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John
Owen
Meditations
and Discourses on the Glory of Christ,
in His
Person, Office, and Grace:
with
The
Differences between Faith and Sight;
applied
unto the use of them that believe.
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CHAPTER
VIII
REPRESENTATIONS
OF THE GLORY OF CHRIST
UNDER THE OLD TESTAMENT
IT
IS SAID of our Lord Jesus Christ that,
beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he declared
unto his disciples in all the Scriptures the things
concerning himself" (Luke 24:27). It is therefore
manifest that Moses, and the Prophets, and all the
Scriptures, give testimony to Him and His glory. This
is the line of life and light which runs through the
whole Old Testament; without which we can understand
nothing aright in it; and the neglect of it is that
which makes many as blind in reading the books of it
as are the Jews, the veil being upon their minds. It
is faith alone, discovering the glory of Christ, that
can remove that veil of darkness which covers the
minds of men in reading the Old Testament, as the
apostle declares (II Cor. 3:14–16). I shall
consider briefly some of those ways and means whereby
the glory of Christ was represented to believers under
the Old Testament.
1. It was represented in the institution of
the beautiful worship of the law, with all the means
of it. Herein have they the advantage above
all the splendid ceremonies that men can invent in the
outward worship of God; they were designed and framed
in divine wisdom to represent the glory of Christ in
His person and His office. This nothing of human
invention can do, or ever pretend to. Men cannot
create mysteries, nor give to any natural thing a
mystical signification. But so it was in the old
divine institutions. What were the Tabernacle and
Temple? What was the holy place with the utensils of
it? What was the oracle, the ark, the cherubim, the
mercy-seat, placed therein? What was the high priest
in all his vestments and administrations? What were
the sacrifices and annual sprinkling of blood in the
most holy place? What was the whole system of their
religious worship? Were they anything but
representations of Christ in the glory of His person
and His office? They were a shadow, and the body
represented by that shadow was Christ.
If any would see how the Lord Christ was in
particular foresignified and represented in them, he
may read the exposition on the ninth chapter of the
Epistle to the Hebrews, where it is treated fully. The
sum is, "Moses was faithful in all the house of
God, for a testimony of those things which were to be
spoken afterward" (Heb. 3:5). All that Moses did
in the erection of the Tabernacle, and the institution
of all its services, was but to give an antecedent
testimony by way of representation to the things of
Christ that were afterward to be revealed. And that
also was the substance of the ministry of the prophets
(I Pet. 1:11,12). The veiled glimpses of the glory of
Christ, which by these means they obtained, were the
life of the Church of old.
2. It was represented in the mystical account
of His communion with His Church in love and
grace. As this is intimated in many
places of Scripture, so there is one entire book
designed to its declaration. This is the divine Song
of Solomon, who was a type of Christ, and a penman of
the Holy Ghost therein. A gracious record it is of the
divine communications of Christ in love and grace to
His Church, with their returns of love to Him and
delight in Him.
Then may a man judge himself to have somewhat
profited in the experience of the mystery of a blessed
intercourse and communion with Christ, when the
expressions of them in that holy dialogue give light
and life to his mind, and efficaciously communicate to
him an experience of their power. But because these
things are little understood by many, the book itself
is much neglected, if not despised; yea, to such
imprudence have some arrived, in foaming out their own
shame, that they have ridiculed the expressions of it.
But we are foretold of such mockers in the last days
that should walk after their own ungodly lusts; they
are not of our present consideration.
The former instance of the representations of the
glory of Christ in their institutions of outward
worship, with this record of the inward communion they
had with Christ in grace, faith, and love, gives us
the substance of that view which they had of His
glory. What holy strains of delight and admiration,
what raptures of joy, what solemn and divine
complacency, what ardency of affection, and diligence
in attendance to the means of enjoying communion with
Him, this discovery of the glory of Christ wrought in
the souls of them that believed, is emphatically
expressed in that discourse. A few days, a few hours
spent in the frame characterized in it, is a
blessedness excelling all the treasures of the earth;
and if we, whose revelations of the same glory far
exceed theirs, should be found to come short of them
in ardency of affection to Christ, and continual holy
admiration of His excellencies, we shall one day be
judged unworthy to have received them.
3. It was represented and made known under
the Old Testament in His personal appearances to
several eminent leaders in their
generations. This He did as a prelude
to His incarnation. He was as yet God only, but
appeared in the assumed shape of a man, to signify
what He would be. He did not create a human nature and
unite it to Himself for such a season; only by His
divine power He acted the shape of a man composed of
what ethereal substance He pleased, immediately to be
dissolved. So He appeared to Abraham, to Jacob, to
Moses, to Joshua, and others; as I have at large
elsewhere proved and confirmed.
And also, because He was the divine Person who
dwelt in and dwelt with the Church, under the Old
Testament, from first to last, in so doing He
constantly assumes to Himself human affections, to
intimate that a season would come when He would
immediately act in that nature. And, indeed, after the
Fall there is nothing spoken of God in the Old
Testament, nothing of His institutions, nothing of the
way and manner of dealing with the Church, but what
has respect to the future incarnation of Christ. And
it had been absurd to bring in God under perpetual
anthropopathies, as grieving, repenting, being angry,
well pleased, and the like, were it not that the
divine Person intended was to take on Him the nature
wherein such affections dwell.
