Jesus as the Brightness of God's glory.
I. THE GLORY OF GOD IS MANIFESTED TO MEN. Our relations of dependence upon God are exalted by our perception of him upon whom we depend. It is not as if a hand stretched out of the unseen, laying before us our daily bread, and then withdrawing itself, as if it concerned us nothing to know the Giver provided only we got the gift. God. is desirous that we should both know him, the Giver, and as much of his glory as it is possible for man to know. "The glory of God." could not have been an unfamiliar phrase to Hebrew Christians. The glory of Jehovah appeared to the children of Israel just before the giving of the manna (Exodus 16:10). Also on Mount Sinai, at the giving of the Law. Also when the tabernacle was completed the glory of Jehovah so filled it that Moses was not able to enter (Exodus 40:35). When Solomon built a house for Jehovah, the glory of Jehovah so filled the house that the priests could not stand to minister. Consider also the crowns of Isaiah and. Ezekiel. Every created thing has its glory, and though there are times when that glory may be in retirement, yet there are other times when the glory comes forth into full manifestation. How much more, then, must there be a suitable and sufficient manifestation of the glory of God himself!
II. THE FULL MANIFESTATION OF GOD'S GLORY IS IN JESUS. The expression here, "brightness," or rather "effulgence," is in harmony with all those numerous passages in which light is connected with the revelation of God in Christ Jesus. The light which we see is but the expression of an invisible existence behind it. We speak of the rays of the sun; but what is the sun itself but condensed radiance? And so when we come to Jesus and. think of the light streaming forth from him upon human ignorance, misery, and despair, we are reminded by the way in which he is here spoken of that Jesus is not to be considered by himself. By him the invisible is made visible. The love of the Father becomes a radiant, communicable emotion in the incarnate life of the Son. All those bursts of intolerable light which filled the tabernacle were but symbols of that true light, the effulgence of the Divine glory, which lighteth every man coming into the world, and. which has dwelt among us in flesh as in a tabernacle. Blessed are those who can see this Divine effulgence, and discern the difference between it and the effulgence of other lights. The dwellers in the immediate district where Jesus had been brought up never thought of explaining the wonders of his life by the fact that he was the ἀπαύγασμα of the Divine glory. Many thought it a sufficient explanation to say that he was Elijah, or Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. Consider in connection the words of Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:1-18., where he speaks of the god of this world blinding the minds of unbelievers, so that there should not shine unto them the illumination of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the Image of God; and then he goes on to speak of how the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness has shined in our hearts, to illuminate them with the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.—Y.