“Certainly, brethren and sisters, to no believer would heaven be desirable if Jesus were not there, or, if being there, they could not enjoy the nearest and dearest fellowship with Him.
A sight of Him first turned our sorrow into joy; renewed communion with Him lifts us above our present cares, and strengthens us to bear our heavy burdens: what must heavenly communion be?
When we have Christ with us we are content on a crust, and satisfied with a cup of water; but if His face be hidden the whole world cannot afford a solace, we are widowed of our Beloved, our sun has set, our moon is eclipsed, our candle is blown out.
Christ is all in all to us here, and therefore we pant and long for a heaven in which He shall be all in all to us forever; and such will the heaven of God be.
The Paradise of God is not the Elysium of imagination, the Utopia of intellect, or the Eden of poetry; but it is the heaven of intense spiritual fellowship with the Lord Jesus—a place where it is promised to faithful souls that “they shall see His face.” (Revelation 22:4)
In the beatific vision it is Christ whom they see; and further, it is His face which they behold.
They shall not see the skirts of His robe as Moses saw the back parts of Jehovah; they shall not be satisfied to touch the hem of His garment, or to sit far down at His feet where they can only see His sandals, but they “shall see His face;” by which I understand two things: first, that they shall literally and physically, with their risen bodies, actually look into the face of Jesus; and secondly, that spiritually their mental faculties shall be enlarged, so that they shall be enabled to look into the very heart, and soul, and character of Christ, so as to understand Him, His work, His love, His all in all, as they never understood Him before.
They shall literally, I say, see his face, for Christ is no phantom; and in heaven though divine, and therefore spiritual, he is still a man, and therefore material like ourselves.
The very flesh and blood that suffered upon Calvary is in heaven; the hand that was pierced with the nail now at this moment grasps the sceptre of all worlds; that very head which was bowed down with anguish is now crowned with a royal diadem; and the face that was so marred is the very face which beams resplendent amidst the thrones of heaven. Into that selfsame countenance we shall be permitted to gaze.
O what a sight! Roll by, ye years; hasten on, ye laggard months and days, to let us but for once behold him, our Beloved, our hearts’ care, who “redeemed us unto God by his blood,” whose we are, and whom we love with such a passionate desire, that to be in his embrace we would be satisfied to suffer ten thousand deaths!
They shall actually see Jesus. Yet the spiritual sight will be sweeter still. I think the text implies that in the next world our powers of mind will be very different from what they are now.
We are, the best of us, in our infancy as yet, and know but in part; but we shall be men then, we shall “put away childish things.”
We shall see and know even as we are known; and amongst the great things that we shall know will be this greatest of all, that we shall know Christ: we shall know the heights, and depths, and lengths, and breadths of the love of Christ that passeth knowledge.
O how delightful it will be then to understand His everlasting love; how without beginning, or ever the earth was, His thoughts darted forward towards His dear ones, whom He had chosen in the sovereignty of His choice, that they should be His forever!
What a subject for delightful meditation will the covenant be, and Christ’s suretyship engagements in that covenant when He undertook to take the debts of all His people upon Himself, and to pay them all, and to stand and suffer in their room!
And what thoughts shall we have then of our union with Christ—our federal, vital, conjugal oneness! We only talk about these things now, we do not really understand them.
We merely plough the surface and gather a topsoil harvest, but a richer subsoil lies beneath. Brethren, in heaven we shall dive into the lowest depths of fellowship with Jesus.
“We shall see His face,” that is, we shall see clearly and plainly all that has to do with our Lord; and this shall be the topmost bliss of heaven.
In the blessed vision the saints see Jesus, and they see Him clearly.”
–Charles H. Spurgeon, “The Heaven of Heaven,” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, vol. 14 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1868), 14: 436–438.
Leave a Reply