September 13 Daily Devotional

Bible Reading:

Colossians 1:15

¹⁵ Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature:

Devotional:

God is a Spirit. God is invisible. But yet the Invisible God reveals Himself with increasing clearness.

Glimmeringly through and behind the veil of nature; more transparently in man created after His Image; and with full clearness in Christ Who is the express Image of His Person, the Image of the Invisible God (Colossians 1:15).

Image, not likeness. What has been sculptured conveys more reality than what has been pictured in lines and tints; it gives the full appearance; in marble or in metal the image imitates the massive form of life. And while the likeness that is drawn with pencil or brush conveys in turn the warmth of life, the glow of soul, the mobile features, which the cold, hard marble refuses to express, yet the image is more impressive, is more overwhelming by its mightier reality and tangibility.

The Scripture therefore does not speak of the likeness, but of the Image of God Who is invisible, and in this expression the whole action of religion centers itself. God gives His Image; man corrupts this Image; man wants himself to make an image of God. This desire himself to make an image of God is grievous sin; and in the end this sin reaches its utmost height, when Satan, as the Beast, as the man of sin, as the Antichrist, himself erects an image, for which he demands worship which alone is due to "the express Image of God's person"—the Christ.

This revelation of God in His Image must not be taken in a figurative or metaphorical sense. On the contrary, it is supernatural reality. Hence the saying of Jesus to Philip (John 14:9): "He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father." And hence the hope of glory for every child of God, that one day he too shall see Christ as He is, and that in seeing the glorified Christ, he shall see God Himself face to face. He shall not see Christ, and afterward and alongside of Him see God, but he shall see God in Christ.

Sin has marred the Image of God in the unregenerate beyond the point of recognition. And now God gives in Christ, in one person, His full Image in perfect clearness. And this was possible in our human nature, because from all eternity the Son was the Image of the Father, and, as by the shadow of this Image, our human nature was formed from the dust of the earth.

He, therefore, who rests content with the revelation of God in nature, depressed as it is by the curse; or he who rests content with the revelation of the spiritual being of God in man, as he is dead by sin; can not attain unto the true knowledge of God, but must fall away into idolatry or false philosophy.

"No man knoweth the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him" (Matthew 11:27).

Therefore Christ remains the center of our Divine worship. Not only by what He spake, by what He did, by what He suffered, but by His own Person. The glory of the Apostles lies in what they have heard, seen and handled of the Word of life.

Christ is not merely the highest Prophet among the prophets, and the Head of the Apostles, He Himself is the personal embodiment of everything that is comprehended in the glory of our religion. "In Him dwelleth the fullness of the Godhead bodily." We name ourselves after Him. In His Name salvation is given us. From His Person and Name goes out the regenerating, life-renewing power, which has changed the fashion of this world. Only where He is worshiped, real Christianity is. He rules not merely by the tradition of what He once was, spake, did and endured, but by a real power, which even now, seated at God's right hand, He still exercises over lands and nations, generations, families and individuals. To be for Him or against Him, decides the course of the world's history, the final destiny of every individual life. With Him the world shall rejoice in peace, turned against Him, it will be troubled and will continue to be vexed, until either it returns to Him, or in resisting Him works out its own destruction.

Every effort to weaken the Christian religion and to detach it from Him, or to mingle it with philosophical and heathen inventions, must therefore lead to spiritual and moral retrogression.

He who in any wise puts the supreme name of Christ on a line with that of Buddha, Confucius or Mohammed or names them in one breath, undermines the Christian religion and all religion, and with it the happy development of our human race. For all this leads away from the knowledge of God, falsifies the same, and causes the real knowledge of God to be lost; and while to know God is itself eternal life, to be enjoyed here and in the hereafter, all alienation from the Christ, all beclouding of the name of Christ, is no search after life, but after death.

To seek Christ for the sake of salvation is the beginning; but he who understands what salvation in Christ is, will for its sake cultivate the knowledge of God.

It is true that in Christ is your surety, that one day your soul will be pure from all sin; the assurance that then no guilt of sin will any more distress you; the promise that you shall one day receive your body back in glory; and, in Christ no less, is the hope of a home in the Father's house of many mansions, of sacred joy in the halls of everlasting light, of an endless fellowship with all God's saints; in brief, of an inheritance that will bring you what no ear has ever heard, no eye has ever seen, or has ever entered the heart of man.

And yet, all this is nothing else than the glory of the palace and of those who may enter therein; the supreme glory, which is and remains salvation, is to be sought in God Himself. To own Him as your God, to know Him with clear-sighted understanding, in blessed adoration to enjoy soul-fellowship with the living God—this, and this alone, is the kernel and the pith of all everlasting salvation.

