Seeing Christ for Who He Is
“Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!
John 1:29
The Christmas season provides a great opportunity to point people to Jesus Christ; “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” Yet one of Satan’s greatest devices is to blind men to the truth of the gospel and prevent them from seeing the glory of Christ (2 Cor. 4:3-4). Even for believers, he seeks to distract us from beholding the glory of Christ so we will no longer find our greatest joy and satisfaction in Him.
Think of it this way: if the foremost commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:29), as Jesus says, then it stands to reason that Satan will do all he can to obstruct this. He is not only determined to prohibit God from being glorified by the adoring worship of His bridal church, but he also knows that such worship is directly proportional to the bride’s apprehension of the glory of her bridegroom. We see this affirmed throughout Scripture. As we behold the beauty of His infinite perfections and contemplate His love for us, our soul becomes so satisfied in Him that it has no desire for the fleeting pleasures of sin and becomes increasingly resistant to temptation. Satan hates this! He despises the sanctifying work of the Spirit knowing that “we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18).
To truly see Christ is to love Christ! In fact, this is the animating force in our sanctification that is first initiated in the miracle of regeneration. We see this pictured when Jesus gave physical sight to the blind beggar in John 9:1-12. While this miracle was ultimately intended to validate Jesus’ claim to be the Son of God and picture Him acting in sovereign grace to save Israel—who had been so influenced by Satan that they were blind to their guilt and bondage to sin—it also pictures the individual ruin of man’s fallen nature rebelling against Jesus, the spiritual “light of the world” (John 8:12). The narrative describes Jesus taking the initiative to show mercy to “a man blind from birth” (v. 1). Those born blind from birth give no value to sight because they have no idea what they’re missing. Likewise, the spiritually blind have no capacity to see the wretchedness of their condition nor the imminent danger they are in; worse yet, they cannot see their desperate need for the Savior or the glory of His person and work. None of us could have ever seen our sin or the Savior apart from divine initiative, because “there is none who seeks after God” (Rom. 3:11), so God must seek after us (Luke 19:10) and save us. Jesus said, “. . . unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).
As in the case of the blind beggar who was utterly destitute and helpless, every sinner is the same, spiritually speaking. Were it not for a merciful God who sought us out and stooped down to give us spiritual sight, we would still be walking in darkness. But Satan’s devices against us will try to obscure these soul-exhilarating truths. He knows the more we behold Christ the more we become like Him! The light of the loveliness and purity of Christ exposes the filth of our sin and makes us all the more amazed by His grace. May we contemplate these exhilarating truths during the Christmas season, and proclaim them boldly.
© COPYRIGHT NOTICE 2023 BY DAVID HARRELL AND SHEPHERD’S FIRE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
