“When the sun is under total eclipse, he loseth nothing of his native beauty, light, and glory. He is still the same that he was from the beginning,– a ‘great light to rule the day.’ To us he appears as a dark, useless meteor; but when he comes by his course to free himself from the lunar interposition, unto his proper aspect towards us, he manifests again his native light and glory.
So was it with the divine nature of Christ, as we have before declared. He veiled the glory of it by the interposition of the flesh, or the assumption of our nature to be His own; with this addition, that therein He took on Him the ‘form of a servant,’– of a person of mean and low degree. But this temporary eclipse being past and over, it now shines forth in its infinite lustre and beauty, which belongs unto the present exaltation of His person.
And when those who beheld Him here as a poor, sorrowful, persecuted man, dying on the cross, cam to see Him in all the infinite, uncreated glories of the divine nature, manifesting themselves in His person, it could not but fill their souls with transcendent joy and admiration. And this is the one reason of His prayer for them whilst He was on the earth, that they might be where He is to behold His glory; for He knew what ineffable satisfaction it would be unto them forevermore.”
-–John Owen, “Meditations and Discourses Concerning the Glory of Christ” in The Works of John Owen, ed. William Goold, (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1965), Vol. I: p. 344.