4. It was represented in prophetical
visions. So the apostle affirms that
the vision which Isaiah had of Him was when he saw His
glory (John 12:41). And it was a blessed
representation thereof; for His divine person being
exalted on a throne of glory, "his train filled the
temple." The whole train of His glorious grace
filled the temple of His body. This is the true
tabernacle, which God pitched and not man; the temple
which was destroyed and which He raised again in three
days, wherein dwelt the fullness of the Godhead (Col.
2:9). This glory was now presented to the view of
Isaiah (61–5); which filled him with dread and
astonishment. But from thence he was relieved, by an
act of the ministry of that glorious one, taking away
his iniquity by a coal from the altar; which typified
the purifying efficacy of His sacrifice. This was food
for the souls of believers: in these and on like
occasions did the whole Church lift up their voice in
that holy cry, "Make haste, our Beloved, and be thou
like to a roe, or to a young hart, on the mountains of
spices."
Of the same nature was His glorious appearance on
Mount Sinai at the giving of the law (Exod. 19); for
the description thereof by the Psalmist (Ps. 68:17,18) is applied by the apostle to the ascension of
Christ after His resurrection (Eph. 4:8). Only, as it
was then full of outward terror, because of the giving
of the fiery law, it was referred to by the Psalmist
as full of mercy, with respect to His accomplishment
of the same law. His giving of it was as death to them
concerned because of its holiness and the severity of
the curse wherewith it was attended; His fulfilling of
it was life, by the pardon and righteousness which
issued from thence.
5. The doctrine of His incarnation, whereby
He became the subject of all that glory which we
inquire after, was revealed. Of course,
it was more clearly revealed in the gospel, after the
actual accomplishment of the thing itself. In how many
places this is done in the Old Testament I have
elsewhere declared; at least I have explained and
vindicated many of them—for no man can presume to
know them all—Vindiciae Evangelicae.
[that is, The Vindication of the
Gospel.] One instance will suffice
here: "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is
given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder:
and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The
mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of
Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace
there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and
upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it
with judgment and with justice from henceforth even
forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform
this" (Isa. 9:6,7). This one testimony is
sufficient to confound all Jews, Socinians, and other
enemies of the glory of Christ.
I acknowledge that, notwithstanding this
declaration of the glory of Christ in His future
incarnation and rule, there remained much darkness in
the minds of them to whom it was then made. Although
they might and did acquiesce in the truth of the
revelation, yet they could frame no notions of the way
or manner of its accomplishment. But now, when every
word of it is explained, declared, and its mystical
sense visibly laid open to us in the gospel, and by
the accomplishment exactly answering every expression
in it, it is judicial blindness not to receive
it. Nothing but the satanical pride of the hearts of
men, which will admit of no effects of infinite wisdom
but what they suppose they can comprehend, can shut
their eyes against the light of this truth.
6. The glory of Christ was also represented
in the promises, prophecies, and predictions
concerning Him. The predictions
concerning His person, coming, office, kingdom, and
His glory in them all, with the wisdom, grace, and
love of God to the Church in Him, are the line of life
which runs through all the Old Testament and takes up
a great portion of it. Those were the things which He
expounded to His disciples out of Moses and all the
Prophets. Concerning these things He appealed to the
Scriptures against all His adversaries: "Search the
Scriptures; . . for they are they which testify of
me" (John 5:39). And if we find them not, if we
discern them not therein, it is because a veil of
blindness is over our minds. Nor can we read, study,
or meditate on the writings of the Old Testament to
any advantage unless we design to find out and behold
the glory of Christ declared and represented in them.
For want of this they are a sealed book to many to
this day.
7. It is usual in the Old Testament to set
out the glory of Christ under metaphorical
expressions; yea, it abounds therein.
For such allusions are exceedingly suited to give
us a sense of those things which we cannot distinctly
comprehend. And there is an infinite condescension of
divine wisdom in this way of instruction, representing
to us the power of things spiritual in what we
naturally discern. Instances of this kind, in calling
the Lord Christ by the names of those creatures which
to our senses represent that excellency which is
spiritually in Him, are innumerable. So He is called
the rose for the sweet savor of His love, grace, and
obedience; the lily, for His gracious beauty and
amiableness; the pearl of price, for His worth, for to
them that believe He is precious; the vine, for His
fruitfulness; the lion, for His power; the lamb, for
His meekness and fitness for sacrifice; with other
things of the like kind almost innumerable.
These things have I mentioned, not with any design
to search into the depth of this treasury of those
divine truths concerning the glory of Christ; but only
to give a little light to the words of the evangelist,
that He opened to His disciples out of Moses and all
the Prophets the things which concerned Himself; and
to stir up our own souls to a contemplation of them as
contained in those books.
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