The Beauties of Christ

I awoke at 2:30 am with a heavy heart. It is amazing to me how sensitive the spirit can be in such a quiet hour. I was overwhelmed with the reality of my sin and the greatness of the grace and beauty of Christ.

Over the past couple of weeks we have learned a new hymn on Sunday Evenings entitled, “To Christ the Lord.” Consider with me the opening verse of this hymn:

To Christ the Lord let every tongue its noblest tribute bring

When He’s the subject of the song who can refuse to sing?

Survey the beauties of His face and on His glories dwell

Think of the wonder of His grace and all His triumphs tell

Starting in that third line is quite the exhortation – “survey the beauties of His face and on His glories dwell…” What does this mean to “survey the beauties of His face? According to Peter 1:8 we read,

and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory,

If we have not seen Him, how are we to survey the beauties of His face? Well, we know that we are to take this more figuratively than literally. To be sure, one day we will see our glorious Savior face to face, but for now we are called to survey the beauties of Christ, which I take to mean to consider deeply, intensely and lovingly the very nature and character of Christ. You might remember the author of Hebrews calling his readers to such a task back in Hebrews 3:1,

Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of our confession;

We must take the time to “consider Jesus” – that is to dig or to discover the richness and vastness of the person of Jesus Christ. There is no more noble use of time or more meaningful a task. To be sure, we have responsibilities on this earth as well as recreation, but these are not to be the motivation or goal of the believer. No, beloved, the goal of the believer is that having done what is necessary to live, even including what we might call “down time” – the believer should devote the rest of his waking hours to the task of considering Jesus, of surveying the beauties of His face and of dwelling on His glories. This is the passion and heart of the apostle Paul, who said those familiar words,

Philippians 3:8-11
8 More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, 9 and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, 10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; 11 in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Let me ask you – do you want to know Jesus as the apostle Paul knew Jesus? If so, what are you doing toward that goal? Do you count all other things as rubbish, casting them aside if needs be in order to know Christ Jesus? A part of your being at church may well be a counting the other things you could be doing as rubbish, as not worthy of your time. But there is more to know of Christ, more to learn of Jesus than what can be picked up in an hour and a half on Sunday morning. Rather, we should commit as much time as we can daily to so learning of Christ, of surveying the beauties of His face.

Soli Deo Gloria,

Pastor Ed