What Is the Beatific Vision?
The main way we are to think of the beatific vision is God has made Himself visible in the most perfect way that human beings are capable of apprehending, that is, in Jesus Christ. For example, the New Testament speaks about seeing the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
The beatific vision is the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise that we will see God. That is the essence of it. Then, we have to ask, “What does Jesus mean by seeing God?” We have to say that it is not a matter of physical sight for the simple reason that God is invisible. He is the invisible God. Many Christians tend to think that when we die, we will see God because He will become visible. However, He is not going to change because we die. This is the sheer mystery of His being. He is not the kind of being who is in His own nature visible. But, He makes Himself visible.
John Calvin has a beautiful way of speaking about creation as the invisible God putting on the clothes He wears to go outside so that we can see what He is like. I think that is part of what it means for us to see God. We see Him in this world, and we will see Him more fully in the world to come.
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“Build Not Your Nest Here”
Christian, the compass of suffering points true north to God’s eternal dwelling place. Therefore, “build not your nest here,” but seek and “desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Hebrews 11:16).19 Your Lord will graciously sustain and bear you through your pain and suffering in this life, and in his timing, usher you into his presence, where there will be no more death, mourning, crying, or pain (Revelation 21:4).
The English Puritans and their Scottish counterparts, the Covenanters, experienced intense suffering. Along with their contemporaries, they faced the normal hardships of the seventeenth-century world: plagues, illnesses, and the deaths of infants, children, and women in childbirth. In addition to these, however, many of the Puritans endured deep and persistent persecution.
The Stuart monarchs (1603–1685) — James I, Charles I, and Charles II — viewed the Puritans as threats to and seditious rebels of the English Commonwealth due to their refusal to conform to the Church of England and their attempts to bring “further reformation” to the Church. As a result, the magistrates fined, dismembered, and incarcerated Puritans for not adhering to the Book of Common Prayer and the various ceremonies of the Church of England. In spite of the cruel, abusive mistreatment that they received at the hand of their tormentors, these Puritans demonstrated courageous resolve and Christian perseverance as they remained steadfast in their devotion to their Lord Jesus Christ.
Though our own hardships may not be the same, we can learn and apply three valuable lessons about suffering from the Puritans’ thoroughly biblical reflections on the trials they endured. Applying these lessons to our own circumstances helps us to recognize them as purifying fires meant to prove the genuineness of our faith and increase our affection for Christ.
A More Precious Christ
The Puritans teach us, first, that suffering can be a catalyst to understanding and experiencing the inestimable value of Christ, which in turn leads to an active, perpetual treasuring of Christ above all else. In the midst of his suffering, the Covenanter Samuel Rutherford was able to see and embrace Christ as his “Pearl.” Christ was so precious to him that he refused to “exchange the joy of my bonds and imprisonment for Christ with all the joy of this dirty and foul-skinned world.”1
For the Puritans, suffering was a purifying agent to “aggravate sinne” so that “sinne bee the sowrest, and Christ the sweetest, of all things.”2 Richard Sibbes asserts that suffering yields a “bruising” that enables a Christian to “prize Christ above all.”3 When all is prosperous, it is more difficult to see the treasure that Christ is, but when trials come, “nothing comforts [the soul] like the riches of Christ. . . . Nothing makes a Christian sing care away, like the riches of Christ.”4 Even as suffering batters the body or the mind of Christ’s disciple, the soul can become more enamored with the beauty of Christ.
Severe Mercy
Second, the Puritans reinforce the truth that God is the divine Author over suffering. Nothing in this life, including suffering, eludes the sovereign will of God. Therefore, Christians are to “question not but there is a favourable design in [suffering] towards you.”5 God uses suffering for his divine purposes, which include the good and growth of his children, thus displaying at one and the same time his sovereignty and covenant love. In the Lord’s sovereign hands, suffering becomes a divine, gracious means of sanctification, by which “God is but killing your lusts.”6
God’s love permeates the suffering of his elect. Every trial that his elect encounter discloses the warmth, sweetness, and affection of the Father. He does not intend to hurt or destroy.
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Three Books to Read on Homosexuality
The idea that God whispers about sexual sin in his Word is nuts! In some ways, one can say that what God says about sex in the Bible is deafeningly loud!
This past Sunday in my church, I spoke about Bill C-4 that passed in Canada, and about the city ordnance that is being proposed in Indiana on how people can counsel when it comes to homosexuality. I told my church that I think this is the issue where many people, Christian or just conservative, are going to compromise because it is such an emotional question, based on personal experience (which has become sacred to the cultural worldview).
These are the three books I wish every Christian would read now to educate themselves on this Biblical truth. Taken together, these books provide a great foundation for a biblical and winsome understanding of what we believe about this sin and its relationship to the Gospel.
First, What Does the Bible Really Teach about Homosexuality? By Kevin DeYoung. This is a clear and engaging little book that answers this question so well.
Second, Transforming Homosexuality: What the Bible Says about Sexual Orientation and Change by Heath Lambert and Denny Burk. This book is very helpful and relevant to the conversation about the Canadian Bill and the city ordnance in Indiana because it addresses precisely the question of whether homosexuals can change. It also clarifies the difference between the classic understanding of conversion therapy and gospel transformation.
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Of What Value are Miracles?
First, he claimed that the Bible was written in a style to excite and inspire human imagination, not to persuade the intellect. Second, a proper reading of Scripture requires peeling back the layers of phrases and metaphors. In other words, the Bible did not record miracles but reported events robed in hyperbole and exaggeration. The seeds of Spinoza’s doubts later blossomed in nineteenth-century liberal interpretations of the Scriptures. Some New Testament scholars claimed, for example, that Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand was no miracle. Rather, Jesus stood before an opening of a cave, which was concealed by His long, flowing robe. His disciples then fed loaves of bread through the sleeves of His robe. The feeding was no miracle but rather a sleight of hand—a well-intentioned ruse meant to inspire selflessness.
In his Theological-Political Treatise, Spinoza argued that the will of God is synonymous with the laws of nature. On the other hand, a miracle is a violation of the law of nature. God’s will is unbreakable; therefore, miracles are impossible. Some philosophers, such as David Hume, simply dismissed miracles because of disbelief. Hume maintained that the testimony of Christ’s resurrection, for example, was likely false. Such testimony was therefore invalid for establishing the historicity of the resurrection. In the present, New Testament scholars such as Bart Ehrman make similar claims. Ehrman defines a miracle as improbable. Historians, however, can establish only what probably occurred in the past. Thus, a historian can never ascertain the historicity of a miracle. Regardless of the variations, the simple truth behind the rejections of miracles is unbelief—a rejection of God’s Word.