“We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” 2 Cor. iii. 18.
Moses prayed for this one thing, that he might “see God’s glory;” and he was allowed to behold it in such measure, that when he came down from the Mount, “the skin of his face shone,” so that the people “were afraid to come nigh him.” Only to him was this privilege vouchsafed in this intimate way, and that but once; but a promise was given, that at some future time it should be extended to the whole earth. God said to him, “As truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of Lord,” that glory which the Israelites had seen in glimpses and had profaned. Afterwards the prophets Isaiah and Habakkuk foretold, in like manner, that the earth should be filled with the Lord’s glory and the knowledge of it. When Christ came, these promises were fulfilled, for “we beheld His glory,” St. John says, “the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father.” [Ex. xxxiv. 30. Numb. xiv. 21. Isa. xi. 9. Hab. ii. 14. John i. 14.]
In the chapter which ends with the text, St. Paul contrasts the shadows and earnests under the Law, of “the glory that should follow” Christ’s coming, with that glory itself. He says that he and his brother Apostles are “not as Moses, who put a veil over his face.” At length the glory of God in full measure was the privilege and birthright of all believers, who now, “in the unveiled face of Christ their Saviour, beheld the reflection of the Lord’s glory,” and were “changed into His likeness from one measure of glory to another.” Our Saviour’s words in His last prayer for His Apostles, and for all his disciples as included under them, convey to us the same gracious truth. He says, “The glory which Thou gavest Me, I have given them.” [John xvii. 22.]
This glorious Dispensation, under which the Church now exists, is called by St. Paul, in the same chapter, “the ministration of the Spirit;” and again in the text, we are said to be changed into the glorious image of Christ, “by the Spirit of the Lord.”
And further, the Church, as being thus honoured and exalted by the presence of the Spirit of Christ, is called “the Kingdom of God,” “the Kingdom of Heaven;” as, for instance, by our Lord Himself. “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand:” “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.” [Matt. x. 7. John iii. 5.]
I propose now to make some remarks on this peculiar gift of the Gospel Dispensation, which, as in the foregoing passages, is spoken of as the gift of “the Spirit,” the gift of “glory,” and through which the Church has become what it was not before, the Kingdom of Heaven.
And here, before entering upon the subject, I would observe, that as there is a sense in which the grant of glory was made even under the Law, viz., in its miracles (as when the Israelites are condemned for having “seen the glory of the Lord and His miracles,” and yet “not having hearkened to his voice” [Numb. xiv. 22.]), so in another point of view it belongs exclusively to the promised blessedness hereafter. Still there is a peculiar and sufficient sense in which it is ascribed to the Christian Church, and what this is, is the question now before us.
1. In the first place, some insight is given into the force of the word “glory,” as our present privilege, by considering the meaning of the title “Kingdom of Heaven,” which, as has been just observed, has also belonged to the Church since Christ came. The Church is called by this name as being the court and domain of Almighty God, who retreated from the earth, as far as His kingly presence was concerned, when man fell. Not that He left Himself without witness in any age, but even in His most gracious manifestations, still He conducted Himself as if in an enemy’s country, “as a stranger in the land, and as a wayfaring man that turneth aside to tarry for a night.” [Jer. xiv. 8.] But when Christ had reconciled Him to His fallen creatures, He returned according to the prophecy, “I will dwell in them, and walk in them; I will set My sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore.” [2 Cor. vi. 16. Ezek. xxxvii. 26.] From that time there has really been a heaven upon earth, in fulfilment of Jacob’s vision. Thenceforth the Church was not a carnal ordinance, made of perishable materials, like the Jewish Tabernacle, which had been a type of the Dispensation to which it belonged. It became “a kingdom which cannot be moved,” being sweetened, purified, and spiritualized by the pouring out of Christ’s blood in it. It became once more an integral part of that unseen, but really existing world, of which “the Lord is the everlasting Light;” and it had fellowship with its blessed inhabitants. St. Paul thus describes it in his epistle to the Hebrews: “Ye are come to Mount Sion;” to the true “mountain of the Lord’s House,” of which the earthly Sion was a type; “and to the city of the Living God, the heavenly Jerusalem;” that is, as he elsewhere calls it, “the Jerusalem that is above,” or, as he speaks in another place, “our citizenship is in heaven;” “and to an innumerable company of Angels, to the festive concourse and Church of the First-born enrolled in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the perfected Just, and to Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.” [Heb. xii. 22-24.]