February 9

For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the first born amongst many brethren. —Romans 8:29.

For two great ends did Christ come into the world; a restitution of us to our interest in salvation, and a restoring our original qualities of holiness unto us. He came to sanctify and cleanse the church, that it should be holy and without blemish; unblamable, and unreprovable in his sight: to redeem and to purify his people. The one is the work of his merit, which goeth upward to the satisfaction of his Father; the other, the work of his Spirit and grace, which goeth downward to the sanctification of his church. In the latter he fashioneth his image in us by renovation. Holiness must needs consist in a conformity unto Christ, if we consider the nature of it. We are then sanctified, when we are re-endued with the image of God, after which we were at first created. Some have conceived that we are therefore said to be created after God's image, because we were made after the image of Christ, who was to come: but that is contradicted by the apostle, who saith, that Adam was the figure of Christ, and not Christ the pattern of Adam; yet that created holiness is renewed in us after the image of Christ. As we have borne the image of the earthly Adam, who was taken out of the earth, an image of sin, and guilt; so we must bear the image of the heavenly Adam, who is the Lord from heaven, an image of life and holiness. "We were predestinated," saith the apostle, "to be conformed unto the image of the Son:" conformed in his nature, holiness; in his end, happiness; and in the way thereunto, sufferings. "We all," saith he, "beholding with open face, as in a glass;" that is, in Christ, or in the face of Christ, "the glory of God, are changed into the same image with Christ," (he the image of his Father, and we of him,) "from glory to glory," that is, either from glory inchoate in obedience and grace here (for the saints in their very sufferings, are glorious and conformable to the glory of Christ: the spirit of glory is upon you for your reproaches for Christ") unto glory consummate in heaven, and salvation hereafter: or, "from glory to glory," that is, grace for grace; the glorious image of God's holiness in Christ's fashioning and producing itself in the hearts of the faithful, as an image or species of light, shining on a glass, doth from thence fashion itself on the wall, or in another glass. Holiness is the image of God. Now in an image there are two things required: 1. A similitude of one thing unto another; 2. A deduction, derivation, impression of that similitude upon the one from the other, and with relation thereunto. For though there be similitude of snow in milk, yet the one is not the image of the other. Now then, when an image is universally lost, that no man living can furnish his neighbor with it, to draw from thence another for himself, there must be recourse to the prototype and original, or else it can not be had. Now in Adam there was a universal obliteration of God's holy image, out of himself and his posterity. Unto God therefore himself, we must have recourse, to repair this image again. But how can this be? The apostle tells us that he is an inaccessible, an unapproachable God; no man can draw near him, but he will be licked up and devoured like the stubble in the fire; and yet, if a man could come near him, (as, in some sense, he is "not far from every one of us,") yet he is an invisible God; no man can see him and live; no man can have a view of his face, to new draw it again. We are all, by sin, come short of his glory: as impossible it is for any man to become holy again, as it is to see that which is invisible, or to approach unto that which is inaccessible; except the Lord be pleased, through some veil or other, to exhibit his image again unto us, and through some glass to let it shine upon us, we shall be everlastingly destitute of it. And this he hath been pleased to do through the veil of Christ's flesh; God was manifest in the flesh; in that flesh he was made visible; and we have an access into the holiest of all through the veil, that is to say, Christ's flesh; in that flesh he was made accessible. By him, saith the apostle, we have access unto the Father: he was the image of the invisible God: he that hath seen him, hath seen the Father. For as God was in him reconciling the world unto himself, so was he in him revealing himself unto the world. "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath revealed him."