They shall see His face

“They shall see His face.” The word, “see” sounds in my ears with a clear, full, melodious note. I think we see but little here. This indeed, is not the world of sight—“we walk by faith, not by sight.” Around us all is mist and cloud; what we do see, we see only as if men were trees walking. If ever we get a glimpse of the spirit-world, it is like yonder momentary lightning flash in the darkness of the tempest which opens for an instant the gates of heaven, and in the twinkling of an eye they are closed again. And then the darkness is denser than before, as if it were enough for us poor mortals to know that there is a brightness denied to us as yet. 

The saints see the face of Jesus in heaven because they are purified from sin. The pure in heart are blessed, they shall see God, and none others. It is because of our impurity which still remains, that we cannot as yet see His face, but their eyes are touched with eye salve, and therefore they see... But up yonder they not only do not sin, but they cannot sin; they are not tempted, for there is no space for the tempter to work upon, even could he be admitted to try them. They are without fault before the throne of God, and surely this alone is a heaven—to be rid of inbred sin, and the plague of the heart, and to have ended forever, the struggle of spiritual life, the crushing of the fleshly power of death! They may well see His face when the scales of sin have been taken from their eyes, and they have become pure as God Himself is pure! ...

Moreover, as they have done with sins and cares, so have they done with sorrows. “There shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying; neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away.” We are none of us quite strangers to grief, and with some of us pain is an inseparable companion—we still dwell in the smoky tents of Kedar. Perhaps it is well that we should be so tried while we are here, for sanctified sorrow refines the soul, but in glory there is no affliction, for pure gold needs not the furnace. Well may they then, behold Christ when there are no tears to dim their eyes, no smoke of this world to rise up between them and their beloved—they are alike, free from sin, and care, and sorrow! They see His face right gloriously in that cloudless atmosphere and in the light which He Himself supplies.

Moreover, the glorified see His face the more clearly because there are no idols to stand between Him and them. Our idolatrous love of worldly things is a chief cause of our knowing so little of spiritual things; because we love this and that so much, we see little of Christ. You cannot fill your life cup from the pools of earth, and yet have room in it for the crystal streams of heaven; but they have no idols there—nothing to occupy the heart, no rival for the Lord Jesus. He reigns supreme within their spirits, and therefore they see His face.

Heaven of Heavens, Sermon 824, Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Photo credit: By Manjesh ambore (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons