Shining Like the Sun

A Biblical Theology of Meeting God Face to Face

David H. Wenkel

• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781683591672
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblische Studien

This is the first sustained, whole-Bible treatment on the theme of meeting God face to face. Starting with Genesis and ending with Revelation, the author systematically covers the major events in salvation history, all of which reveal the beauty of encountering God's grace in abundance.

Chapter 10

Face to Face with God in the New Covenant Community

This chapter of our study draws from a wide array of sources in the New Testament, including Paul’s letters and the Johannine epistles. The goal of this chapter is to describe how the important theme of YHWH’s shining face came to be used in important to ways to refer to God’s personal presence among his people in the new covenant community.

The previous chapter emphasized the beginning and middle of Jesus’ ministry on earth before his death and resurrection. The three synoptic Gospels depict the transfiguration event because it gave the disciples a small window into the glory of God that was to be revealed. Jesus met with the disciples on the mountain in a special way because he knew that their hearts and minds needed to be prepared for the cross. After his resurrection, Jesus continued to appear to the disciples for forty days (Acts 1:3). Now Jesus was physically gone from among the church, though spiritually present and empowering them even more through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

In this chapter we will see that once Jesus physically ascended into heaven, the motif of meeting Jesus face to face continues to function as an important way to communicate God’s presence among the disciples. The motif of God’s face continues to build on all of the layers ever since the trajectory was firmly established by Moses’ face-to-face meetings with YHWH (and Jacob’s wrestling match).

The death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus were followed by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples at Pentecost (Acts 2). This outpouring enabled the disciples to have eyes to see and ears to hear who Jesus was and is. Through the power of the Holy Spirit and a renewed mind they were able to fully comprehend that he was YHWH-in-the-flesh, that is, God incarnate. As Graham Goldsworthy explains, “Pentecost, then, involves an experience unique to the disciples, for it marks a point of transition. It is a fact of history that no one except the apostles has ever had this experience. No one since that time has come from knowing Jesus face to face, in the flesh, to knowing him by his preached Word and by his Spirit.”1

This outpouring of the Holy Spirit is significant because the new covenant is characterized by the presence of God’s Spirit in all of its participants. This fulfills the promise from Jeremiah 31:31–34 that all of God’s people will know him and have a personal relationship with them. Whereas the Mosaic covenant was nationalistic and temporary, the new covenant is an eternally enduring personal relationship open to both Jew and Gentile.

All participants in the new covenant have a personal relationship with the Lord. Both Jesus and God the Father are referred to as “Lord” (κυριος, kurios). In Luke-Acts, the title Lord has a twofold referent and a degree of intentional ambiguity. Kavin Rowe explains that the “possibility of the shared identity” between Jesus and God the Father as Lord is something that “lies within the activity of God’s own life.”2 The worship of Jesus in the first century was a distinctive development or transformation of the normative monotheistic Jewish practice of worshiping YHWH. Larry Hurtado explains that what is so distinctive about Christian worship is that “Christ is included with God as a recipient of devotion.”3

This chapter will seek to identify those texts in the New Testament where the motif of meeting God face to face continues. Again, every instance where Jesus appears before others constitutes an example of someone seeing YHWH face to face. This would include much of the New Testament. This narrow study is focused on a much narrower set of texts. The criteria used in this chapter are identical to the criteria we applied to Mark’s Gospel. We are examining those New Testament texts that continue the thematic trajectory established by Moses and his shining face that had to be hidden from the people after he met with God face to face. In this chapter we see further confirmation of the thesis: those who meet with God face to face through the gospel are changed. Until Christ’s return, this meeting is spiritual rather than physical and is experienced through prayer.

Jesus’ Face: Shining through the Gospel

One of the clearest examples of the face-to-face motif in the New Testament appears in 2 Corinthians 3–4. This chapter also demonstrates the ongoing pastoral relevance of this theme. The pastoral problem that Paul faced was the presence of people who were disturbing the Corinthian church and finding authority on the basis of letters that established their legitimacy. In 2 Corinthians 3–4 Paul defends his ministry and his lack of such letters. Ernest Best sums up the matter: “If however the Corinthians really want such letters, then Paul can offer many — the Corinthian Christians themselves.”4

The narratives about Moses, his shining face, the veil that covered it, and his encounters with YHWH are used to illustrate the major differences between the Mosaic, or old covenant, and the new covenant. Paul probably engaged in this rather complex discussion in order to turn the tables on those who were disturbing the church with twisted interpretations of Exodus. Moses was not only prominent in the old covenant but in contemporary literature of the first century. But it is equally unlikely, as N. T. Wright points out, that Paul was reluctant to “drag Moses into his argument.”5 This large section of argumentation in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthian church highlights the importance of the motif we have been tracing through the Scriptures. We see in 2 Corinthians 3–4 that the face of Jesus shines on the hearts of those who believe through the gospel. When a person believes in Jesus, they spiritually encounter the shining face of God in Christ and they are changed.

Reading Exodus correctly is essential in order to read 2 Corinthians 3–4 correctly. Paul anchors his inner-biblical allusions to the larger biblical narratives of Exodus 19–34, and not just bits and pieces of it.6 This is an important point to make because historical-critical readings of Exodus have often divvied up the Pentateuch (including the book of Exodus) according to theories about who might have authored it. Such theories often assert that Moses did not write Exodus and that the text as we have it today is a patchwork of various authors. As Scott Hafemann points out, “The implications of a critical reading of biblical narratives have thus inadvertently carried over into the interpretation of Paul’s own reading of the biblical tradition.”7

We do not have space to explore each detail of Paul’s use of Exodus in 2 Corinthians 3–4. However, there is one important truth that connects to our study: those who have faith encounter the shining face of Jesus in and through the gospel. Because people are not able to remain neutral when they encounter God, they must either be hardened or changed into vessels of God’s glory and light.

Paul establishes a contrasting r...