“He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high”
Thoughtfully reading this verse, we pause in wonder! This Lord of Glory, this Power holding universes together, including our own Milky Way; this alive Personage created us to be persons within His Body, making us into who He eternally is.
This letter was written when the term “universe” meant all known creation into a single oneness. Now giant telescopes reveal our creation concept consists of many finite spaces way beyond our first perception of a “universe.” Now there are theories about “multiverses” because there are existing universe spaces beyond our former realization and realities exceeding present 3 dimensional time and space.
It all portends design rather than “Big Bang.” It also forces atheists to use words like “God” to describe the complexity and size of “Mother Nature.” This is exactly what Psalm 19 depicts from the heart of David, “Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard.” Even the holding of universes together cannot be documented by our science. It is a Person and the Person with whom we have to do!
The writer to the Hebrews opens this letter large, with a larger than life perspective. He describes temporal experience within a context of our Creator’s domain. Take time to absorb this enormous conveyed truth. The God of Adam and Eve, the Provider of our original Ten Commandments, The Creator producing world wide floods saving the family of Noah, the God who through Moses delivers Joseph’s people out of Egypt, bringing them into Jerusalem through David; Jehovah God is preparing you and me as participates in His Eternal Kingdom!
Our Hebrews author brings this massive reality to the table, bringing it into our view! A Hebrew civilization, during the time of the writer, understood “powers” to be defined by angels and men who spoke on behalf of God. Their history is channeled through a people chosen by God, pointing toward a single individual, a Person Who is the exact imprint of the nature of God, Jesus!
It was God’s plan all along! Old Testament history points to Jesus, the One Who fulfills all of Old Testament prophecy. This same Jesus is the Person behind whom created persons, like us, exist and the Person behind whom the “multiverses” surrounding our earthly domain are sourced.
Our minds gravitate toward power and universes but this verse speaks about a totality. It speaks about the splendor of God’s glory, the nature of His character and our purifying redemption in addition to power and creation. Here, in these few words, is an integrated summary of our relationship with God in Christ. No one thing can be isolated or separated from the others. They are together, in a unity of wholeness which is a shadow of ourselves in Christ.
Notice, Jesus is the “radiance” of God’s glory. Some will argue radiance is lesser than the glory itself. They say it is the effect of what the glory or brightness produces and does not contain the essence of the glory itself. On the surface this seems plausible but consider it more closely.
We are gifted, in Christ, to be who He is. Being in Him, all of us are provided with a Spiritual power and gift unique to each individually. We are all different and to the extent we grow in His grace, consuming His gifts to us, we grow into a fullness of Himself. We are finite persons, gifted, allowing others to witness God’s radiant power in us. But it is up to us to allow His glory to be seen. So the radiance cannot be separated from the glory, it merely reveals what is there, what is possible. It is living and actively alive!
Jesus is also God’s character expressed in our human flesh. His power not only brought universes into being, but holds it in place. This power, creating life itself, including all the material physics of our observable science, is also applied to the soul of man; it applies to our new identity in Christ, a power penetrating deeply into our soul.
John describes it this way in the first chapter of his gospel:
He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor the will of flesh nor the will of man, but of God.
We marvel at the idea of a timeless existence, an eternity without beginning or end. We are confounded by the creation of natural life which we witness all around in trees, plants, flowers and living animals, and birds but here is another astounding reality which escapes notice, simply because we have become callous to many astounding common creations. We are given the right to be “Children of God.” Of course, this simply means we were physically created by God. We are, therefore, the physical children of God!
To this common interpretation Jesus Himself goes on record to say, no, that is not it at all! In John 3 He goes on record to Nicodemus, “That which is flesh is flesh, and that which is born of Spirit is Spirit.” Jesus said to him, “Unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” One needs Spiritual eyes to see Spiritually and time to acquire Spiritual perception. We are a Spiritual child of the King!
This is further explained in Ephesians 4:24, “and put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” The creator of original life and our physical multiverses, actually creates in the believer, who accepts God’s gift of Life in Jesus, the actual resurrection life of Jesus. This believing person is created brand new Spiritually on the inside! This is what our memory verse tells us in 2Corinthians 5:17. See also Gal. 6:15-16.
And now Jesus is in the presence of the Father “working” on our behalf bringing us out of bondage into His glorious freedom. Jesus is God’s expression of reality for finite people. Seeing and measuring this reality in flesh, we must take seriously the claims of God’s Word accessing His gift of life and consuming His grace!
The totality of this theology and practical living in Christ Jesus is wrapped up in the “radiance of His glory.” But lets back up and hone into the Greek word specifically for radiance.
This is an interesting word not only because of what it describes but it conveys an unusual meaning to our finite perception. Radiance is a Latin synonym for the root of “fulgere” meaning to shine. The Greek word refers to an overwhelming brilliance like the sun. But in our verse, the Greek word used for brilliance, too bright to look upon, has a preposition added to the front of the word suggesting a distraction or take away from the bright source. I’m not a scholar and don’t have license to comment but we do need to be sensitive to issues in God’s Word intentionally conveying a special meaning. This is what we have here and it speaks to me as a larger context of relationship. It may speak to the reciprocal relationship of Jesus being God’s Son; a conveyance of identity between Father and Son and Holy Spirit.
This may seem theological, and it is, but it is important here because the subject of our Salvation, our redemption, sanctification and righteousness is also at issue. All these attributes, ours because we are “IN Christ Jesus” as Jesus is in the Father, in a oneness exceeding our wonder and comprehension.
Jesus alludes to this when in the upper room He instructs the disciples and then verbally prays to the Father for the disciple to hear and listen in:
“… that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us … I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”
We are now in the age of Jesus; the Bible calls it grace. It is Jesus giving His life into us so that we can fulfill a purpose in Him. What He has begun, in us, He will continue to perform until He comes again taking us out of this worldly system and joining us to Himself in a marriage as a body is joined to its head.
Jesus is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature. Jesus upholds the universe by the word of His power. Jesus made purification for our sins on the cross and sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high after being resurrected from the grave. Jesus is, right now, in the presence of the Father interceding for us as our High Priest.
A deeper side of this profound human reality, is how the radiance of the glory of God is expressed. This is a Spiritual issue since God is a Spirit and they that worship Him must do it in Spirit and Truth. This is exactly what John tells us in John 1, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
This is the radiance of the glory of God penetrating our very soul. When we are “born again,” it is a Spiritual birth, a creation not only in Christ Jesus but are also gifted to live His life from within our present body of flesh. The flesh doesn’t change but we do! We become Spiritual! We benefit from the splendor of God’s glory in us so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in us and we are glorified in Him according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Lets put a wrap on this discussion by thinking about having the Spirit of God dwelling in us. We are not alone. We have God’s Spirit within us, gifting us to live out Christ’s life in His power. But we still have choices. We are now “born again,” created new Spiritually, but have the option of living our new life in the power of our indwelling Spirit or playing the part of a fool in self indulgence.
Grace and Truth are living within us but only released by the power of God’s Spirit. The splendor of God’s glory is visible to others when our Spiritual eyes are on the resurrected person of Jesus Christ. God’s glory is radiant when His resurrection power is free to flow out of these vessels of clay we are wear because we are in Christ Jesus just as Jesus was in the Father. Amen!