their feet, they’re looking at the goal, the finish line. Jesus is the finish line, Jesus is the founder and perfecter of faith. We look at Jesus, and with our eyes fixed on Jesus is how we run, that’s how we persevere, that’s how we continue in the faith.
Let me give you another Puritan illustration. I’m heavy on the Puritans today, but this is good stuff. There was a Puritan—also in the 17th century—named Isaac Ambrose. Some of you have heard me quote him before. He got sick. He was a pastor, and he got a very serious sickness. He was away from his pulpit for a period of time, but when he was enduring through the sickness (we don’t even know what it was) he started writing down his meditations about Jesus. That became an 800-page book called Looking unto Jesus, and it is one of the great devotional masterpieces in the English language.
Essentially, what Ambrose does is he defines looking to Jesus, he packs it full of all different kinds of things. He says it’s knowing him and considering him and desiring him and hoping in him and believing him and loving him and enjoying him and conforming ourselves to his image. That’s what it means to look.
Then he studies through every aspect of the person and work of Christ, beginning with the eternal sonship of Christ and then going through the entire incarnation, the earthly life of Christ, his passion, his resurrection, his ascension. In each one of these things he’s looking at Jesus, meditating on Jesus, and thinking through the implications for life.
It’s a beautiful book, and here’s one of his exhortations from that book. He said,
“I beseech you [or I beg you], come warm your heart at this blessed fire. Oh come and smell the precious ointments of Jesus Christ. Oh come and sit under his shadow with great delight. Oh that all men would presently fall upon this practice of the gospel art of looking unto Jesus!”
Brothers and sisters, that’s what I want. That’s what I want for me, that’s what I want for you: that we learn to practice this gospel art of looking unto Jesus, so that our eyes are on him, our gaze is on him, we’re beholding him, we’re contemplating him, we’re focusing on him. That’s how the Christian life is lived. It’s not that you believe in Jesus and then add layers and layers of works and duties and all of the kinds of things to it and move on from Jesus. You start by looking at Jesus and you continue with your eyes on Jesus all the way. That’s where growth comes from. That’s where sanctification comes from. That’s where holiness comes from. That’s where the strength to continue in the race set before us comes from, as we look to Christ.
(3) Salvation, sanctification; here’s the third reason we need it: satisfaction. We need spiritual vision because the greatest and deepest satisfaction of the human soul is promised to those who see God.
These are Jesus’ words from Matthew 5:8: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
Blessed. That means full of joy. That means satisfied and joyful and rejoicing, and it comes to those who are pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Or take the psalmist, Psalm 17:15. “As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness.”
There is a depth of joy that is given to those who are in communion with God, in a right relationship with God, who know God. There’s a depth of joy that is available to them that you don’t get anywhere. It’s hard to believe it until you’ve experienced it, but once you’ve experienced it you can’t be satisfied with anything less.
I’ve shared before these words from John Newton. These are some of my favorite words from sacred poetry. This is a wonderful hymn of Newton, where he says, Content with beholding his face—there’s the language again: beholding his face. Content or satisfied with beholding his face.
Content with beholding His face,
My all to His pleasure resigned;
No changes of season or place,
Would make any change in my mind.
While blessed with a sense of His love,
A palace a toy would appear;
And prisons would palaces prove,
If Jesus would dwell with me there.
Just think about that. I sang that growing up for two decades before I understood what those words mean, and it just hit me one day. While blessed with a sense of His love, / A palace a toy would appear. In John Newton’s mind, the greatest possible earthly circumstance is a palace, and he says it’s just a toy, it’s just a trifle if I have Jesus. While blessed with a sense of His love, “it’s just a toy to me!” On the other hand, he says prisons would palaces prove, / If Jesus would dwell with me there.
Haven’t you read the stories of the missionaries and the martyrs and the faithful Christians who endured all kinds of horrendous suffering and circumstances, and they did it with joy? How did they do it with joy? Because their joy was not dependent on season and place, as so much of our joy is. So much of our joy is dependent on keeping things just right. Don’t rock the boat, don’t give me more than I can handle, help me keep enough comfort in my life to get by and to get through. John Newton is saying there’s a different kind of joy than that. There is a peace that surpasses understanding. There is a joy that is inexpressible and full of glory. There is a satisfaction of soul that is given to those who behold his face, a contentment that is so deep and so great it will carry you through anything.
You can be blessed with the greatest possible earthly blessings, and it’s just a toy. It’s great, but you can live without it. You can go through the most difficult trials and circumstances in life, and if you’re blessed with a sense of his love you’re still living in a palace, even if you’re in a prison, because you have Jesus. Satisfaction.
What is spiritual vision? Perception, attention, contemplation. Why do we need it? For salvation, for sanctification, for satisfaction.
3. How Do We Get It?
Now, how do we get it? I have five things; give me ten minutes.
(1) Number one: you have to understand that spiritual sight is a gift. The first answer to the question, How do you get it? is it has to be given to you. You can’t just flip a switch. This isn’t a light switch where you can just flip a switch and all of a sudden you have it. I’m not going to tell you that you can do that. It is a gift, so if you see spiritual reality with this kind of clarity, that is a gift of God in his grace.
Listen to the words of Jesus in Matthew 11:25-27. After having just pronounced judgment on the cities who rejected his ministry, Jesus says,
“I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
Those are astounding words, but they’re the words of Jesus, as Jesus thanks the Father and says that those who know God, those who receive this divine revelation, the reason they do is because God has revealed it to them. That’s a gift.
