Eclectic Christian

Christ on the throne

By Michael Bell

This is Part 4, of a multi-part series looking at the deity of Christ. Here are the links to the Introduction and Table of Contents.

In our last post we we looked at how Christ was the image of God, using the analogy of light from a star. We also touched on how he was the brightness or radiance of God’s glory.

Hebrews 1:3a (NIV) – The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being…

Hebrews 1:3a (KJV) Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person…

Brightness and Glory. Glory and Brightness. They really go hand in hand. It seems like you can’t have one without the other. You certainly can’t have brightness without having a source of that light. Can you have glory without brightness? From our human perspective you would think that if you were to take brightness away from glory, what you would be left with would be no longer glorious. But it is always difficult to use human terms to describe an infinite God, and in this case, God doesn’t seem to work that way.

As Philippians 2:7 says, Christ voluntarily “made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant”. Yet nowhere in scripture does it imply that the glory of the Father is somehow reduced or compromised by Jesus taking human form. Jesus makes it clear in John 17:5 that the Father is still the source of glory and that as God the Son, he expected to share in that glory again.

John 17:5 (NIV) – And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.

As the brightness of God’s glory, Jesus certainly shared in God’s glory in a way that no one else could. It was a glory that Christ had with God even before the world began, and shared again after his death and resurrection. Consider this next verse:

Isaiah 42:8 (NIV) – I am the LORD; that is my name!
I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols.

God is not willing to share his glory with another! Yet, as we have seen, he shared it with Christ, the brilliance of his glory, before the world began! This is only possible if Christ is God.

As usual, your thoughts and comments are welcome.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 23rd, 2009 at 10:18 pm and is filed under Deity of Christ. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.