Week 49—Wednesday Hebrews 12:2-3
Week 49—WEDNESDAY
Hebrews 12:2-3
“THE SON WHO IS THE EFFULGENCE
OF GOD’S SPLENDOR”
We come to the next portion of the unfolding of the meaning of the Incarnation: Fourth, “The Son who is the effulgence of God’s splendour and the stamp of God’s very being.”
This is an amazing passage and reverses so much of our Christian and non-Christian thinking about God and Christ. A prominent Hindu said to me a few days ago, “God has nothing to do with the law of karma [cause and effect], it operates without God, God is apart from it in bliss.” God was “in bliss” by being apart from the law of sowing and repeating which is operative among us. God maintains bliss by being apart. But the Christian believes that God finds bliss and splendour through and in the human tragedy. Not by philosophizing about it, but by getting into it redemptively.
And Jesus “is the effulgence of God’s splendour.” God’s glory point is the Incarnation where God took it all on. And the center of that glory point is the cross where God felt the acutest pain of all—the pain of our sin. At the Transfiguration Jesus burst into light when he talked about “his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem” (Luke 9:31). But this was the word of the cross become word. But at the actual cross it was the Word become flesh. It actually happened. Therefore the actual cross is “the effulgence of God’s splendour.” God’s bitterest shame was turned into the greatest glory. The God of the Scars has become the God of the Stars—all worlds.
Gone is the nonsense of Swinburne’s words: “O Pale Galilean, Thou hast turned the world into ashes by the breath of Thy mouth.” Instead it could be said, “Thou Blessed Risen Savior, Thou has turned Death into a Door, The Grave into Glory, and Thou hast become the very ‘effulgence of God’s splendour.’” Jesus is the saving and the shining point of God. When we think of God’s glory, we think of Jesus. This is no cheap, tinseled glory—it is Glory, inherent and earned. The Word of Glory become flesh.
O Jesus, Lord of Glory, your glory is an expensive glory—the glory of a cross turned luminous. We are not dazzled but drawn by this Glory. For it is a redemptive Glory. We glory in this Glory. We thank you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “Let the Beauty of Jesus be seen in me, all his wonderful Love and Purity.”