This is the great vision for the present. This is what the Holy Spirit wants us to behold more than anything else. Of Stephen it is written: “He being full of the Holy Spirit, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God” (Acts vii:55). And whenever the Holy Spirit fills us He will direct the vision of the eyes of our heart to Him who was made a little lower than the angels and who is now in heaven crowned with glory and honor. And only the power of the Holy Spirit filling us can make this great fact and vision a reality.
But what does this glorious vision mean to us? What does it teach us? Oh, much more than the weak pen of the writer can tell out.
The blessed One who is there crowned with glory and honor is the One who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death; He bore our sins on the cross and died for us. What a blessed, blessed proof then it is, as we behold Him there, that our sins are completely and forever gone!
But more than that. In seeing Him there we behold ourselves. The deliverer of our souls at the right hand of God, the second man, crowned with glory and honor, is the pattern and forerunner of all who belong to Him and whom He is not ashamed to call brethren. Grace has raised us up together, and has made us sit down together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus (Eph. ii:5, 6).
Our eternal destiny, beloved in the Lord, is to be like Him, with Him and to share His marvelous inheritance as His co-heirs. That glorious vision is the evidence of our coming glory, when we shall be transformed into His image that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. As we gaze in the Spirit on Him who is crowned with glory and honor we can see ourselves.
And as the age darkens, as the Laodicean state becomes more prevalent, temptations and snares increase, the enemy’s powers and activities more marked, we need to open our eyes and hearts wider, to take in the vision of our blessed head in Glory. Only in this way can we be kept in these evil days. The only way of spiritual progress, spiritual enjoyment, spiritual worship is to “behold as in a glass the glory of the Lord,” and beholding that glorious vision we “are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. vii:18).
This glorious vision will keep us in the place of separation. It will make us heavenly-minded and produce in our lives the practical results of the cross of Christ “crucified unto the world and the world crucified unto me.” Why do real Christians, who know the truth and even know and speak of His Second Coming go along with the world and delight in its ways? It is because the heart is departed from Christ and has lost sight of the blessed and glorious vision. Years ago a saint of God, who is now present with the Lord, made the following statement:
“It sometimes happens that Christians have got so far away from Christ in heart, that they become engrossed in the affairs of this life, and some can even visit and enjoy the poor empty, tinselled shows of this world’s vanity. What could be more lamentable? They forget that death’s stamp is deeply graven on everything this side of resurrection. But such actions clearly prove that the heart must have been away from Christ for some time.”
Reader! if this means you return unto thy rest. Arise now and seek His face and behold your Saviour, who was made a little lower than the angels crowned with glory and honor.
May all our hearts, dear children of God, cry out with him, who knew Him so well, the prisoner of the Lord “That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death” (Phil. iii:10). Soon we shall know Him and all His glory.