When souls are fainted and discouraged, Christ is both the cure and the curer. He must lay His hand on us and speak the word. He is the cure that is applied, and the physician that applies it. He touches and speaks, and the cure follows. Believers must receive the word out of Christ’s mouth for their encouragement before they can shake off discouragement. He has the tongue of the learned to speak a word in season to the weary soul.
There was recent controversy about an alleged depiction of George Floyd as Christ at a Roman Catholic university. The icon used the Greek words for I Am. It reminds us of the constant tendency of the sinful heart to seek to make God and the Lord Jesus Christ in our own image. Scripture gives us no clue to the appearance of Christ, but it gives us much about what any representation can never convey—His divine majesty. That infinitely transcends our sinful thoughts and imaginations. Not only that, but Scripture reveals the full exercise of His divine power and glory together with a personalised infinite tenderness. This is difficult enough for us to comprehend, let alone communicate. Yet it is able to remove our very real and constant fears.
We see the majestic tenderness of Christ in the first chapter of Revelation. When John beholds the glory of the Redeemer he falls at Christ’s feet as though he were dead (Revelation 1:17). John manifests weakness but Christ reveals much love, tenderness, and skilfulness in dealing with him (Revelation 1:17-18). Our fears can be real and debilitating, Christ graciously observes this and deals with the excessive fears of His people to remove them. In the following updated extract, James Durham shows what we can learn from this.
1. Christ’s Majesty Requires Humility
The effect which the vision had on John, in the beginning of verse 17. For as stately and lovingly as Jesus Christ represented Himself, he could not bear it, but faints when he sees Him, and he falls at His feet as dead. This is the first effect of the vision. “I fell down as dead”; that is, “I was benumbed (as it were) and stunned with the sight of the excellent majesty and glory that I saw in Him, and I was put out of capacity to act in body or mind, as if I had been dead. I could no more exercise or act the acts of a living man, than a dead man can.” It is like the experience of Daniel (Daniel 10:8, 9) and others. This is for two reasons.
(a) It is due to the exceeding great distance that is between the infinite majesty of God and finite creatures. The brightness of the glory, excellency, and majesty of God the Creator, burdens and over-burdens the weakness and infirmity of the best of creatures. For if the eyes of creatures be that weak that they cannot look on the Sun, what wonder that flesh and blood is not able to look on the Sun of Righteousness. This new wine is too strong for our old bottles [cf. Matt. 9:17].
(b) It is due to a sense of sin and so a fear to appear before Him, which makes the creature fear they will be undone (Isaiah 6:5). Although before the Fall, when God and Adam were friends, he could have endured God to speak to him, yet after the Fall, the appearance of God is terrible to Him. When he hears His voice, he is afraid and runs and hides himself. And there is something of this fear that raises hesitancy in the best; a fear that rises from the sight of sin, which nearness to God exposes. It is likely that something of both was the case with John, as may be gathered from the Lord’s application of the remedy, and the reasons He uses in comforting him.
2. Christ’s Majesty Requires Reverential Fear
This shows us the great disproportion that is between creatures and the majesty of God. The beloved disciple John, cannot stand before Him when He reveals Himself, but falls down as dead. A little nearness to God should leave a stamp of humility and an impression of the majesty and excellency of God upon us (Isaiah 40:15, 17 and 41:11, 12, 24). This is one of the fountain graces, humility, and a holy awe of the majesty of God. And this is the way to come to it, to get a right sight of that excellent majesty that is in Him.
Reverence and admire God’s wise and well-ordered governing of this world, especially the things that concern His church and people. Wonder that God has ordered such a way in the works of creation and providence, and in the dispensation of the gospel, and the mysteries of salvation suitable to our weakness. This is so as communion may be kept with Him. In Job 26:9, one of the stately steps of His power is that He holds back the face of His throne and spreads His cloud upon it. He draws the veil of the firmament before His throne, to keep His glory from breaking forth and consuming men. And in the dispensation of the gospel, He has chosen the ministry of weak men to reveal His mind to us. He does not speak to us directly Himself, because we could not endure it. If you heard Him speak, as He did on mount Sinai, you would say as Israel did, “Let not God speak to us lest we die” (Exodus 20:19). This way of revealing Himself should make us wonder at His condescendence in hedging Himself up (as it were) for our good. We ought to reverence the one that deals so tenderly with us, when a little glimpse of His glory, a look of His eye, a drawing by of the veil, would kill us and make us as if we had never been.
3. Christ’s Majesty Prohibits Excessive Fear
Humility and reverence even in the best of God’s people, is often ready to degenerate into servile fear and discouragement. Worshiping Jesus Christ in humble reverence was required of John. Yet this excessive fear was not called for. Such is our weakness and the slipperiness of our walking, that we can hardly keep the right path, but deviate to one side or other. Our faith is ready to degenerate into presumption, and our humility to fainting and despondency of spirit, and our fear to discouragement, heartlessness, and distrust. Our corruption is ready to abuse anything. For though there is no excess in these graces, yet there may be in us excess in our exercising them due to the corruption which is in us. There is an excessive fear that God will not allow in His people. Everything that passes for fear and humility should not be admitted.
Christ says to John, “fear not.” This is because:
(a) It is a degenerating fear that breeds mistakes concerning Christ and deters this from Him. It weakens and discourages them in their fellowship with Him. Christ will not allow John’s fear to mar that.
(b) It makes people incapable of hearing or receiving a message from Christ. When He speaks, they are benumbed, senseless and dead, they have ears, but hear not. It locks them up to such an extent that no word takes hold of them. Christ will not allow this in John.
(c) It disables, obstructs and mars in the duty that Christ requires. When John is called to write the vision, he falls as dead. Therefore, Christ tells him not to fear but rather rise up and write. He is required to reverence and fear Him but in a way that helps rather than hinders him in his duty.
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