In Exodus 33, Moses asks God to allow him to see His glory and God responds in verse 20, "You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!”
I believe that if we, as humans, saw the face of God we would not be able to survive the magnificence and majesty and beauty and holiness and glory and redeeming love expressed in His face due to the fact that seeing His face would overload our human minds! Yet, we find in Psalm 11:7 that God’s Word says, “For the LORD is righteous, He loves righteousness; The upright will behold His face.” How can this be true in light of God’s Word to Moses?
On one hand, there will come a day when we see God face to face in heaven…but what about the here and now? I believe both are possible. When I worship God, I believe I see glimpses of His face…His persona. Like catching small glimpses of the Lord’s perfect love or short glances of His amazing grace or stealing a peek at how my Father sees me, I believe - in a sense - that I see and meet with Him face to face as I worship. Although I have not seen Him with my physical eyes, I have seen Him with and through my spiritual eyes!
His Word is very clear: the righteous will see His face. If I am born again, I have been made the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus…therefore I can ‘see’ His face with and through my spiritual eyes!
How awesome to think that we are righteous by virtue of the blood of Jesus – and nothing else. I cannot work for His approval. I have it. And to think He calls me His own? I cannot contain it. Bless You, Lord!
Matthew 5:8 NASB says, "Blessed are the pure in heart [the righteous], for they shall see God.”
It is in the walking out of our relationship with God - renewing our minds with the truth of who Father says we are - that we experience true intimacy with God! And I don’t think that means we have to wait until heaven to experience that! This is here and now relationship with God Almighty!
Philippians 3:8-9 NASB 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…
Let’s walk in righteousness by faith today and let the Word of God permeate our hearts and minds this week as we remind ourselves that we are the righteousness of God in and through Christ Jesus by virtue of His blood! Let’s meet with Him face to face - nothing hidden between us. This is the place of abundant life…regardless of our circumstances. Believe it and receive it!
Dennis Jernigan
Photo courtesy of https://pixabay.com/photos/man-face-look-people-sad-emotion-164217/