The veil, which hides the unseen God from the eye of mortals, must be somehow withdrawn. Now all this has been done once, and done only, in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, He being the brightness of His Father’s glory, and the express image of His person.
The Godhead became palpable to human senses; and man could behold, as in a picture or in distinct personification, the very characteristics of the Being who made him. Then truly did men hold converse with Immanuel, which is, being interpreted, God with us. They saw His glory in the face of Jesus and the very characteristics of the Divinity Himself may be said to have appeared in authentic representation before them, when God manifest in the flesh descended on Judea, and sojourned amongst its earthly tabernacles.
By this mysterious movement from heaven to earth, the dark, the untrodden interval, which separates the corporeal from the spiritual, was at length over come. The King eternal and invisible was then placed within the ken of mortals. They saw the Son, and in Him saw the Father also so that while contemplating the person and the history of a man, they could make a study of the Godhead.
And it is thus the unequivocal demonstration has been given, that God is love. We could not scale the heights of that mysterious ascent which might bring us within view of the Godhead. It is by the descent of the Godhead unto us, that this great manifestation has been given; and we learn and know of God, from the wondrous history of Him who went about doing good continually.
We could not go in search of the viewless
Deity, through the depths and the vastnesses of infinitude; or discover the
secret, the untold purposes, that were brooding there. But in no way could a
more palpable exhibition have been made, than when the eternal Son shrined in
humanity stepped forth on the platform of visible things, and on the proclaimed
errand to seek and to save us.
We can now read the character of God in the human looks and in the human language of Him who is the very image and visible representation of the Deity. We see it in the tears of sympathy which He shed. We hear it in the accents of tenderness which fell from Him. Even His very remonstrances were those of a meek and gentle nature; for they are remonstrances of deepest pathos, the complaints of a longing and affectionate spirit, against the sad perversity of men bent on their own undoing.
When visited with the fear that God looks hardly and adversely towards
us, let us think of Him who had compassion on the famishing multitudes; of Him
who mourned with the sisters of Lazarus; of Him who, when He approached the
city of Jerusalem, wept over it, at the thought of its coming desolation. And
knowing that the Son is like unto the Father, let us re-assure our hopes with
the certainty that God is love.
