THE FACE WE'LL SEE

Christmas has ended and already our neighbors are taking down their decorative lights and tossing their Christmas trees to the sidewalk for the trash man to take to the place of burning. They have lost their savor. How American! How pragmatic! How 21st-century! How predictably pagan! With typically blunt American matter-of-factness, we admit we have just completed one phase of our lives and now it's time to move on to the next. What events lie ahead in the cultural calendar? Well, there's Kwanzaa and New Years (a hedonistic football fest!)and then the celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s birthday in January. Next there is African-American history month in February in which month we also rejoice in and celebrate our loved ones on Valentine's Day. And on and on and on. The wheels of time keep rotating with a tireless, pervasive subjecting power.

We have missed the point of Christmas: God humiliating Himself by laying aside the insignia of His Majesty and donning the weak raiment of man- deity in diapers, divinity draped in dust forevermore- in order to dwell in our yard, live a meteoric, sinless life, voluntarily put Himself on the cross in our place so that we, through faith in this same Jesus Christ and His work, might be reconciled to the Father. Amazing! Amazing grace! Our callous rush to get on with life testifies to our adamantine ignorance and inculpates us with those of whom it is said in the Negro spiritual, " De worl' treat You mean, Lawd, .. please, Suh, fuhgive us Lawd; we didn't know 'twas You." Tragically, we missed the point of Christmas. We didn't know it was Him.

The haste to get rid of the majestic and to return to the mundane tells us that we really did not look on the face of God in Christ. It condemns us for not viewing Christmas in the face of Christ but in the wrapping, trimmings, exchange of gifts, decorations, festivities and other externals. Now these have become cumbersome and, succumbing to our fallen macho adrenaline, we chin-up and face the new challenges of life. In so doing we have convincingly demonstrated that we have missed the beautiful face of God in Christ; we have buried Him under the seasonal outburst of bohemian busyness and have marginalized Him with an uncaring, momentary tolerance. We did not see His face. We could not see His face. The apostle was right: "In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." 2 Cor 4:4.

What is ironic is that this is the most prominent face all mankind will see. Believers and nonbelievers will see the face of Jesus Christ in eternity; the former in immeasurable, rhapsodic joy, the latter, in conscious, relentless, unthinkable torment. In the paraphrased words uttered by the sagacious Dr. Doug Kelly at the 2006 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA): Heaven is being in the presence of God with a Mediator; hell is being in the presence of God without a Mediator. In other words, the face of Jesus Christ is omnipresent; it is a face that’s always in our face! It is the face that sovereignly commands, “Thou shall have no other gods before my face.” Ex 20:3

In the Old Testament, those to whom God was pleased to reveal Himself thought they would die when they saw His face. In the new covenant, God has condescended to show us Himself in the physical form of His eternal Son, Jesus Christ, so that we may live. In this life, His face, the beatific vision, is what God's elect are dying daily to see, 1 Jn Jn 3:1-3. In the eschaton, Jesus will be recognized: the sinner will look on Him Whom they have pierced, Zech 12:10; Rev 1:7, and believers will recognize Him as the Lamb that was slain, Rev 5:6, 12. There’s no denying it -- the winsome, cherubic face of the baby of Bethlehem is the very face of Jesus Christ, the Davidic Messiah and Savior of the elect from all over the world, the face of “.. a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not." Isa 53:3. Let’s face up to Him: we shall all behold Him. This is the face we’ll all see... for all eternity. Aren't you glad for the sovereign grace of God Who does not play peekabo with you?