And therefore there is salvation in Christ, both because He delivers you from sin, and because He guarantees the inheritance among the saints in light; but yet, salvation in Christ is only grasped in full, when in Him, as the Image of the invisible God, you lay hold on God Himself, and in this knowledge of God, which shines out toward you from this Image, you imbibe eternal life.

It is not a salvation which Christ but prepares for you, brings down to you, and into which He once shall lead you, simply in order that, after this mighty work has been consummated, He may retire from the scene. No, even in the realm of glory there would be no blissfulness if Christ were not to be forever there, as the One in Whom you can see, know and enjoy God.

You do not have to wait for this until you have entered the Father-house above.

In the heavenly life the knowledge of God will be consummated, but it begins here and now. We have not merely a promise of future revelation, but a revelation of God in Christ, which already here falls within our reach.

The Image of God is sketched for us on the Gospel page in Christ. God is a Spirit, and the self-revelation of God in the eternal Word is expressed for us in the written Word.

Even after His Ascension, Christ still lives on in this Word. With this Word the likeness of God's Image has gone forth into the world. His figure lives on among us, and thanks to this Word, we are so familiar with the Person and the Appearance of Christ, that He accompanies us by the way. As Christ moved among the people of His time, so the imagination brings Him into our own environment, and we apply His word of the long ago to ourselves, in such a way as to make us feel that He Himself addresses, admonishes, encourages and comforts us.

Even this is not all.

There is not only a likeness of Christ in the Word, but powers also, operations and influences have gone out from Him, which, as sparks emitting fire, have transplanted themselves from soul to soul, have kindled fire in the human breast, and thus have caused a flame of love, of sacred purpose, of spiritual consecration to glow, which has extended through the ages and still burns today, and which, when we are privileged to live in it, cherishes and warms us, and brings, as it were, the very breath of Christ close to us.

And all this is not merely the passive result of His appearing twenty centuries ago, but in all reality it is fed and strengthened day by day by Christ Himself, and, immediately from Christ, urges itself upon us. Every soul that is born anew, every holy thought that comes into our mind, all good work that we are enabled to do, it is all His work through the wondrous indwelling of the Holy Ghost.

He would come and take up His abode with us, and He is come, and still comes, every day and every night, to confirm this indwelling in the congregation of His saints. He knows and calls us by name, and adapts Himself to the need of every heart.

So He Who is the Image of the Invisible God, continually urges Himself upon us, continues in us the work He has once begun, and through ebb and flood, makes the ocean of God's unfathomable mercies glisten for us ever more gloriously.

Truly, there is knowledge of God which we take from Him and derive from Him; but far more there is knowledge still of God which He Himself imparts unto us, which He brings into us, and in the hidden depths of our soul makes fully clear to us.

The mystery of it is, that He Who is the Image of the Invisible God, not merely shows this Image unto us, and fascinates us with it, but chisels this Image in ourselves, in our own person, in our own soul.

Our own inner life is made conformable to the inner life of Christ. His Image imprints itself in God's saints.

And this is the highest knowledge of God, which we can attain here on earth, when thus the Image of God in Christ renews the Image of God in us.

This devotional classic offers 110 meditations on a single thought from Psalm 73: "As for me, it is good to be near to God." The author states, "The fellowship of being near unto God must become reality ... it must permeate and give color to our feeling, our perceptions, our sensations, our thinking, our imagining, our willing, our acting, our speaking. It must not stand as a foreign factor in our life, but it must be the passion that breathes throughout our whole existence."

The meditations reflect the blending of spiritual vigor with doctrinal loyalty so consistently expressed in the life of Abraham Kuyper. These are devotions with true substance, avoiding the extremes about which Kuyper adds a word of caution: "Stress in creedal confession, without drinking from the Living Fountain, runs dry in barren orthodoxy, just as truly as spiritual emotion, without clearness in confessional standards, makes one sink in the bog of sickly mysticism."

Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) was a Dutch political leader and Calvinist theologian. Elected to parliament in 1874, he became Prime Minister in 1901 and served in that capacity until 1905. As a theologian, he revived a systematic, orthodox Calvinism. He founded the Free Reformed Church and the Free University of Amsterdam. His other works include Principles of Sacred Theology, Lectures on Calvinism, and The Work of the Holy Spirit

Further information about Abraham Kuyper's life can be seen in the translator's "Biographical Note"; further information about To Be Near Unto God can be Abraham Kuyper's "Preface" to that book.