You remember the story of the blind man, the man who was born blind, in John 9? Jesus healed him in John 9. The whole chapter’s taken up with this, and the man functions as something like an illustration for what it means to receive spiritual sight and to see Jesus as the light of the world. In that story this man is born blind. He doesn’t even ask for healing, but Jesus heals him so that he sees! That’s where we get those words, “I once was blind, but now I see.” It’s a gift.
If you see this morning, that sight is a gift. And if there’s something in you where you’re not sure that you see, you’re not sure that you’ve received this gift, but there’s something stirring, there’s a conviction inside, then ask God for it.
(2) Number two, if we have this sight, then we need light in order to see spiritual reality, the light of the gospel and the word.
You see this emphasized in the 2 Corinthians passage. Paul talks about the gospel being veiled because the god of this world has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. So the gospel is the source of this light.
I think you could say this—you could say that every human being, spiritually speaking, needs two things. They need the faculty of spiritual sight—they need to be able to see—and they also need light by which to see. So, one thing they need is subjective; they need something done in them so that their eyes are opened, so that they can see. They also need objective truth coming from outside them that shows them what spiritual reality is.
If you have a person who is standing in the noonday sun, they have all the light they need, but if they’re blind they can’t see, because they don’t have the faculty. On the other hand, you can have someone who has 20/20 vision, but put them in a dark cave two miles underground with no artificial light and they’re not going to see anything, because there’s no light.
In the same way, you and I need both spiritual sight—that’s a gift of God—and we need spiritual light, and that comes to us through the gospel, it comes to us through the word of God.
Psalm 119:130 says, “The unfolding of your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple.”
How many of you have ever been to Mackinac Island? Let me see your hands. I’ve never been there, but my understanding is that if you go to Mackinac Island, because it’s an island you can’t get there by driving a car. You have to take a ferry; you have to take a boat to get to the island. The boat is a means to get to the island.
I thought of that when I read this from Isaac Ambrose, who compares spiritual duties like prayer and meditation. He says they are like bridges that give us a passage to God; they are like boats that carry us to the bosom of Christ, a means of bringing us into more intimate communion with the Father.
This is why you need spiritual disciplines. They’re not an end in and of themselves, but you need the word and you need prayer, which I’m about to talk about. You need those, because they are the bridges and the boats that carry you to God. They’re the means of receiving this light of the gospel and of the word.
(3) Number three, pray for the eyes of your heart to be opened. This is how Paul prays in Ephesians 1:18: “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe” [paraphrase].
Once again, the psalmist in Psalm 119 says, “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.” So pray for spiritual vision, pray for spiritual sight.
(4) Number four, come to the table to taste and see that the Lord is good. We use that language a lot here at Redeemer, tasting and seeing that the Lord is good. It comes from Psalm 34:8. In Psalm 34 the psalmist is not writing about the table when he says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” Maybe he had Passover in mind, maybe he had the sacrifice that went with a Jewish festival or a feast, some tangible way of tasting and seeing that the Lord is good.
But in the New Testament the Lord’s table is a means for us to come to see and to behold Christ. There’s a wonderful story in Luke 24, when Jesus walks on the road to Emmaus—he’s risen from the dead, he’s walking on the road to Emmaus with his disciples, and they don’t recognize him until that night. He sits down with them and he breaks bread, and then their eyes are opened and they recognize him.
I think Luke’s original readers would have read that, and when they read about the breaking of bread they immediately would have thought of the Lord’s Supper. They would have thought of this communion meal that they celebrated together. There is something about the Lord’s Supper that helps open our eyes, so that we see. We could say it this way, that in the preaching of the word the gospel is made audible; we hear it. But when we come to the Lord’s table, the gospel is made visible and it’s made tangible, so that we taste it and we see it. You see the emblems every week. They’re telling you the story of the broken body and the shed blood of Jesus Christ. If we come with faith and our eyes peeled for Jesus, it is a means for us of beholding Christ.
(5) Finally, one more thing, and this is not so much a means as it is a way for us to use whatever the means are. Focus on the object of sight, not on the act of seeing.
Here’s the danger with spiritual disciplines: you talk about them, and then all of a sudden our focus is on what we’re doing and not focusing on Christ himself. We can mistake the means for the end.
But go back to this illustration from Hebrews 12. We are to run the race that is set before us with endurance, looking to Jesus. Runners don’t look at their feet, they look to the finish line.
This is the way all athletics are played. It took me a while to figure this out with golf, but I started to figure this out. I was really struggling with putting especially about a year ago, until I read a book, and it told me that in trying to putt the ball in the hole, you don’t think about what your arms and hands are doing. You don’t do that; you’re thinking about the target. You’re thinking about where you want the ball to go. This is really how all athletics are, right? You’re not focused on the mechanics when you’re throwing a ball, you’re thinking about the person you want to throw the ball to.
In the Christian life, our focus should not be on the mechanics of what we’re doing. We’re not to be constantly analyzing and looking at ourselves; instead, our focus is to be on Jesus, looking at him, trusting in him, beholding him.
You remember those words from Robert Murray M’Cheyne, as he counseled this young woman in a letter, troubled about her sins, troubled about herself. M’Cheyne said, “For every one look at self, take ten looks at Christ.”
Brothers and sisters, that’s the call. It is to behold him. It is to look to him. It is to look away from ourselves and to get our gaze, the gaze of our souls, steadfastly focused on Jesus Christ. I hope you’ll do that in your Christian life, and if you’re not a believer then I pray that today you would look to Christ, receive the gift of spiritual sight, and begin this journey of transformation in knowing him.
Brian G. Hedges
