Hebrews Chapter One, Character

 

Hebrews 1:3 who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person

 

The writer of Hebrews is still focusing on Jesus in this passage, mentioning that our universe enveloped in time was made through Christ, and that this same Christ is the brightness of God’s glory, and the express image of His person. Brightness can also be translated as effulgence, which has a much more fascinating implication. It means to shine out or radiate, to be in a constant state of brightness. Effulgence, then, is the visible expression of its source. Jesus, in the flesh, was the effulgence, the radiant glory, of the Father. That is why we read: “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness,” John 1:4, 5. Later, we find Jesus telling His audience, “I am the light of the world,” John 8:12.

Christ is the effulgence, the brilliant expression of the Father’s glory incarnated among Adam’s race. The Greek for “brightness” is, “apaugasma,” and means, “shining forth, or more literally, from brightness.” The light coming forth is not a reflected light, so to speak. The light of God’s glory expressed in Christ isn’t cast off of Him, as though Jesus was the moon reflecting God’s glory to the nations of the earth. Rather, Christ was radiating the light; He IS the brightness of God’s glory; He does not reflect it, but expresses it. A Christian is a light in the world only in the sense that the Holy Spirit casts light through us. We cast, by all accounts, reflected light. But Jesus is light, as we have already quoted. He is capable of shining this light solely because He is in fact of the same person and substance as the Father.

 

A light shone in a dark place, and those who believed in the light would become sons of light, John 12:36. Jesus expressed God’s glory. When He performed miracles, when He imparted heavenly wisdom, when He cast out demons, the radiance of the Holy One of Israel shone in Him and through Him. If I were to offer an analogy, I would say that if the Father was represented as the sun in space, Christ would be the light and heat the sun sheds, while the Holy Spirit would be the senses of a man that permits him to experience and enjoy its reception.

 

Note also that the Son is the express image of God. That little phrase, “express image,” is actually the Greek word, “charakter.” The word denotes the impress or imprint of an image or likeness with the image producing said print. The NASB renders this portion of the verse, “And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature.” Note how the author of Hebrews does not say, “He is the express image of Him,” but, “of His person.” The attributes that define the Father define the Son as well. Christ isn’t an image of the Father in the sense that a coin’s image is expressed in clay that it’s pressed into. Rather, God’s nature, “character” or person is displayed in Christ. Though not the same person, they have the same nature, which is why Jesus told the Jews, “I and My Father are one,” John 10:30. Jesus did not mean they shared the same purpose; no, the Greek suggests oneness of essence. One might say, using an analogy, that when we have a child that they are the express image of our person. Unlike a picture or statue, this child shares our attributes and even our genetics, and is infused with the same lively intelligence that reveals them as an explicit image of the one that sired them. This analogy can only stretch so far, of course, but I think it helps to clarify. While a picture of me is an expression of me personally, my son is an expression of my person. Fundamentally we are equals: he bears my image in a way no other on earth could. Like begets like.

 

So the verse isn’t focused on likening Christ to being an image or stamp of the divine in this world; rather, the writer is expressing that Jesus identically mirrors the Father’s character in every respect. He is the express image, or exact representation of the invisible God. Once more quoting our Lord, He says, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father,” John 14:9. In John 17:21 Jesus prays the Father, explaining that as Father and Son are one, abiding in one another, so too ought believers to be in Them. Christian faith then, ought to be an expression of the unity the Trinity enjoys, a oneness in purpose and character as God conforms us to His Son’s image through the power of the Holy Spirit. This is our sanctification: the power over sin’s daily influence in our lives, that we may be reckoned dead to it. Being dead to sin, we are free to pursue unity in the Spirit with other saints so that, as the church, we demonstrate to the unsaved world the oneness Christ and the Father enjoy as it is expressed through His children. As believers mature (in the faith) there should be less of us, and more of Christ in us. This opens the door for Christians to fellowship in a way that John 17:21 expresses: a oneness of faith in which Jesus’ presence in our lives banishes minor blights so that we may have harmony in the body, that is, the church.

 

This verse is a good proof text for demonstrating what the New Testament writers believed about Jesus the Christ. In summary, the author of Hebrews did not flinch from proclaiming the Son’s innate divinity within 3 verses of the epistle’s beginning. Going back to the word, “charakter,” in this instance in Hebrews, stresses the complete similarity, substance, or essence of the Father and Son.