01 The Express Image of His Person

I THE EXPRESS IMAGE OF HIS PERSON

Hebrews 1:3 The Greek word χαρακτήρ—character—is a most expressive and a most suggestive word. The artists and the handicraftsmen of Greece employed this word to describe the etching on the face of a seal and the engraving on the face of a stamp. And from that first use of this ancient word we find it widening out to embrace every kind of distinctive feature; every kind of special sign and symbol. And then after this rich and expressive Greek word becomes naturalized and acclimatized into the English language, we soon have such serviceable words of our own as "characterize," "characteristic," and "characterization," all springing up and branching out from the original and parent word. Beginning with its artistic and handicraft uses, both in Greek and in English, this most fruitful and most helpful of words was immediately carried up into the far loftier fields of morals and religion, till there is no word we oftener employ in the vocabulary of conduct than just this Greek-English word, character. Every day we find ourselves saying that such and such a man bears a blameless character, and that such and such another man bears a bad character. We say of one man that he has completely lost his character, and of another man that he has succeeded in regaining his character. And, then, some of our greatest authors have given their whole strength to the study of human character, both in themselves and in other men. And they have set forth their studies in great books that stand at the head of our very best literature. Thus, we have the Characters of Theophrastus in Greek, and the Characters of La Bruyere in French. While all Shakespeare’s characters and all John Bunyan’s characters and all William Law’s characters are nothing less than household words with us. And then Bishop Butler has given his great talents to the study and the exhibition of human character in a way that has made his sermons on human nature to be simply ethical classics to all time. And Butler’s well-known definition of human character may very well come in here, both as illustrating his peculiar way of writing, as also because his authoritative words will carry us another step onward in our preliminary inquiry on this subject. ’By character," says the Bishop, in his bald, dry, deep way, "is meant that temper, taste, disposition, and whole frame of mind, from which we act in one way rather than in another way. Those principles from which a man acts, when they become fixed and habitual in him, we call his character. And consequently, there is a far greater variety in men’s characters than there is in the features of their faces."

But, with all that, by far the loftiest and most august use to which this Greek word has ever been put is its use in the text. The very finest words of this world are infinitely unworthy of such heavenly employment and such heavenly honor as those of the text. To take the very purest and the most perfect words of earth and to plunge them into the heavenly glory of the text is enough to consume them to dust and ashes. Still, notwithstanding all that, our earth born word character stands there shining in the light which no man can approach unto--shining but not consumed. Yes; there it stands, partaking of that awful light, and reflecting some rays of that awful light down upon us, till by means of its light we are enabled to approach some sure steps nearer to that mystery of Godliness, the Eternal Word, Who is Very God of Very God, and is at the same time our perfect pattern, and the original source and guarantee of our Christian character. The absolutely highest use to which this much-honored word has ever been put is when it is employed upon God the Father, and then upon His Eternal Son, as it is employed in the text. Now, what, exactly, is meant in the text by the "character" of God the Father? What does the apostle point at when he speaks of the express image, or as it is in the original, the character of God the Father? Well, God’s character, His express image, is just His divine nature. It is just His love, and His joy, and His peace, and His long-suffering, and His gentleness, and all His goodness. That is God’s character. It is His fulness of all these things that makes Him God, and our God. Jehovah revealed His whole moral and spiritual character when He descended and proclaimed the name of the LORD to Moses on the Mount. ’The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth." That is God’s name and nature. That is God’s express image. That is God’s character. That is what makes Him the only living and true God. That is what makes all the psalmists extol Him. And that is what makes Micah exclaim at the end of his life, and as the seal of his ministry--Who is a God like unto Thee! And then the Son of God is set forth to us in the New Testament as the brightness of His Father’s glory, and the express image of His person. Or, as the original Greek has it, the Father’s whole character is fully and for ever stamped and sealed down upon His Son. While the eternal generation of the Divine Son is unapproachably beyond and above us; while the conveyance of the Father’s character to the Son is high, and we cannot attain unto it; at the same time the conveying and the impressing of the Divine character of the Father and the Son on the human nature of our Lord is that supreme study, and all-satisfying contemplation, to which the New Testament on its every page invites us. From His birth to His death, we are enabled and we are intended to see the character of our Lord manifested in every word He spake, and in every act He did. The whole of the four Gospels are written, and have been put into our hands, in order that we may have continually before our eyes the character of Jesus Christ, both for our justifying faith in Him, and for our sanctifying imitation of Him. If you had been born and brought up in the same house with the Child Jesus, what do you think you would have remembered, and told all your days, about His childhood character? What express image would you have carried away with you from that house in which He and you both dwelt? Cicero as a schoolboy had such talents and such a character, and his school fellows had such wonderful stories to tell about him, that their fathers and mothers used to visit the school less to see their own children at their lessons than to see the young Cicero, concerning whom they were constantly hearing such wonderful stories. Well, suppose you had been at school with the young Christ, what would you have told your parents about Him, and about His ways, every night when you returned home? And if you had been a carpenter in the same workshop with Him, in what do you suppose He would have differed so much from all the other workmen? And so on, through His whole earthly life. For instance, suppose He had been a guest in the same house with you, for a shorter or longer season. What do you think you would have remembered in Him different from the other guests? The Baptist would have passed on all the best dishes, and would have drunk nothing but water, and, like Marcus’s father and Father John, not much of that. But Jesus of Nazareth ate and drank and conversed on all subjects, just like all the other guests. There was nothing ascetic, or superior to other men, about Him. And yet there was something about Him in all these things that immediately and indelibly stamped itself on every open eye and on every good and honest heart. It was His character. His character came out in everything He did and said, and in everything He did not do and did not say. His character was so clearly cut in Him that it could not be hid. You never met Him on the highway or on the street; you never spent five minutes in His society; you never stood under the same tree with Him till a shower passed over, that you did not see in Him the brightness of His Father’s glory, and the express image of His person, till you went home saying to all your kinsfolk that you had beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

