10. The Great Revelation
10
The Great Revelation
“In thy light,” oh God, “shall we see light.”1 But what was that very light, that, falling on Jesus Christ fell then on Saul and then revealed God’s Son in him? Was it that same light which shone suddenly above the brightness of the mid-day sun at the South Gate of Damascus? No. Oh, No! It was another and a far nobler light than that. Noble, and awful, as that great light was, an eternity of that great light alone would not have revealed so much as Christ’s shoe latchet to Saul. The whole band of temple police saw that great light, but I do not read that so much as one of them was baptized by Ananias. It was not the entrancing light that flooded the Mount of Transfiguration that revealed Christ to Peter, though under it he fell on his face and was sore afraid. Nay! the light that would blaze upon us all at the last day, making the sun sackcloth and the moon blood, even that blast of all-searching light will not reveal one glimpse of what Saul of Tarsus saw in the Son of God.
The light in which God revealed His Son to Saul was an altogether brighter, sweeter, and holier light than that. “God is light,”2 and it was God immediately and personally shining on his Son with the light of his countenance, and then, into the same light translating Saul. “God is light and in him is no darkness at all.”3 This is the light, that, when it falls for any sinner on Christ, brings out of Christ for that sinner, a truth, a beauty, a sweetness, a blessedness, it had not theretofore entered into his heart to conceive. This is that light that sometimes shines upon a Scripture till we lay down the book saying, “Oh how love I thy law! How sweet are thy words to my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth.”4 This is the same light that sometimes shines out upon us in the sanctuary till we can scarce restrain ourselves, “Because thy loving kindness is better than life.”5 Aye! sometimes, it will, e’er we are aware, suddenly shine into our hearts till we cry, “Abba Father: the Spirit itself bearing witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.”6 “The light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun: and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold in the day when the Lord healeth the stroke of his people.… And there shall be no night there…for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.”7 Now the first result of this influx of divine light was to open new eyes in the soul of Paul.…
The moral beauty and the transcendent glory of Christ, were then revealed to Saul: and with the overpowering loveliness and grace of Christ, there came to Saul also an infallible assurance of the reality of the things he saw, an assurance that never wavered and never faded from his mind. We never hear of Paul doubting either the existence of the grace or the glory of Christ. We never hear him hesitating or halting about the absolute reality and certainty of the things he preached. And that assurance and certitude came to him at first, and was sustained in him all his life, through the revelation that God made of his Son to Saul, and his many subsequent revelations that God’s Son made of himself. As Saul was continually saying, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard the things that God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God hath revealed them to us by his Spirit: for the spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.”8
*From Saul Called Paul (London/Edinburgh: Oliphants Ltd., 1955), 41-43.
1. Psalm 36:9.
2. 1 John 1:5.
3. 1 John 1:5.
4. Psalm 119:97, 103.
5. Psalm 63:3.
6. Romans 8:15-16.
7. Cp. Isaiah 30:26; Revelation 22:5.
8. 1 Corinthians 2:9-10.