What will you see, and feel, when you look into the fire of His eyes? What a fearsome wonder that will be. What a horror for an unshielded sinner. And what a purifying, exhilarating, unnerving, satisfying thrill for those who love Him, worship Him, and know themselves rescued by Him.

I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me…His eyes were like a flame of fire.
(Revelation 1:12–14)

What will it be like to look Jesus in the eye?

You will. The day is coming. Are you ready for that heart-stopping instant? What thrill, or dread, will flood your soul when at last you see his face, and look into his eyes?

Those Eyes

The apostle John must have been haunted by those eyes on the isle of Patmos—or at least unnerved. That first look at the glorified gaze of Jesus was doubtless seared into his mind and soul, both terrifying and thrilling. As fire dances with light and heat, alive with both warmth and threat, so Jesus’s eyes marked John so profoundly that he draws attention to them three times in the Apocalypse.

In the opening chapter, a loud voice, from behind him, rings in his ears like a trumpet. “I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me…His eyes were like a flame of fire” (Revelation 1:12–14). A chapter later, John recalls those eyes in the letter to Thyatira: Jesus is “the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire” (2:18). Then once more in Revelation 19: Jesus, called “Faithful and True,” sits on a white horse, judging righteously and making war (verse 11). What does John see? “His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems” (verse 12).

In this apocalyptic style, John doesn’t mean for us to take this literally and draw pictures of Jesus with embers for irises. These visions signify realities beyond concrete description. Jesus’s eyes are not actually ablaze; they are like a flame of fire—just as his hair is white like wool and snow, his feet like burnished bronze, his voice like the roar of many waters.

What then might we see when we look into the flame of Jesus’s eyes?

Eyes That See All

First, the fire in his eyes means he sees all. The risen, glorified God-man now possesses divinely penetrating sight. No creature is hidden from him; no act unseen. All stand naked and exposed to his piercing gaze (Hebrews 4:13). He sees and knows all—in every nation, in every church, in every heart. He knows who is faithful, and who is faithless. He knows precisely whose hearts are soft toward him and whose are diamond-hard.

In the vision of Revelation 5, the Lamb—once slain, now standing in resurrected strength—has seven horns, the fullness of regal power, and seven eyes, the fullness of divine omniscience and wisdom (verse 6). Nothing escapes his sight and insight. He not only sees and knows all, but sees and knows all perfectly, without any error or mistake in judgment. His penetrating vision is both pure and perfect, leading to infallible discernment.

Eyes of Anger—and Grief

The war horse beneath him reveals another aspect of his vision (Revelation 19:12). The flames in his eyes are “a devouring fire” (Isaiah 29:6), the “consuming fire” of God himself that will destroy his foes and the enemies of his people (Deuteronomy 4:24; Hebrews 12:29). For the wicked, the fire in Jesus’s eyes flashes with the horrors of his impending justice.

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