I invite you, then, to the study of our Lord’s character and walk and conversation; and, in that, to the parallel study and improvement of your own character and walk and conversation. For, first His character, and then your own, those are the two things that most concern you and me in all this world. And that is so, because all else in this world shall for ever perish, and that too before very long. Your moral character alone will abide when this world shall for ever have passed away. Open your eyes then and look around you; and everything you see exists and works together for the sake of the moral character of men. (’Moral and spiritual character is the chief end of God and of man and of all their works. The creation of the world; its continuance and its administration; the coming of Christ, His work, His death, His departure, His return; the final cause and chief end of all that is the moral and spiritual character of mankind. And thus it will be that when all these things shall have finished the work given them to do, the moral and spiritual character of godly men shall alone survive.") All else shall pass away as a "tale that is told." One thing alone shall endure for ever, and that is the image and likeness of our characters to the character of Christ. Death, with one stroke of his hand, will one day strip us bare of all that we now pursue and possess. But the last enemy will not be able to lay a finger on our Christian character, unless it is to add on its finishing touches. Our Lord carried up to His Father’s house a human heart, a human character, which was and is and will for ever be a new wonder in Heaven. He carried up all His human nature with Him, with all the stamp and impress of His divine nature upon it: all His human meekness and humility and lowliness of mind; all His human love and pity and compassionateness; all His human sympathy and approachableness and affableness. And like Him, if we are found at last in Him and like Him, we also shall carry to the same place the same things that He carried. And they are the only things we possess here that are worth carrying so far; even as they are the only things that will be admitted there. And there is no fear but that all these things will be both admitted and welcomed there, as well as all those who shall possess them. For all these things are nothing else but the divine nature here and now partaken of by us, and then to all eternity to be possessed by us. And he who possesses these things in Christ and in himself; he who has while here put on the whole express image of God in Christ; he will be immortal with the same immortality as the God-Man Himself; and will be for ever blessed with the same blessedness as the God-Man Himself. Come then, and let us begin to study the character of Christ, in order to put it on. And let us not cease both studying it and putting it on until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ; which in His times He shall show; who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and the Lord of lords; who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, or can see; to whom be honor and power everlasting. Amen.